So, when he arrived at the door of my tenement apartment at 1AM, unexpected, unannounced, I didn't say no. I let him in, against all my instincts.

"Hi. I was at the community center. We just finished working. We were painting and doing construction. I'm exhausted. It's too late to go home. Can I stay here?"

He stood there right before me, Jay Martinez, about 5'10", dark-skinned, a little pockmarked. His hair was close-cropped and curly. His ears were extremely small and curled up at the bottom. He was stocky, but he had a sloppy-full belly that spilled over his belt. Though he looked strong and muscular enough he would always let the other men do the hard work and heavy lifting I'd noticed.

And now, here he was. I had gone to school that day, attended three classes at Hunter, worked at my waitress job on the usual 7-hour shift, taken the subway home to the Court Street station at Borough Hall. I'd just gotten in from a very long day a half hour before. I had hoped to do evening prayers, put on my pajamas, watch a little tv and then fall dead asleep. His arrival ruined those innocent plans.

He was a Headquarters Chief in what was then called NSA. Now known as SGI (Soka Gakkai International), it was and is a group founded on Buddhist principles. Many New Yorkers are familiar with NSA/SGI from their time in the 80s when they conducted huge campaigns to recruit people. They could be found in every neighborhood, out on the streets, handing out pamphlets and intruding upon people with the question, posed with a big smile, "Have you ever heard about Nam myoho renge kyo?"

I had been drawn in not by this method of "street shakubuku" (introduction), but through a girl I worked with, Anna. We were both waitresses in a burger restaurant on Court Street in Brooklyn Heights. She intrigued me. She had a young son, was a single mother, worked for the same tips I did, and yet managed to maintain an apartment in the Heights.

Even more importantly, when everyone else was stressing out about not having a date on Friday night, she seemed genuinely happy and at ease, unconcerned with her single status. She seemed buoyant.

"Oh my God, you will not believe what happened today!" she announced to the lunch shift table as we had breakfast before the restaurant opened. "I was $300 short on the rent. I didn't know where I'd get it. So, I just chanted and chanted Nam myoho renge kyo and what do you think happened? I got a check in the mail this morning - a refund from the telephone company!!! for $296! Can you believe it? Isn't that wild?"

She had stories like this on a regular basis: a friend sending her $50, a birthday card with $100, finding $20 on the street when she had no money for dinner for her son and herself.

I was impressed. It didn't hit me until years later to ask why a young woman with an MA in Psychology (fairly rare in those days) was working as a waitress and not in her own field.

Everything about her seemed to be unencumbered by weighty convention, even her physical being, her lack of breasts (which would have bothered other women), her height (5'1"), her very short hair. She had a Peter Pan quality that men found fascinating.

Anna had tried to introduce me to her "Buddhist beliefs" a number of times. "Maggie, you'd love this." I would never give her a hearing. I thought she was a Hare Krishna or somesuch. When I finally told her that, she cried, "What? No, no. That's a cult!"

And then one day she left one of her NSA magazines open to an article she knew I'd be interested in. She left it right where I'd be sitting to have lunch after the shift ended. My eye naturally alighted on it and I read. It was well-written. My English major prejudice was impressed by the grammatical correctness and fluent style. This was no Hare Krishna klaptrap with appalling spelling and uneven font. This was sophisticated stuff.

And so, I was seduced. One day shortly after she invited me to her apartment to see her altar. She led me to the bedroom where she had a small, unobtrusive altar, laid out artfully with fresh green leaves in a vase, fresh fruit in a wooden bowl, a small vessel filled with water. Suspended on the wall above the altar was what looked like a wooden curio cabinet, in blonde wood. It had an elegant simplicity.

"Do you want to see my Gohonzon?"
"What's a Gohonzon?"
"Gohonzon means 'highest object of worship.'"
"Oh. Yeah. Yes."
"OK," she said in the charming, wry, smiling way I'd become familiar with. She looked happy.

She knelt down in front of the altar, put a small leaf between her lips, reached up over the altar toward the cabinet and opened it.

I was floored. The scroll before me was astonishingly beautiful. It was a little mandela. I'd been taking a course at Hunter in Buddhism and we'd studied these. They were meditation objects, meant to help the practitioner concentrate, meditate. This one was awesome. In length it was about 12 inches, in width, about 6. It contained only characters - Japanese? Chinese? The characters were gold, printed on a tannish brown background which had some kind of pattern emblazoned on it. It had such presence! Such charisma!

I remembered how our professor told us that, after his enlightenment, even Shakyamuni's detractors were compelled to rise up and greet him respectfully because he had such charisma, such power.

"It's beautiful."
"Would you like to try chanting?"
"All right."
"Nam myoho renge kyo.... Try it. Repeat after me...Nam myoho renge kyo."
"Nam myoho? renge kyo. Is that right?"

And now it was 3 years later. The "honeymoon phase" had ended abruptly the moment I finally acquiesed and became an official member. At first, I'd been treated like the loved and wanted golden child who could do no wrong, whose every move was pure delight. Upon joining, the pressure began.

Calls at 7AM Saturday morning: "Where are you? We're doing a 5 hour daimoku toso (chanting session). You have to be here!"

Calls at 11PM: "Tomorrow morning at 8AM you have to bring 40 sandwiches for the Youth Division."

"Our district has pledged to have 12 new members this month. Do shakubuku (introduction)!"

"We have a target of 150 subscriptions to the World Tribune (organ newspaper). So, your target must be 50. Get on the phone!"

"No! Of course you can't have a Christmas tree!"

I was 28 when I first met Anna and was introduced to her beliefs. I'd had a pretty difficult life. I'd been a foster child, aged out of the system without a penny to get started in the world and no one to lean on. But I'd been getting things together. I'd finally decided to go to college and was doing it, enjoying it. I was a waitress at a restaurant that was not bad to work at, at all. You could have your meals there. And I had friends there.

Restaurant people were fun: real, unassuming, and with irreverant senses of humor. Whenever you had an annoying customer you could curse your head off in the kitchen and return to the dining area calm and composed. A typical kitchen conversation during rush would sound something like this:

"Shit. I have that asshole again on Station 2. He's trying to impress his date by running me all over the fucking place. I feel like telling her I heard he has a small dick."

Wild laughter.

"I got that cheap bitch. She was here yesterday. Can't she find another place to go? She wears a cashmere coat and leaves me a dollar."

"You're lucky. I got Sam again. He's sloshed."

After the intense pressure of the rush we'd all calm down, turn in our books, count our tips, and settle in for lunch together. It was during one of these lunches that I discovered the NSA magazine.

Three years later and I was a kumicho, a unit chief in NSA. On the first day I was appointed, I was given a list of 30 members who had left NSA and told I was to get them back. "Start calling. Don't forget to get their World Tribune subscription money. Don't forget your target."

I learned immediately, as all members did, that questioning was considered negative and destructive, "destroying the unity of believers." Good fortune was determined by one's fidelity to NSA, one's unquestioning loyalty. In fact, one's eternal soul was connected to being an active member, a true believer.

It was an important element in the life of a true believer to "receive guidance" from a "senior leader." With any life crisis you were encouraged to do this. Senior leaders were allowed, even encouraged, to scold, ridicule, castigate, scream at junior members. A senior leader who wasn't willing to be resented by their junior members was irresponsible.

And so it was that I went for guidance to Jay Martinez when the relationship I was in was not going well. I trusted him. He was a Buddhist leader, revered and loved by all the members. He was there to protect me, to guide me, to keep me from harm. I was safe with him.

I confessed to him all my hurt and despair over the broken romance, along with details. He was like a father. After this, he began turning up in odd places and at odd hours. I didn't question it. I was flattered: I felt special. This important man wants to be friends with me. He's so busy and a father of 2, a husband, a Headquarters chief and yet he makes time for me.

So, at 1AM, I wasn't completely surprised. He'd come other times, once in the afternoon, once around 5PM or so. But he had never asked to stay over. What was I to do with this request in my little apartment? I had a tiny bedroom with room only for a bed, and a pull-out couch in the living room.

It was awkward. He sat on the couch awhile and recounted his day. I was so tired. After about an hour he asked if he could take a shower.

"Sure."

He came out of the bathroom wearing only a towel. That's when I finally realized his true intention. I scrambled around frantically thinking what can I do, who can I call. It was 2AM. My friends would all be asleep. And what would I say? What could they do? He was a Headquarters Chief! You didn't say no!

"Do you mind if I lay down?"
"No, go ahead."

What would Anna be doing now? Could I call Liz? 2:05 AM. Don't call anyone. You'll be disturbing people. Just avoid him. Wait him out. He'll go to sleep. Maybe you're imagining things. He's married. He has 2 kids. He's a Buddhist. Wait him out. Clean the house. Study. Sort out your finances. Do the dishes.

I vacuumed. I did the dishes. I cleaned, dusted, sorted. I attempted to study. After a long, long, long time he called out, "When are you coming to bed?"

When I heard his voice, so strong, so awake, so insistent, everything inside me collapsed. I knew I was defeated. I was exhausted and completely alone. It was 4AM, the darkest hour of the night. There was no one to call to, no one to help. And you didn't say no to a leader.

Afterwards, he got up, dressed, and went home. Suddenly, it was not so far away that he couldn't make it there.

The days that followed were days of despair. What had I done? It was all my fault.

After 3 weeks I could endure it no longer. I needed help. I went for guidance. Since my problem involved a Headquarters Chief I went to the most senior leader in New York.
In slow, almost whispered tones I told him what had happened. He was Japanese-American. He listened with a sympathetic face, deep brown eyes, tilting his head compassionately toward me. Finally, he spoke, after a long silence in which he seemed to be deeply and wisely ruminating.

"This is your karma. Be glad he didn't use violence."

I left the center that day determined to turn this negative experience into something positive. In the days that followed I chanted more and more to expiate my negative karma. At every meeting I saw Jay. He gave "final encouragement." I saw him giving guidance. He led prayers. He bantered with members. He was introduced as an important leader and an excellent role model. All the time I struggled with my anger, disappointment, hurt, shame.

One day I returned to the New York senior leader to speak with him about my "negative life condition" and to ask why nothing had happened to Jay Martinez. Again, he looked so sympathetic. He seemed so compassionate as he considered my situation.

And then he said, his long lashes lowered over his half-closed eyes, as if rousing himself from deep meditation, "You must protect the organization. You understand? You must never tell anyone about this."

M. O'Connell grew up in Brooklyn. For a time she was a member of NSA/SGI.

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.

In many ways Stan was an archetypal post-World War II junkie: Male, urban, working class, first generation American, and Jewish. Like a lot of the estimated 5,000 addicts in New York City at that time - most Jewish or Italian-American - he was a habitué of the drug-heavy jazz scene. For the Stans of the world the 1950s were not a sunny tableau of letterman jackets and chocolate malts, but a time when the status quo enthusiastically supported racial, cultural and religious discrimination and used the police to enforce that status quo. For the outsiders, the American dream was an unattainable fantasy, a ruse from which drugs offered some relief.

I met Stan in the winter of 2006. He was retired and living alone in a Brighton Beach apartment that he’d bought with his modest salary as a drug counselor. At his suggestion we met at a Starbucks during which he expressed sentiments like "why do you care about these kinds of stories?" and, to himself in particular, “why am I talking to you?”

I had first gotten in touch with Stan by phone as part of my research for a film and book on an experimental prison for drug addicts called The Narcotic Farm, which, among other things, housed drug-using jazz greats such as Chet Baker, Elvin Jones, Jimmy Heath and most of Charlie Parker’s band, as well as Sammy Davis Jr., Ray Charles, and writer William Burroughs, who wrote about The Narcotic Farm in his roman a clef, "Junky." Stan (rightly) saw himself as at the center of this American junkie culture and eventually agreed to sit down for what became a lengthy, riveting on-camera interview about life as a heroin addict on the streets of New York in the late 1940s through the mid 1960s. Before wrapping it up for the day’s shoot, Stan asked if he could tell us a story that wasn’t related to The Narcotic Farm but one he'd like us to hear anyway. We turned off the camera and listened.

Arrested for possession of a needle by an undercover detective in Manhattan, Stan recalled being sent to The Tombs for what would have been his second or third time in April of 1953. Before being assigned his jail cell Stan was already in acute opiate withdrawal. If you don’t already know this from the movies, withdrawal from heroin includes all variety of feeling shitty – you sweat, you experience both anxiety and deep depression, you get the chills, you vomit repeatedly and often, and your nose won’t stop running. This lasts about a week. On top of all this you have diarrhea, fever and, most memorable to Stan this particular time around, a pulverizing headache.

In the mire of this dope sickness Stan was lying face down on his cot with a pillow over his head, sweating like mad and trying his best to make it through yet another wave of thumping headaches when a woman somewhere within earshot began to sing a rousing, a cappella version of “God Bless America.” The voice, he remembers, was pretty good. But this, along with the steady din of the institution, its bootsteps, its clanging doors, and all the other sounds of a large prison, was too much too absorb in this fragile state.

He yelled for the woman to shut up. But her voice kept on going, unfazed and unstoppable. She kept singing and he kept yelling. When “God Bless America” was finally over, her voice started up again. Stan began screaming so loud a guard came his cell to see what was wrong. The guard listened passively as Stan pleaded with him to make this woman stop singing. He took out his ring of keys and opened the jail cell door and gestured to Stan that he was free to walk outside and confront the woman.

"Go right ahead," said the guard, "Just walk down there and tell her to shut up. But before you do that, you should know that that is Ethel Rosenberg who is singing. She’s just been sentenced to death."

JP Olsen is a filmmaker, journalist and musician living in Brooklyn. His film and book "The Narcotic Farm" received praise from Errol Morris and Luc Sante, among others. He also fronts the musical collective The Malefactors of Great Wealth, whose debut EP "Today is the Best Day of My Life," is released March 2011 on Old 3C records (old3c.com).

2. From amidst flashing blue lights, pierced by that one super bright lamp the cops shine into the car, a figure emerges. I am alone.

3. "I’m sorry," I say. "I for some reason thought you were parked." "I was in the turn lane," he says.

4. He peers into the back of the car. A baby seat, a suitcase, a bulging black garbage bag, an air mattress. "Your license please."

5. "What’s your first name?" he asks. If this is an attempt to determine if I am drunk, it is setting the bar very low. Why this question?

6. "Thomas," I say. And then, perhaps in apology for that innate pang of pride that I have answered correctly, I add, "I teach at Tulane."

7. "What do you teach?" he asks. When I tell him he says, "Interesting." "Why?" I say. "You working on a novel?" He sighs deeply.

8. "I want to," he says. "But I don’t know where to start." "Starting is difficult, "I say. "Do you have a character in mind?"

9. "I have a voice. But not really a character." For five minutes we discuss writing. The problems. At some point he hands me my license.

10. I tell him to look me up anytime he wants to talk. I ask his name. He says it. "Blumfeld?" I say? No, he corrects my pronunciation.

11. "I’m serious, look me up," I say. "OK," he says. I want to ask, "What is the novel about?" I don’t. He looks pensive, concerned.

12. Maybe I am afraid he doesn’t know. But do I know what mine is about? We part warmly. "Good bye, Thomas," he says. He turns off the light.

Thomas Beller is a writer and founder and co-editor of Open City magazine and mrbellersneighborhood.com. He teaches creative writing at Tulane University, and you can read his tweets at twitter.com/thomasbeller.

These are the sons of the older generation men, who would never let a woman pay for a check. And, who consider it right and honorable to pick up the tab for any person or group of persons with whom they are associated or have just a mild acquaintance.

Each weekend I frequent a local diner (Nick’s, some call it Joe’s.), sometimes alone, sometimes with my clique of friends. There is one guy, his name is actually Guy, who will always pick up my check. This makes me uncomfortable, I don’t want him to do that. There are times when I want to order my full egg breakfast, but when he walks through the door, I immediately change my order to a lonely bagel or dry toast. As many times as I have argued with him, it has all been vain. I recently figured out how to beat him at his own game. When I enter the restaurant, I will sometimes give the owner a twenty dollar bill up front before I sit and order. I tell Asia to charge me later and give me the change when I’m done.

It’s not just him. I have another friend who sells Christmas Trees on the corner of Smith and President Street. Two years ago I bought a tree from him, but he adamantly refused the money. He has the best trees in the neighborhood, but I have been forced to shop elsewhere ever since. How can I go back, it is embarrassing? Now I am stuck with inferior trees at high cost, so what favor has Jay done for me?

If I am making a purchase in D’Amico, and my cousin happens to walk in, bill paid, done. I once had a friend who would spot me getting my nails done in the local salon. He’d walk in, pay for my manicure and leave. Then he would call me a week later to borrow fifty bucks. His heart was in the right place, but he never had money, yet wanted to do the “right thing”.

Last week I was invited to dine with two brothers, one I’ve know for years and one I recently met. We met at Vinny’s on Smith Street, a real Italian neighborhood place. I knew better than to offer to pay. However, sitting at the table across from us was another neighborhood friend with his family. Of course the friend I was dining with immediately and without hesitation picked up that table’s tab, while a third friend walked in and picked up our table tab. It really gets confusing, everyone paying everyone else’s bill. I thought to myself, if anyone else we know walks in, there might be an all-out war over who will pay their check.

And I will admit this phenomenon has rubbed off on myself and my best friend Barbara. When we dine together it is a real battle for the check. We have torn checks into pieces in tug of war, cursed each other out, leaped over the table for that scribbled piece of paper. I have grabbed the check and sat on it til dinner was over, while she has warned the restaurant proprietor not to give me the check at all or else. What is it with us?

Barbara and I, we laugh at the newcomers in the neighborhood who calculate the exact amount of a tip from the check, when we ourselves leave almost as much as the check itself.

When I thought I had seen everything in the way of big tippers, I was yet again amazed. On my way home from work, on a ninety five-degree summer day, I had run into my longtime friend (and neighborhood undertaker), who invited me to join him for a drink. At a local restaurant, just two blocks away, we strolled to the bar for some martinis and wine. As we left the restaurant, the parking valet outside the restaurant bid us goodnight. My friend proceeded to tip the parking attendant. He gave him $20 just for saying goodnight. Remember, we walked the two blocks to the place, no car was involved.

This neighborhood of high rollers is disappearing fast before my eyes. And while I may complain about it, I love the absolute old world chivalry of it all.

Rafael Cruz, the owner and one of Mayfair’s six barbers, doesn’t mind sacrificing his shirt-sleeve as he buffs the barber’s pole between customers. “Look around! There’s no end to it. Everywhere there’s dirt,” Cruz says with a sweeping gesture of his arms. He dodges two garment racks, barely escaping with his life. “I’m not even safe on my own doorstep,” he says.

For Cruz, dirt is a living, breathing entity whose aim is to make his life hell. Out of the corner of his eye he notices that the shop’s name, painted in gold, is starting to flake. He winces and, speaking rapidly to himself in Spanish, moves in for closer inspection.

Cruz’s fastidiousness may once have been a common sight in New York, but these days it’s so rare it’s been known to prompt spontaneous applause from passersby.

When the boss is away visiting family in Puerto Rico or even when he’s outside cleaning fly specks off the window, he counts on his fellow barber, Rocco Battista, to look out after the shop.

Rocco’s body is a testament to 45 years of his wife’s home cooking–he’s all soft edges. His facial features are smooth, sagging a bit, but it’s a kind visage. Hard-earned dark circles hang beneath his eyes. Thick glasses ride low on his nose, making his eyes look bigger and friendlier. He’s bald except for a small patch on the side of his head–barely enough to cut.

He began his career at 15 in his native Naples, Italy, always hoping to come to America, but never expecting it to happen. Now he is part of the bricks and mortar of New York City. His boss, as well as the tonsorial cognoscenti, call him “the best barber in Midtown.”

Fifty years ago, when Mayfair first opened, the difference between success and failure seemed to be the personal touch people invested in their work. The local barber who could boast, “I cut your father’s hair,” is no longer part of our lives. But this is Mayfair’s credo.

Haircuts cost ten bucks at Mayfair–unlike everything else in the world, there’s no catch here. Don’t confuse the bargain price with some inferior, low-budget franchise; no one will ask you if you got a free bowl of soup with a Mayfair haircut.

The shop’s interior is square. The street side has two large windows, with a front entrance dividing them. Two walls are covered by mirrors and fronted by three barber’s chairs; a seventh chair resides in the center of the shop.

Most of the wall-space is taken up with prints of New York as it looked 50 years ago, small posters showing outdated hairstyles, and a couple of expired calendars that haven’t been removed. You won’t find any designer products, just the old-school Clubman brand gel. When asked if he’s heard of Paul Mitchell, Rocco responds, “Didn’t he play for the Mets?”

They still use Pinaud Haircare goodies in their Spartan green canisters–check in your grandpa’s medicine cabinet to see what they look like. Combs are placed in sterile blue liquid, and talcum powder is stored in tin canisters that resemble big salt shakers. On a countertop, an Oster shaving cream dispenser foams out hot lather.

Tiny scissors, designed for ear and nose hair removal, are arranged in antiseptic-looking trays. Old nylon aprons with snaps at the neck are still used, as well as soft-bristled brushes that whisk your neck clean of hair when the job is done.

The finest pleasures you’ll find at Mayfair are the professional shaves. Wielding meticulously sharpened straight-razors, the barbers’ hands are as steady as a surgeons’.

Mayfair is a cultural melting pot where customers feel at home–unlike the subways and buses where a cross-section of society is thrown together, yet straphangers still tend to insulate themselves from their neighbors. On an average day, a street guy can find himself seated next to an Asian UPS worker, a Wall Street guy in $700 loafers, or a newly arrived immigrant hustling garments on racks. The clientele clearly appreciates the opportunity to ease back and soak up the scene. Even if the People magazine is from last January, it’s fun to wait your turn at Mayfair.

Mayfair is a barbershop, not a beauty salon. Women customers are rare. When the occasional woman does come in, it’s for a masculine haircut or one that demands clippers or a straight-razor.

If you arrive at the right time, you’ll catch the regulars. Next to the door, beneath a faded poster of a Fonzi-lookalike advertising Vitalis, sits a lean black man with a sleek, shaved skull and white chin whiskers. A porkpie hat rests on his knee.

“If you’re looking to meet ladies, don’t come here,” he says. “The boss don’t keep no blue hair dye in stock, dig? Ain’t that right, Rocco?”

Rocco, bending over a customer whose neck he’s shaving, responds in almost a whisper. “I will cut anyone’s hair if they come in on time and pay. They can be ladies, too, or anything in between.”

A young Russian barber, the greenest member of the staff, watches Rocco’s hands, fully absorbed in his wizardry. “Look how smooth he is–like silk,” he says. “When he uses the scissors, it looks like a hummingbird’s wings.”

The black man, half-listening, shrugs, and immediately changes the subject to his “old lady.”

“She gets suspicious about what really goes on in this place,” he tells an Asian man with doughy hands, holding a horse racing form. “She suspects it’s a front for a cat house.”

This elicits raucous laugh from all the guys: “A cat house?”

The barbershop could be the last bastion of the figurative “boys’ club” in New York, one which a woman would not wish to join, even if invited.

An old garmento with a gravelly Brooklyn accent, faintly smelling of cigars and Old Spice, has been going to the barbershop since the Nixon administration. He has an answer for everything. Over the course of an hour, his polemic’s range from “Why we blew it in Vietnam” to “Why we’re blowin’ today.” He blows in like clockwork at 3 p.m. on Thursdays.

“It’s a veritable fountain of youth, ” he says of Mayfair. “Twenty years ago, I thought the Big Guy in the sky had Bernie Gootblatt’s number, I tell you. With two bleeding ulcers and a bad ticker, I wasn’t even gonna see Nixon run outta office! Now I kibitz and laugh. It makes the time pass easier. I don’t look a day over 60, do I? It’s the age I was when I started comin’, so I ain’t gonna stop now.”

“Me too! I been regular eight years now,” the Asian man pipes up. He habitually tries to join conversations with the words “me too”–so much so that it’s become his nickname. He works as a stockboy at his uncle’s grocery store up the street. “Everybody know my face here, everybody say, ‘Hi!’ Everybody listen, right, Rocco?”

Without looking up, Rocco, who is concentrating on his client’s sideburns, confirms Me-Too’s statement with a slow nod.

“The city can be a lonely place,” the old black man says, looking down at his shoes. “Most of the good joints closed down.”

Downtown billiard halls and late-night diners were where many of Mayfair’s customers used to hang out.

“It is the Yuppster wiped out all the class in the city, isn’t it, Rocco?” says the young Russian. “They call it sanitation, huh?”

“Sanitization,” Rocco corrects him, his eyes on his client. “People don’t change, only the words.” “Yuppsters! I don’t know from Yuppsters,” the garmento interrupts. “All’s I know is I’m a pastrami on rye with a malt. I think Cagney was the best damn actor ever was, I like a bourbon at night. See my point? That’s what gets me through the day.” He cranes his neck to see if his pals agree.

The regulars nod their heads, as if no finer truth has ever been spoken.

Suddenly, there’s a commotion outside. Three large bodies collide at full-speed into the storefront window, like NBA players chasing a loose ball into the stands. WHACK! The barbershop window quakes but doesn’t shatter; everyone in the barbershop recoils from the shock.

The guy on the bottom, a black man in standard-issue baggy clothes, takes the wallop of a forearm to the jaw. It sends him scurrying for shelter. He tries Mayfair’s front door. The other two men, white with bristly goatees and buzz cuts, charge him. They’re inside now.

Rafael Cruz drops his scissors and heads for the doorway. The two attackers drag their victim outside and bang the man’s forehead on the cement as if it was a sandbag. They pull him to his knees. He struggles back, gets loose. A blur of legs and arms fly. Everything is motion. They’re pushing him against the storefront window, trying to subdue him.

No bigger than a bantamweight but fighting like a heavyweight, Cruz jumps into the fray, easing them off his window, over to the adjacent concrete wall. The black man has nothing left. The two men lock his hands with plastic tie cuffs. It all happens in a matter of seconds. It’s clear to everyone in Mayfair these guys are two undercover cops and a suspect. The black man’s blood has streaked the window.

“Fuck! He’s bleeding!” says one cop to the other. “Did he bite you?”

The same cop sees the suspect is choking. He had the “rock” in his mouth the whole time, trying to get it down. The cop grabs his throat, to stop him from swallowing the drugs and destroying his bust.

Everyone at the barbershop has an opinion to voice about the scene they’ve just witnessed–about the insanity and unpredictability of everyday life. As usual, Rocco has the last word.

“Outside, you never know what to expect. But nothing ever changes at the Mayfair.”

I live in a college town. The boundaries of this town are roughly between 110th Street and 125th Street on the west side of Manhattan, though the holdings and minor fiefdoms extend well beyond those borders. The college is in fact a university: Columbia University. I grew up in this city, and after fifteen years in other parts of the country and the world, I have returned to the old neighborhood to raise my children.

It is an exquisite doom to be raised in New York City, for though there are other great cities and many, many cheaper places to raise a family, there is really no place quite like this “island off the coast of America,” and at a certain point I found myself driven by an illogical longing to go back home. Becoming a mother was part of it, I kept looking at my daughters and realizing that if I didn’t do something soon they wouldn’t, in fact, be New Yorkers–which didn’t make sense to me on some sort of cellular level. Provincial? Yes, I am, extremely. Someone once said that New York is like a prison where the citizens have become their own jailers, and they keep themselves imprisoned by the illusion that this is the only place to be.

I have scratched my name more than once into the wet pavement of these sidewalks. Initials and hearts when I was a teenager, handprints with my children. I feel free to ignore the law when it comes to marking my city and I have no excuse, really. It’s not art, like graffiti, it’s more like a dog lifting its leg—I can’t help myself and I suppose I grew up thinking that is what wet cement is there for.

There are no corners in my neighborhood without a memory—I feel ownership even after the old bodega has been replaced by the new condo with one of those ubiquitous mega drugstores or banks built in at street level. Like you shouldn’t be able to walk more than two blocks without stopping for cash and a Band-Aid. But we all see our old neighborhoods in layers.

My neighborhood has remained less changed than many, and why? Columbia. As in most college towns, there is a love/hate relationship between the Townies and the Ivory Tower. The university pretty much owns the town, and it pretty much doesn’t care about the Townies. I’m a Townie. Still, Columbia was my playground. My parents never worked there, but when the gates were closed in the sixties I remember holding my mother’s hand and looking at the bed sheets draped out the windows. They were covered with slogans painted in red that dripped like blood. There were cops on horseback, the smell of teargas and a student with a megaphone wearing sunglasses and a light blue button-down shirt with one tail untucked. It looked like fun to me. My father carried a dark green book bag for a while, which I associated with Columbia, though I know the colors are blue and white. Still, the book bag meant Columbia to me, and he wasn’t much older than the students.

I learned how to ride a two-wheeler on the car-free pathways of the campus and when I was a teenager we would smoke cigarettes on the main steps, leaning against that famous bronze sculpture of Truth like she was our big sister who would never tell. All of the Townies hate Columbia, of course, my kids have figured it out already. Whenever an old building is being torn down, or a friend can’t afford the rent on an apartment anymore, the first question is always: Is it a Columbia building?

Usually it is. But I was still jealous of all those people who got to go to the gym, the library, wherever they wanted. They had the ID, I didn’t. I lurked around campus like a Townie.

When the time came to go to college, I was persuaded to apply and actually got accepted. But the last thing I wanted at eighteen was to stay in the old neighborhood. I needed to take my arrogance far enough out into the world to lose it. But I still couldn’t quite say no to Columbia. I deferred admission every fall for five years—until I finally got a letter telling me that I had gotten too old. If I wanted to attend the University I would have to go to the Department of Continuing Education across the street.

Back in the neighborhood, I now live in the building above the Hungarian Pastry Shop, a well known university hang out. The students and professors hang out late, and it anchors the block to light and conversation. I like the fact that despite all of the gentrification there is still a human tide that comes in every fall and goes out every spring. There are people of all ages speaking more languages than I can recognize as they walk down the block, and not everyone is stunning to look at. That’s what it used to be like everywhere in Manhattan.

But I still don’t have the ID. I can’t take my kids to the gym and until recently, I couldn’t get into the library. There is a nice public library right down the block. It’s clean and well lit, modern—but it isn’t quiet. As a writer I am constantly on the lookout for places to work that will actually be quiet. I am one of those writers who doesn’t like to write in restaurants. I am so easily distracted that I hate to hear conversations, lyrics—they are almost always more interesting than staring at the blank screen. But the branch libraries are no longer quiet, and I’ve found this to be true in other parts of the country as well. The librarians don’t even say “Sshh” anymore.

I thought this was really odd until I asked a librarian several years ago why they didn’t ask people to be quiet anymore. She explained patiently (and at regular volume) that the libraries are often used by the public schools now as a learning environment, since the schools are so overcrowded. They can’t tell kids never to ask a question if they are actually in their classroom now can they? Furthermore, the hours of the branch libraries are constantly being reduced due to lack of federal funding, so the neighborhood kids can’t come to the library as often as they used to.

I stopped complaining about the noise.

Meanwhile there is this beautiful building on campus, four blocks north of me, with names like Socrates and Vergil emblazoned across the front. The Butler Library. A place where I was sure one could plug in a laptop and sit in near-absolute silence. I wouldn’t take out any books, I just wanted to be able to write for a few hours every day. I now teach at a college (Bard) and a University (CUNY), but I am fairly new to academia. A colleague laughed when I told her that I was lusting after the Butler Library and assured me that Columbia would allow me to use their library as a courtesy between universities. All I had to do was to show my faculty ID.

She was wrong. I had a college ID, but it wasn’t the ID. I only got as far as the entryway. I was told to go into a small office to the left, and they might give me a day pass. In fact, I was given two options: As faculty at Bard College—they wouldn’t even let CUNY people in–I could pay a fairly hefty sum of money to have access to the library for a year, or I could use the library for five consecutive days for free. Five days per semester, and they had to be five days in a row starting now. As a Townie I balked at paying money to the monolith, and besides, if I had money I would try and rent an office. Fine.

Would I like the card that would get me in for the next five days?

I wanted to say no and go have a cigarette in front of the Truth statue like in the old days. But I said yes. I was already there with my laptop over my shoulder and I desperately needed the time, even if it was only five days.

I walked past the security guards, flashing my temporary card and feeling slightly guilty. Then I walked up the marble staircase into heaven. Butler has reading rooms with outlets everywhere for laptops, which must be silenced, of course. There are six floors of stacks with a table, chair and lamp placed just the right way—in a hidden and silent corner. The largest reading room has floor to ceiling windows that gaze across the quadrangle over manicured lawns (which are fenced, gated and locked up most of the time).

There are also smaller reading rooms with the option of private carrels or simple tables, and when you look up there are rows of books and strange, Grecian-themed friezes on the ceiling: a winged horse with the tail of a serpent. There are upper galleries with cast iron railings, and small circular windows. Everyone there is silently reading or writing, and happily ignoring one another. It is not the main branch of the New York Public Library, there is no library that can approach that one for grandeur. But the Butler Library is still my dream of what a library should be—and best of all, it is only four blocks away.

Today is my last day, and I have gotten a lot done in five days. But now I’m panicking again, and more than that—I’m pissed. They don’t have room for me.

It’s like a mini-city in here and I don’t take up much space. Why can’t the Townies swim in the Club pool? So that’s why I’m thinking of breaking the law. You see, that card they gave me wasn’t laminated, and there’s just enough room on the front to change the date. All I need is a ballpoint pen, and I happen to have a few of those in my bag. It wouldn’t get me in all year, not even close. But I could get twenty-six more days.

Twenty-six days. I pull out the card and check the color of the ink, yes, I just might be able to match that one. I look around to be sure nobody’s looking and I write the highest number I can get away with for this month.

I guess you could call it forgery, and I might just get caught, but what’s the worst that can happen? All they can do is throw me out of the pool.

So not counting the coat Blue estimates that she, or rather what she is wearing on her body, comes to a grand total of $860. She is also wearing a Jhane Barnes cranberry/black wool alpaca silk blend sweater that probably wholesales for $300. The knit is vertical, rather than horizontal, making the sweater much more flattering.

The sweater was a gift from Jhane Barnes’ PR director, Thom, who, like Jhane Barnes herself inserts an “h” into his name to make it more interesting. Blue is on her way to his apartment right now. When she visits him and her real friend, Jacques, Thom’s boyfriend, she makes sure she is decked out from head to toe in natural fibers. Since they became friends she not only knows the finer nuances of natural fibers but precious natural fibers too.

But back to the estimate: Jhane Barnes sweater, $300, Black Keds Sneakers, $20, black oversized canvas pocketbook, $20, Lee jeans, $20, eight fire opal rings (which Blue wears on eight fingers, excluding her thumbs) $500 — for a grand total of $860, including the Jhane Barnes sweater and Lee jeans.

The year is 1984 and Blue has been estimating her physical worth since she moved to New York two years ago straight from college. She works as a secretary in the ad sales department at North American Travel Agent, the official publication for the American Association of Travel Agents, where she reports to three space sales reps, all of whom are about 30 (eight years older than Blue) and gorgeous, which Blue is pretty sure she is not. One, Sloane, even has a real, new, fur coat.

Blue earns $15,000 a year, which is a huge raise from her last job as an editorial assistant for True Detective – $3,000 more, in fact. But now she sees $15,000 doesn’t buy hardly anything, and she hates the job.

Blue has nothing in common with the sales reps that make tons of money and talk incessantly about Le Cote Basque, Le Cirque and on and on. They each wear at least $860 of clothing and jewelry every day – and they pay for it with their own salaries or those of their rich boyfriends.

Two of out three of the reps are members of the Junior League, something Blue had never head of until she moved to New York. Nor did she know that having a last name first name was a sign of pedigree. In addition to Sloane there is also Ellison and Parker, who goes by Muffy of all things. Her only friend at North American Travel Agent is the art director, Jacques.

The sales reps at North American Travel Agent would not wear rings on each finger except their thumbs. Blue is not sure how much the rings actually cost, but she assesses the lot of them at $500 based on nothing.

Her grandmother bought them in Australia for her mother years ago, way before her mother even got sick, and they probably were less expensive than what you would pay for them here.

When her mother died, Blue inherited all her jewelry, including her wedding band and diamond ring, and, of course, all the opal rings.

Last week Jacques dyed Blue’s black hair blonde and she is now on her way back to his apartment on 14th Street so he can put a blue streak in the front, which he thinks is very clever. He said if she likes it he’d add more streaks later. Blue is not too sure about this idea at all, although she does like being a blonde.

You may have been wondering about Blue’s name, and whether it’s a nickname. It isn’t. She was named after her mother’s childhood Russian Blue cat, a fact that she finds horrifying. She tells people it is a nickname and that her real name is Amanda.

When Blue emerges from the IRT train, which she caught at 96th Street, she calls Jacques and Thom on a phone near the tracks to tell them she is on her way, something she always does. She is looking forward to this. While Jacque dyes her hair the three of them will do lines of coke. They might even go to Rick’s, a bar with gigantic margaritas on Eight Avenue. More than likely, though, they will instead drink Greyhounds in the apartment and talk talk talk.

Jacques will also make homemade biscuits, both he and Thom are from West Virginia, which he always saturates in butter and tops with thinly sliced ham. She plans to eat at least four of them before their toots, which leave her, thankfully, with no appetite.

As Blue walks up the steps that lead to the street she thinks she sees someone behind her, but then when she turns around no one is there. She turns east on Seventh, in the direction of Thom and Jacques’ building, The Village House, the very building where Bernard Goetz, who shot four black kids on the subway last year, also lives.

Although Thom applauds what Bernard Goetz did he dislikes him because he wore a synthetic coat during a TV interview. Thom is pretty conservative for someone who does coke all the time and starts the day with a screwdriver.

>Personally, Blue feels sorry for the boys that were shot by Goetz, but she keeps this information to herself, at least around Thom.

She once made direct eye contact with Bernard Goetz in Thom and Jacques’ lobby, bringing her Making Eye Contact With Famous People list to three: John Savage from “The Deer Hunter,” whose coat she checked when she worked at Merlino’s Cafe as a coat check girl, and John Travolta, who looked directly at her when she was walking by Trader Vics where he was standing outside.

Fourteenth Street between Sixth and Seventh is dead this evening, which is unusual for a Saturday night. There’s hardly anyone around. Blue can hear herself breathe. But it’s not what she hears it’s what she feels.

Someone is behind her. She turns her head back in the direction of Seventh Avenue and there is a black man who is walking behind her but he is crossing over to the south side of the street. Blue continues to walk, but faster now. Blue looks straight ahead but can’t help but see the man cross back over to her side of the street. Blue walks a little faster but resists the urge to run. What if he’s just a normal person and not a drug-crazed rapist? How embarrassing would that be?

He’s behind her now and Blue holds her breath.

“I’m going to shoot you,” he says from behind her, just inches away.

She stops, and realizes she has answered the question that she always wanted to know: Would she resist and attack or comply during an attack. She is going to be a complier.

Blue turns to face the man but doesn’t see a gun, although one hand is lodged in his beige cordory jacket. He wears a black skullcap, just like so many of the men in the Most Wanted pictures in the post office. He doesn’t seem as tall as she originally thought, just very powerful and wide. Like that guy they call the Refrigerator who plays for the Chicago Bears.

“Give me your money,” he says to Blue, who is momentarily relieved that he is saying this rather than “Take your clothes off.”

She hands him her large canvas pocketbook and he takes it, standing there and not saying anything.

Not only does Blue want to be compliant she wants to help. She wants to illustrate that she is in this thing with him.

“You probably don’t want to carry that,” she says. “Do you want me to take the money out?”

He just stands there looking at her, holding the pocketbook in his one gargantuan hand while keeping the other entrenched in his jacket.

She takes it back from him, pulls out the wallet, panicking at first because she can’t find her money amid the crumpled papers that are also in the billfold section. She pulls out the wrinkly $20 and hands it to the man.

“It’s only $20,” she says.

He still doesn’t move, or speak. He doesn’t blink, either, which she finds the most unsettling thing of all.

“You can take these rings too,” she says, since he hasn’t told her she can go yet. She pulls the opals off her left hand first and hands them to him, and then does the same with her right hand.

She can’t shut up. “They’re opals and they’re from Australia,” she says. “Fire opals, which are more valuable than regular opals.”

He still doesn’t say anything and he still doesn’t blink. Blue can’t stop herself. “I shouldn’t be wearing them anyway because it’s bad luck if you’re not born in October.”

She wishes she hadn’t said that.

Does he now think that he is bad luck? “I just mean they’re probably worth something.”

He puts the rings and the money into another jacket pocket, not the one that possibly houses the gun.

“Walk up the street and don’t turn around. Walk slow.”

“Okay,” she says, noting a certain cheerleader-like enthusiasm in her voice.

She does what she is told. She walks for what seems like miles and doesn’t turn around until she crosses from Sixth Avenue to Fifth.

She is alive and she didn’t get raped or maimed or shot, although she can’t imagine eating biscuits and ham, or doing lines of Coke, or drinking Greyhounds.

She doesn’t have any money now to get home. She’ll borrow some from Jacques and Thom.

She wonders if the rings will bring the man any luck.

You’re not the only one who’s made mistakes but they’re the only things that you can truly call your own”

–Billy Joel

I was looking at some apartments with my realtor, Harriet Loshin, just west of Union square, near west 12th street. We were in a cab, because Harriet was older and had a bad back that caused her to limp. She couldn’t walk even though the apartment was only a few blocks away. We’d been killing time in one of those gross, greasy spoon diners just below Union Square, probably an old place, been there forever, long before me or any of my friends moved to the city. We were in the middle of the full-out rush hour lunch crowd and there was one table left in the restaurant. Harriet Loshin ordered a muffin and a cup of decaffeinated coffee. Who orders decaffeinated coffee? So many people seem to think that decaf has no caffeine and they’re shocked when, after three cups, their head is abuzz with adrenaline. Anyway, I wasn’t hungry, I’d just eaten and I was starting to come down with a little something so I ordered chamomile tea.

The cute, young blonde Russian waitress said tersely, “Minimum order five dollars. You must order more food,” like the recorded voice of a prison camp director pumped in over loud speakers.

Harriet turned to me and gave me that semi-ugly, scrunched-up face that people make when they don’t understand a word that was just spoken to them. I translated for her: “Five dollar minimum.” She nodded and looked back up at the waitress who was growing testier by the second.

“It’s busy here,” she said, “All the tables are full,” and she pointed around the restaurant with her click pen to prove her point then repeated, “Five dollar minimum,” lest Harriet or I had still not received the directorate.

I took a minute to look through the menu.

“Give me some cottage cheese,” I said, the ultimate fuck-you order. That’ll show that little Soviet bitch-queen waitress.

She looked at me with disgust and disappeared into the kitchen. She was right, though, it was packed in the restaurant. How could so many people find this horrible food palatable? I looked at the table to our left and saw three enormously fat businessmen who had somehow managed to cram their multi-layered rolls of flab into the immobile and unforgiving diner booth contours.

In a transparently desperate attempt to kill time before our next appointment Harriet didn’t so much try to engage me in conversation as she attempted to throw at me every anecdote she could from her Harriet Loshin consciousness file. God bless her. I mean, I know she wasn’t trying to do me any harm and was certainly not trying to cause me any distress or boredom with her small talk. She was just being a good salesperson. Keep the customer busy. Don’t let them sit quietly for two seconds. That would be deadly. That would kill any potential deal. Harriet had a thick, creaky old-woman voice that sounded as if she were eating a sandwich and that, for some reason, made her seem really trustworthy.

As she continued to send a torrential stream of language my way she occasionally alternated her tones like a master saxophone player always returning to the root note. I instantly forgot 98% of what she said. At one point Harriet told me she used to write poetry. That stuck.

“How long ago was that?” I asked, wanting a sense of scale.

“When I was young,” she laughed then immediately turned serious, her far-off glance settling in the deeply somber distance over my left shoulder. Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought.

My tea and cottage cheese came. Harriet’s decaf coffee came but no muffin. I was dying. I wanted to get out of the diner A.S.A.P. I used to love diners but – I don’t know when the paradigm shifted – now I think they’re the most disgusting places in the world. None of the food’s any good, it’s not even that cheap, and no matter what you order, you are guaranteed to have diarrhea immediately afterward. Harriet got her muffin and I excused myself to go to the bathroom which was sort of thrilling because I really did have to go and it gave me a chance to leave the table and be alone for a few minutes. Peace. New York City is so constantly in-your-face and over-the-top that you end up being thrilled that you have to go to the bathroom. This is something that people don’t talk about when they talk about New York City — that it makes you really appreciate having a bowel movement, just to have a little quiet as the cultural insanity swirls outside you.

When I returned to the table from my spa-like bowel movement it was suddenly time to go. Harriet finished her decaf and toasted muffin and I finished my tea though did not, of course, touch my cottage cheese (you can never eat the fuck-you food otherwise it would just be food). We paid the bill and, on the way out, I caught the waitress’s pretty profile out of the corner of my eye and saw her little button nose and thought what a sweet woman she probably was, how she was probably a dreamy little girl and will probably have a few dreamy little girls of her own someday who will grow up to become utterly unlikable, draconian waitresses in grotesque, inhumane diners where people seek shelter in the diarrhea-stained bathrooms in a blissful respite from the human shit-pile that is New York City.

“Ahh, life,” I thought darting out into the slightly overcast, choppy late summer air.

We stopped at the appropriate corner and, in my manliest demeanor, told her that I would wave down a cab. I stepped into the street and waved my long arm in the air. For cab drivers, I am the ultimate flagger. It’s hard to miss my arm. I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is a great quality of mine (I don’t tell women about my long cab-waving arms on a first date, for instance) but it does happen to be true. At first, though, there were no free cabs. We waited. Cars passed. People walked by. The streets were slicked with rain. And then, as if swooping down from the sunshiney heavens, a minivan cab soared into my line of sight and, seeing my arm, seamlessly descended on our position.

I gestured for Harriet to get in (ladies first) but she waved me off and said, “No, no, you go,” and I realized it would have been physically too difficult for her to get in first and slide all the way over. I said hi to the cab driver like I always do. I think it’s important to make a good first impression. I mean, why not? They are about to drive you – no, chauffeur you – through a hyper-crazed urban war-zone. Why not say hello? It must be such a lonely job and I can only imagine how awful and rude so many people are to cab drivers. I’ve seen my own friends be incredibly rude and it’s just not right. They don’t deserve it.

As Harriet was getting into the minivan she said, “West 12th Street between Sixth and Seventh,” to which our sixty-something Pakistani cabbie guffawed in response.

“That’s only four or five blocks from here!” he practically shouted with indignation.

What an asshole, I thought.

I saw this kind of response before when my mom, grandmother and I visited Manhattan on a college trip in the summer of 1993. My mom had just had two hip replacements and, at the time, had difficulty walking even a few blocks. We ran into several cab drivers who refused us service because the distance was too small. I understand why a cab driver would want the highest possible fares but still…how are handicapped people supposed to get around Manhattan? Maybe they’re not.

It made me mad that the cab driver was huffy to us when Harriet told him where we were going. But he didn’t kick us out. We were already in with our seat belts buckled. It was too late. Harriet didn’t hear what he said anyway and when she looked at me with that same ugly, scrunched face I waved it away as if it were nothing. At least she didn’t realize she was being discriminated against.

Five minutes and several blocks later the crabby cabbie pulled up to our address, stopped and, as we began to unbuckle, jolted forward, realizing our address was still a few doors up ahead on the left. When he pulled to a stop a second time we began to unbuckle again and the cab driver jolted forward one more time almost giving Harriet and I whiplash. I laughed. What was he doing?

How odd.

“This is it,” he said.

I got out and stood next to the driver’s window as I reached for my wallet.

Just as I did a big thirty-something black guy walked up to the window inches in front of me and yelled directly into the cab driver’s face, “What the fuck are you doing? You almost ran me over!”

And the cab driver, equally angry, responded, “No I didn’t. I did not almost run you over.”

“Yes you did, motherfucker!” the guy at the window yelled back, “I was walking right here next to this car and you almost crushed me!”

“I did not almost crush you!” the cab driver yelled, “Fuck you!”

And then, the black guy leaned back in one quick, powerful motion and sprang forward punching the cab driver at point-blank range, hard in the face.

All activity on the street seemed to freeze as if the block were an early twenty-first century diorama in the Natural History Museum.

I let out a soft and disappointed, “Oh!”

At my left two young Japanese guys were staring in shock, plastic shopping bags dangling from their hands. To the left of them the slickly dressed, thirty-something gay realtor Harriet Loshin and I were going to meet stood beneath the building’s awning, arms nonchalantly crossed in front of his pin-stripe double-breasted jacket, one leg folded in front of the other as if this were the thirteenth punching he’d witnessed that day.

The sixty-something Pakistani cab driver leaned his suddenly fragile head and neck out the window into the cool late summer air like a baby chick poking its wet head through the cracks of its eggshell. His eyes were teary and confused and there was a large red gash opened beneath his left eye, a stream of blood already coursing down his face. I was shocked.

I had no idea that one blow, as simple as it appeared, the kind that I’ve fantasized about delivering a thousand times to a thousand assholes could so easily tear a hole in a man’s face. Suddenly, this cabdriver, this man who was so rude and obnoxious to my deaf and lame, sandwich-chewing realtor Harriet Loshin and I only moments ago was now helpless and wounded.

One of the young Japanese men broke the silence and in an alarmingly high voice yelled, “You can’t do that! That’s not right! I’m calling the police,” all the while pointing at the puncher who was now standing several feet back, close to the curb, his glance downward, the reality of the moment apparently sinking in.

The cab driver looked at me through teary, disbelieving eyes and, in a feeble voice, said, “Someone, call the police.”

“Someone is calling the police,” I said.

He turned to me, pointing at the man who’d punched him, and pleaded, “Don’t let him get away.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding solemnly, knowing full well I would do absolutely nothing if, suddenly, the puncher bolted off down the street, something I expected him to do at any second. It’s what I would have done if I’d punched the cab driver.

Suddenly, I felt useless just standing there. I wanted to do something. I could not and did not want to continue on my way to view the apartment for sale and decided instead to clean up the cab driver’s wound.

“I’m going to get something for your cut,” I told him and ran west down the street, as a slight bolt of adrenaline (which could have been fear) shot through my body.

I ran into a small dry cleaners imagining they’d have a towel or thrown away t-shirt I could grab and I would say to the confused clerk on my way out, “I need this! A man is hurt!” But the dry cleaners had nothing.

I ran a few more doors down and came to an open-aired Italian restaurant and I strode rapidly inside to the back where I grabbed a pile of paper napkins. A cute, bookish waitress with ponytail and glasses looked at me with a puzzled face and, walking briskly past her, I said, “I need these. A man’s bleeding,” almost as steely and efficiently as Superman himself or even George Clooney on ER.

It was that rare moment when I actually had to say something in public. I had to explain my actions. For the most part, you can live your life without ever saying anything to anyone, anywhere. It’s such a sad realization but it’s true. I mean, sure, it’s expected of you to say Please and Thank You, Hello, and Goodbye to store clerks or restaurant staff but it’s not quite the same as being faced with a blood-gushing emergency. It made me realize how long it had been since I’d felt that invisible, undeniable force of necessity. It felt good, like being tapped on the shoulder by some long lost, slightly crazy friend who you’d thought had died or run away to get married never to be heard from again.

But now he was back and all along you’d forgotten how much you missed him, how he helped you truly live your life, kept you from wandering through it like some half-conscious, cave-dwelling mammal.

I returned with the napkins, half expecting more violence to have broken out though none had. The cab driver stood outside his cab shakily surveying the scene. The young Japanese fellow had apparently gotten off the phone with the police and was now making stay-where-you-are-you’re-not-going-anywhere gestures to the puncher who irritatingly shrugged him off.

“Man, I’m not going anywhere! I want the police to come,” he said angrily. And then, picking up his cell phone said, “I’m going to call them myself.”

The cab driver heard this and yelled out in a high-pitched squeal, “He’s calling the police now? What is this!?! Ooooh….”

I walked up to him and started wiping the blood from his face but he immediately waved me off.

“Leave the blood,” he said, “I want the police to see I’ve been punched.”

I laughed. “I think they’re going to be able to tell you’ve been punched without the blood.” Then I told him as firmly as possible that he needed to sit down and that I was going to apply pressure to his cut.

“You look like you’ve been in a boxing match,” I said.

“Oooh,” he whimpered again. The punch had reduced him to a little helpless boy.

This was obviously a man who hadn’t been punched in a long time, if ever. I wonder how I would have responded? I looked over at the man who punched him and he wore a hard look on his face, though not the kind of irretrievable hardness that is difficult to find sympathy for, just a hardness indicative of a difficult life. I wondered if he’d ever been punched and assumed he had if this was how he responded to a charged situation.

That was the first wound I’d ever treated and it was just such a pure and simple exchange: Wounded man — Helper. It was an unambiguous, non-ironic, actual exchange between two people forced together by a particular chain of events and I found myself rather enjoying it, much more than the Realtor – Client relationship, which has the appearance of helpfulness but is really just predatory.

The police arrived promptly within two or three minutes and as the squad car pulled up the cab driver asked me if I would please speak up and be a witness for him. I nodded calmly and said I would, that I’d seen it all. A tall blond officer emerged from the driver’s door. He looked like he could have been a California beach bum in the years before becoming an officer, his hair curling in a perfectly shampooed wave. He and his partner, a shorter, vaguely ethnic, dark-haired man approached the cab driver and black puncher who’d naturally come together side-by-side in front of the cab as if awaiting judgment on either side of blind Lady Justice’s scales.

The taller, blond officer assumed the position of makeshift judge as half-deaf Harriet Loshin and I stood behind the plaintiff and defendant like court observers.

The tall blond turned to the wounded man first, “What happened?”

In a voice bordering on hysteria the cab driver began, “This man ran up to my window, accused me of almost running him over. I did not even see him. And then he punched me!”

The officer-judge turned to the accused and repeated, in exactly the same tone, “What happened?”

“I was walking down the street,” he said in an angry, indignant voice, “and this guy almost drove me over…”

“Listen to him!!!” the cab driver interjected wildly, pointing at his attacker, looking to me for support.

“Let him finish,” the officer said calmly, silencing the cabbie. “Go ahead,” he motioned to the accused.

“…He almost drove me over. He almost pinned me to this car,” he broke off as he pointed at a parked sedan several feet back.

“And then what?” the officer asked.

Pause.

“And then I hit him!” the black guy responded with a timing that could almost be described as comic.

“Turn around,” the tall blonde officer said, “you’re under arrest.”

And just like that the makeshift trial was over and the accused man was cuffed and placed into the rear of the squad car.

“Thank you, thank you,” the cab driver said to no one in particular, his head bobbing back and forth like Stevie Wonder.

I was surprised that the puncher was arrested. I didn’t know what I thought would happen but cuffing him and taking him into custody, marking him as a criminal, seemed an extreme thing to do to a man who’d lost his temper in a single, heated moment. But I guess you can’t just let people go around punching each other. A punching ticket wouldn’t be stiff enough. There would be a lot more random punching if that were the case. Strange to think how human behavior is so directly affected by something as abstract as Law; that human behavior, which I so often think about as fixed and universal is, actually, quite malleable.

I immediately felt sorry for the man being taken into custody. What was going to happen to him? Would this violent outburst mark him for the rest of his life? Did he have a long criminal record and would this violation send him over the top? Would he face prison time? I could see the sadness, fear and regret in his eyes as the law descended on him, his hands cuffed at the small of his back, his head bowed in the rear of the squad car.

After I gave the shorter, darker police officer my contact information so I could be called on as a witness if one was needed Harriet Loshin and I finally proceeded to greet the realtor whom we’d originally taken the cab to meet, in effect, causing the entire incident. The three of us exchanged slightly disappointed “Shit happens” expressions with shoulder shrugs all around. It seemed as if both realtors were embarrassed to have been even marginally involved in the fracas, as if their proximity to such a primal act reflected poorly on them as people.

The three of us (a true Larry, Moe and Curly) boarded the tiny elevator and proceeded upstairs to the apartment. I will never, I thought, be alone with these two people again for the rest of eternity. The apartment was tiny, ugly and expensive. Small dogs were allowed. Plenty of closet space. Washer and dryers in the building. After about thirty seconds in the unit I said thank you and we all made for the elevator where conversation turned back to the incident. “Well, at least you won’t forget the building,” the slick-haired gay realtor said. He was certainly right about that.

…

The following night, as I was on my way to meet several friends at a faux-french bar/restaurant in the meatpacking district just below Chelsea, I passed a supermarket located next door and can you imagine who I saw? I saw the puncher and he was working, collecting several carts on the sidewalk in front of the supermarket. What were the chances of me ever seeing that man again, let alone the very next night? I knew I had to talk to him, had to take advantage of the outrageous circumstances but was slightly intimidated. He and I never made eye contact the previous day and I didn’t know if he was going to be angry at me for standing at the scene as a witness on the cab driver’s behalf.

Several hours and half a dozen beers and a cheeseburger later I departed momentarily from my friends and walked through the supermarket in search of this man whose anger led me to feeling positively alive with exhilaration the previous day. I saw him, his rock-heavy features and stoic expression standing near the candy racks in front of the checkout lines. I strode up to him, my confidence building with every step. How could I be afraid of this guy? I kind of loved this guy. I slapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey,” I said with a laugh, “what happened to you yesterday?”

He looked at me with a blank stare and quickly looked away and I could tell that he had no idea who I was.

“I was in the cab yesterday when you hit the driver.”

He smiled as a look of recognition appeared in his eyes and his entire composure relaxed. “Hey man, how you doing?” he said and we clutched hands.

“What happened to you yesterday?” I asked again, “Did they hold you all day?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he repeated, for dragging me into the whole thing and ruining my day.

I wanted to tell him that it was, somehow, one of the best things that’d happened to me in a long time but thought it might be a weird thing to say so I just laughed and said, “Don’t worry about it.”

He said the police held him for about ninety minutes and that it was an Assault 2 charge that would be reduced to an Assault 1, a misdemeanor, that would not go on his permanent record. I was glad to hear.

“I’m the manager of this store,” he said with a lot of pride, changing the subject.

“That’s great,” I said, knowing that he really wanted me to know that he’s a legitimate person, a contributing member of society and not just some thug who goes around punching people.

“The cop told me in the car that I did what he thinks about doing every day,” he said after a long silence and I imagined the tall, blond surfer fellow saying that and it made me happy.

That seemed to be an honest response to what had happened. We’re all capable of hurting one another all day, every day, and to deny that would be an injustice.

We are, truly, so vulnerable to one another. How many times have I wanted to punch a strutting hipster, to shove some fat woman out of the way, to shout profanities in the face of a child? This man acted on his anger and — though what he did was wrong — I admired him for it. I admired him for acting on his base impulse. However crude, it was honest and that counts for something.

“Had you ever done that before?” I had to ask him.

He laughed, “No, I don’t go around hitting people.”

And that was that. We were pals.

I said, “Well, listen, I just wanted to stop by and see what happened to you yesterday.”

He smiled in appreciation of my gesture.

We clasped hands again and he said warmly, “Stop by any time.”

“I will,” I said, “I will.”