Sure, there had previously been a Tintin phase and then a Han Solo period (I was always more a Han man than a Luke), but this was different. Here were Jewish oddballs raised by bohemians who only wanted to be left alone with their punk rock, their Led Zeppelin, their booming beats, Bud tall boys and girls, girls, girls. Just like me, my older brother Asher, and many of our closest friends in our middle class suburb of Baltimore.

And so I bought a Volkswagen medallion in a Fells Point thrift shop and fashioned it into a gaudy necklace. I wore Sharpie-savaged jeans, high-top Adidas, sweatshirts, and—as a committed Oriole fan, this still haunts me—a New York Yankees baseball cap swung sideways.

It was amazing to us that the Beastie Boys were just a few years older than we were. And yet they were already doing exactly what they wanted to do, as they would later declare in a rap. Perhaps one day we, too, could turn our lives into a wild, raunchy goof and call it a career. “My job ain’t a job, it’s a damn good time,” the band chanted and we believed them.

After graduating from high school, Asher moved to northern California to live with our dad. An advanced social creature, he quickly fell in with a roving band of stoners, which led to a gig performing The Rocky Horror Picture Show live every Saturday at midnight at a theater near the Berkley campus. Eventually he found his way to Sonoma State University.

I left Baltimore a few years after my brother and drove straight to New York City to start my freshman year in college. This was the first stop in my accidental trailing of the Beastie Boys. The trio famously grew up prowling Village clubs, collecting sounds and images they’d soon scratch into their own sample-mad, post-modern party jams.

By the time I moved into a dorm overlooking Washington Square Park in 1989, the Beasties’ second album, “Paul’s Boutique,” was my university’s de facto soundtrack. The CD bounced and grinded at parties; the cassette ticked ceaselessly from Walkman headphones. My friends and I banged into packed rooms lustily quoting lyrics: “Hey, ladies!” As another sweaty Saturday night wound down, we’d summon strength echoing the “Paul’s” sample: “Right up to your face and diss you!”

I was deep in a teenage Bukowski funk and I’d wander Manhattan in a tattered sportcoat drinking 40 ounces of Colt 45 until the brown bag was empty. “Paul’s Boutique” was my constant companion: “You know you light up when the lights go down/ Then you read the New York Post, Fulton Street, downtown/ Same faces every day but you don't know their names/ Party people going placed on the D train.”

This educational approach proved fiscally unsustainable so I left New York after one year. Asher convinced me to move to Hollywood to live with our cousin Aaron, take acting lessons and buy a motorcycle. Once he finished school, he’d join us in Los Angeles and together we would become, effectively, the Beastie Boys of the movie business. At the time we were about the same age the Beasties were when they released their first record—so why not?

Coincidentally, the actual Beastie Boys had also recently moved from New York to Los Angeles, shedding the fratty fooling of their early years for a more mature, socially conscious vision. MCA had even discovered Buddhism and become a vegan, while lyrically renouncing the group’s once-perceived misogyny.

And still their songs pumped at parties. I’d ditched my drunken poet pose back East and was once again rocking thrift store jewelry and questionable facial hair. Out West I grooved to the latest funkified iteration of the Beastie Boys.

Asher graduated from college in the spring of 1992 and a week later he pointed his Geo Tracker toward the apartment I shared with Aaron on Detroit Street, not far from the so-called Miracle Mile. There are photographs of us from that time taken at a poolside party in the Valley. Asher, Aaron, and I practically burst from the photos, chutzpah-propelled in outrageous sunglasses, mugging hardcore for the lens.

Then, on June 17, my brother was shot and killed during a botched robbery attempt. He and Aaron had been out that night working on a film script they were writing. After the work session, Asher was parallel parking on Detroit Street when a skinny dude approached the Tracker asking for spare change. My brother went for his wallet, the skinny dude stepped aside and behind him was a guy with a gun.

That fall Aaron and I, shattered, moved to San Francisco to begin putting our lives back together.

Among the many samples on “Paul’s Boutique” is one from the 1971 R&B hit “Mr. Big Stuff,” asking: “Who do you think you are?” The Beastie Boys’ MCA died of cancer in early May at 47 years of age. Asher would’ve turned 44 this month. I'm now married with two young daughters, living in Brooklyn where I sometimes play the Beasties while running Prospect Park's loop.

On one of the Beasties’ early hits, “Brass Monkey,” MCA told us in his deep bark: “I’ve got a castle in Brooklyn and that’s where I dwell.” While I hardly live in a castle, it is a 3-bedroom apartment that’s quite large by New York City standards. But any sense of modern royalty I have is not due to where I live, what I do, or the music I listen to—though all those things certainly make life more appealing. No, the feeling that I have led a rich life to this point is most poignantly due to the people I’ve known, whether intimately as in the case of my brother or distantly as with MCA and the Beastie Boys. Asher and MCA both died far too young, but not before discovering precisely who they were, and helping me figure out what kind of person I want to be.

Maccabee lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife and two kids. He is the author of Jetpack Dreams, the editor of Innocent When You Dream: The Tom Waits Reader, and he has written for the New York Times, New York magazine and Salon, among others. He is a News Editor for Fastcompany.com and at work on a screenplay, a coming of age story fueled by sex, drugs, rock n roll and Edgar Allan Poe.

There is a glass of water sitting on the coffee table. It has been sitting there for three days. There are specks of something floating near the top of the water.There is a vase of dried brown flowers next to the glass. The water in the vase is cloudy.A hissing noise is coming from the heater. It hisses for a few minutes and then it stops hissing. I am reading a book. I have been reading the same two pages for the past nineteen minutes. I look out the window. The dog is barking at a squirrel in a tree. The squirrel is chasing another squirrel. I can't tell if they are in love or if they hate each other.

I open my laptop. The tabs for Gmail and The New York Times and Facebook are open. There are no new emails in my inbox. I refresh it twice to make sure. I click on The New York Times. I light a cigarette and stare at the headlines. I click on Facebook and scroll down the news feed. I close my computer. I wish someone was watching me through a camera in my apartment. I have total privacy and freedom to do anything I want and I am not doing anything. If someone was watching me I think it could give me ambition. There are too many options to choose from and too few options that seem worth choosing. I want to fight something concrete but I wouldn't want to follow orders but I would have to follow orders because I wouldn't be able to decide on my own what to do. I would be willing to kill. Who would I kill? I don't think I will ever kill anyone. Technology has stripped us of that obligation. This should make me more uncomfortable than it does.

I walk out of my apartment building. I walk down Lafayette Avenue towards the bodega. The sun is out but there is a bit of an overcast. Some kids are smashing bottles in empty lot across the street. A couple of old ladies pushing carts are walking down the sidewalk towards me. I turn the corner. A couple of middle-aged men are standing at the corner. One of them has his back turned and then he turns in my direction. I run into him and a plastic bag he is carrying falls to the ground and I hear a glass bottle break inside it. I see it was a bottle of Bailey's. The two men shake their heads and say that it sucks. I apologize and offer to pay them back for it. I can't remember how much a bottle of Bailey's costs. I don't even want to pay him. He ran into me. He puts his palm near my chest. I take the thirty dollars in my wallet and give it to him. I tell him that is all I have. I feel afraid of him because he is bigger than me. I turn and walk away. I could have easily just run away from them and not given them the money. I don't have any money left to buy anything from the bodega. I walk back to my apartment.

Andrew Worthington lives in Harlem, where he teaches at the City College of New York. He has a short fiction e-book (PangurBanParty.com), a magazine (KeepThisBagAwayFromChildren.com), and a blog (FuckingBigThoughts.blogspot.com). He is 24, and he probably has most of his life ahead of him.

It is not every day that one visits an Ashram for yoga and encounters a “retired” Mafia soldier, adrift there because of illness and poverty. From my end, I envisioned a documentary film covering his faded world; however, for his own security - though the events occurred many years ago - he wished to limit his exposure to the following narrative.

If you travel on the Cross Bay Parkway, past what is called Howard Beach, you probably would not give it much of a glance. More likely you are traveling through the Ozone Park district to the Rockaways. But if you look to the right, you would notice a strip of non-descript stores and located behind them, ordinary, single-family homes. Howard Beach’s claim to fame was via its most famous resident - the now deceased, "Dapper Don” John Gotti. It was there that plans were made to develop, expand and make profitable various criminal enterprises that would make him infamous. This is the story of Johnny.  He was only one of the minor minions but in speaking with him, he was quite open in his respect for Gotti and proud to describe his path to the mob.

Johnny is tall and gaunt with a wide, open face marked by a certain sensuality that shapes the contours of his mouth. His language is marked with “rough” talk, but a beguiling smile belies his claim to be a “stand up guy." You cannot help noticing the shadow of a one time “tough guy,” but now a relic; ravished by time and cancer. He proudly defines himself as gangster; actually a Mafia foot soldier...

First, I want you to know that I was always a stand up guy. Personality doesn’t change. I was from a large family and we were all different in our ways. I respected my father, but he was distant like many men of his generation. A World War II veteran, he would never talk about his experiences. He was a hard, adventuresome man and in his youth even acted as a guide for hunters in Maine. Eventually he made his way to Long Island after marrying my mom and became a truck driver then later a fisherman. Myself, I didn’t like fishing. I didn’t like studying. I was always a person of action.

I would say my family was very straight but it wasn’t “Ozzie and Harriet”. Father was a driven guy and mother was overwhelmed with seven of us. They did their best but couldn’t do much with such a large brood. We were left on our own. In contrast to my brothers and sister who were into education, I liked the active, more physical world and hung around with older, hard guys. Since I was big and strong for a teenager, they accepted me. As for my own large family, I only ever had a connection with my brother John. He never made “judgments” but we still saw the world differently. He was interested in saving humanity and I, in making it in the world the best way possible. The family ignored me and with my negative attitude toward school, assumed I was “going to fall on my face”. For a while I worked in the family business and I learned early to play two types of lives; the “knock around life style”, where one lives for the excitement of the moment”; and the straight life, which I found to be mostly a pain with its predictable hills and valleys. But even with these two kinds of lives, I was a family man; the kids came first.

There were always challenges, but I was an optimist with a faith that ultimately life is run by the angels. I believed whatever the adversity, one should figure how to make it the best way possible . In my first marriage, our new born was lethargic and had difficulty breathing. They could not handle him at the local clinic and urged us to rush him to the hospital. But there is no hospital in Howard Beach. So there I was on Cross Bay Boulevard and my car broke down. Jumping out onto the road, I tried to flag down help but no one would stop. In desperation I scooped him up in my arms and ran and ran until finally some cop picked me and brought me to the hospital. Staggering into the emergency room I screamed for a doctor. They immediately attempted to revive him but it was too late. Only years later I learned about the diagnosis of “sudden infant death syndrome". I didn’t feel anger; not at the drivers who passed me by or the failure of the doctors. I believe that when things happen, they are ordained to happen. In a way I am a religious person marked by a certain fatalism; “God chooses when to pick the flowers”.

Through a friend, I was recommended to join Gotti’s crew where I could make real money. I was invited, but not as a made man; more like a stand-in for different jobs. “When they called, I went.” I was a part time member of a crew and I knew where I stood in the pecking order. If I wanted to score in the territory of another family, I would send out feelers to learn how much it would cost to work a job on their turf. Meanwhile I was a craftsman and maintained a legitimate contracting business. I knew if I was picked up and did not have a “real job” the IRS or the cops would pounce.

Why did they let me join even though I was not Italian? Well in the straight world, you go for an interview. In that world, you need someone to vouch for you. They would tell the boss or maybe it would be a crew leader, “he can be relied on; a knock around guy, give him a shot”. We mostly functioned like a regular business. Profit was always the motive and we tried to bring in more each year. It was like a corporation with a pecking order from the top on down; and the bottom line was paramount. We were no different than the corporate raiders, except we were more likely to go to jail. We had meetings just like them. There were even family barbecues to keep us together. Anyhow it was more comfortable to socialize with the other gangsters and their families than with neighbors; we didn’t have to hide our line of work from each other since we all knew the score.

As for working for Gotti, a lieutenant vouched for me; “this guy can do the job”. I rarely interacted with him except on social occasions. He was a pleasant enough guy. Most of the time I was used as a collector or helped work the gambling weekends for high rollers. I am big and can look fierce so they used me as security, which meant keeping things peaceful and safe. The gambling crew would rent a floor in a shabby motel for the weekend and there we would set up the game tables and provide food and even women. The crew would rake in a 20% take from the gambling and, of course I would get a small piece - but it might amount to as much as two or three thousand cash for that weekend. I also had a collection route for the “numbers racket” but never prostitution or drugs. I identified with the “old timers” and they were not interested in going there.

Over the years I kept my head down and maybe I was just lucky, but I was never busted. Even if it would have happened, I was confident that someone would contact me with legal and financial support. My view was that it was important to get all my ducks in a row and if I would be hit, then I would look for the least amount of time for vacation (jail). When busted, a lawyer would probably be sent out who would suggest that should the “ducks fall” (which means convicted and go to jail), I should behave myself and keep my mouth shut. It was understood when I got out, money would be waiting for me. This made good, business sense.

For a while I served as a "bag man" but to the outside world I described myself as a “financial facilitator”. The mob trusted me to transfer their "bundles". Piles of cash were tied into blocks, fitted into garbage bags and taped up nice and neat. Money came in from various ventures but I didn’t speculate about the source just so long as I was taken care of. How they distributed it or where it was invested, I have no idea. My job was just to transfer the cash and at that time it was usually to Las Vegas; my favorite city.

One trip stands out. I was taking the back roads through Tennessee at 2:00 AM, going about four thousand miles per hour. I'mrelaxed, listening to music, I notice lights flashing behind me. The cop pulls me over and asks why am I traveling so fast on his road? I try to be cool and friendly. I explain that I am off to Las Vegas and suggest we go for a beer. I'm casual with him, though I admit my heart is pumping away. On the floor of the backseat and in the trunk, I have a few "bundles”.  He points to them but I explain, “no need to go there” and reach into my jacket. I say, “I have an envelope here that will convince you to go somewhere else. It is my intended gambling money of $15,000 and it is now yours”. This might sound cynical but wherever you are, the city or the sticks, all cops want to supplement their salary.

Finally I arrive in the City of Lights and make my way to our meeting place; not only me but “carriers” from all over. The bundles are emptied and then both are hand and machine counted. The other guys  and I wait to be rewarded, but instead of sending us out to the Strip to enjoy ourselves, they drive us out to the desert. We all get out of the limo and these bruisers who are packing order us to kneel down. I am fatalistic -“what is gong to happen is going to happen”. After several minutes of agony, they tell me, “my cards are good” and I am sent back to Vegas. Some of the guys are made to stay because they were caught short bagging. I never saw them again and I assume they found their burial plots out there in the sand. Why they'd take such a chance, I have no idea; maybe just plain stupid. If we don’t have trust, even amongst gangsters, what do we have?

To be part of that life, you need a tough temperament. Charlie, who is now on “life vacation,” was my early mentor. I met him as a kid when I joined a motorcycle gang. He taught me how to handle myself in intense situations. I learned that in this business the key is to get results with the least amount of physicality. Before sponsoring me, he arranged for a test. I guess it was like trying to get into school, but this was Mafia college. He gave me information on a guy who owed him money and was “reluctant to pay up”. I was instructed to convince him that it would be in his best interest to meet his obligation. I was given a background story, included the fact that he is a “tough son of a bitch” and two previous attempts to retrieve the debt had failed. My job was to go in with as little fan fair as possible and collect.

When I arrived at the deadbeat's deli, the first thing I did, without a word said, was to knock down the glass shelves. This was my wake-up message to remind him to meet his fiduciary responsibilities. Nobody likes to pay up to the shylock, but if you make the contract, you have to stick to the deal or there are consequences. My mentor watched my back and at the same time observed how I operated. I was successful and from then on when they needed a collector, I was the man.

It was not always so simple; sometimes there would be a fight and a few times, I got my teeth knocked out. I proved myself at the job though. In the regular world, you need to pass an exam. This was tougher. But once vouched for, there was no turning back. As a reward there was exciting, lucrative work. The word would be out, “he is a knock around guy and effective”; “give him a shot”. For example, if there was to be a truck hijacking and an additional crew member was needed, I was invited to join. They knew I would keep my head and could be counted on. Over time I became more trusted and was invited to more lucrative jobs. Like in the straight world; you do a good job and are promoted.

I am proud to say, I never needed to pack a gun because I was confident I could take care of every situation. My cue was a rage button. It was a felt sense of a rumbling fury. There would first be a “baby cry” in my voice that would build momentum until there was an explosion. The message is, “don’t be around me when I am this way.” It was a controlled anger and ended when I got my way. In many ways it was easy, I just needed to play the part of a scary gangster.

As for my family, my wife was not happy with the life. She loved the perks, but the fear of my being busted was too nerve-racking for her and it eventually broke up the marriage. My son looked at it differently.

When he finished high school he asked if he could join a crew. For him, it would be big money. I felt it was his decision to choose his life, but just as I was tested, he needed to pass and learn if there was a fit. He was big and brawny and could be physically imposing. Like how Charlie had sent me out when I was a kid, I put him to the test with a collection job - though it was actually a set-up. I instructed my pals to play act by muscling him when he arrived but not too badly as to do him harm. Well they gave him a black eye, kicked him out the door and that was the end of his career. He decided he didn’t have it in him and now has a real profession; a cop.

Do I or those “wise guys” have a conscience? I believe everyone has one. Look, I even went to Confession. The priest would tell me that he was shocked at my behavior and suggest that I do “hail Marys” and take the straight path. I knew where to draw a line. No problem for me to break someone’s thumb, but never to kill. There would be no amount of money that I would accept for that. We all have our own rules. Mine allowed me to crack some limbs but not murder.

How did I get out of this line of work? “Well, it is not like a job, where you just quit. You know too much. My cancer, which occurred a decade ago, was the “big casino” and that was my ticket out. First there was colon and then prostate cancer. The first time, I got fixed up and tried to stay healthy. The more recent bout was more difficult. First, since I had no health insurance, I went through almost two million dollars; essentially the medical costs brought me down. Once the private hospital had all of my money, it was “goodbye Charlie”. Who is the real gangster here?

Broke, it looked like the end of the rope, but I knew a lot of doctors. They taught me how to play the innocent and get medical service without paying. I kept my head straight and suffered it all; from the loss of my testicles to facing a life of homelessness. Look, all my plumbing is gone but I stay tough. Admittedly, I thought of giving up but at that time, my grandson was born and I made the decision to be around to see him grow up.

After the first bout, it was important to regain my strength but also my finances; so I returned to my favorite place, Las Vegas. I am a good gambler but I am also a guy who enjoys going to the edge. Teaming up with a friend, we decided to cheat the House. We used a number of tricks and were successful, but eventually we were caught flipping chips in a grade B casino. Four husky guys came up behind me and another four surrounded my partner. They quietly escorted us to the parking garage. There, we were given a choice; a one way trip to the desert or the cinder block routine. It was a no-brainier and I just asked them to get it over with. They placed my arm between the blocks, and broke it with a bat. For my friend, they chose to break his legs. They were gentlemen and dropped us off at the nearest emergency room. “I was not angry; to me, they were doing their job.”

I wondered to myself, why I took the risk since I could make money by legitimate gambling. For me it was the excitement of the score; the juice high. It was the same feeling when I did collections; it was not just about money but the “juice” flowing through the veins.

Now I make do in a totally different world; an Ashram, a million miles away from Howard Beach. Almost homeless and without resources, I came at my brother’s invitation. In contrast to the Mafia guys who have no illusions, here I think most of the people are full of shit and play holy. I openly tell them I used to be a gangster and that seems to be okay with them and ensures they don’t mess with me. Meanwhile I help out and my mechanical skills save the Ashram a shit load of money. In turn I found a temporary home.

In the end, the issue has never been one of conscience for the life I chose, but regrets. I failed to do more to help myself in this life. Meanwhile I am a survivor and wait to see what the angels will bring. 

We used to sometimes go to Atlantic City.  Neil would play at the low stakes table while I wandered around with the baby strapped to my chest and poked my nose in the shops.  I liked the colorful lights and sounds.  I found some of the people fascinating, particularly the women who stayed all day and played with the same quiet intensity as the men.  I was particularly enamored of anyone in unusual hats or sparkly outfits or giant earrings or long, gaudy painted nails or leather fur-trim designer clothes – I would love these people for dressing the part, for wearing things that told me how important it all was to them.  I would usually vow at some point or another to learn to play poker myself but, to this day, have not gone through with it.  Too busy to learn, to busy to play, always too busy.

                When our second child came, it became impractical to go to Atlantic City so my husband contented himself with the faceless opponents he found on his phone.  But there was no reason for this, he realized – the city is full of underground gambling clubs.  After nosing around a bit among friends, he discovered one in midtown that was a good fit.  And so, one night a week, he would leave me with the kids and venture out at night to go and play poker for a couple of hours.  But one night, to satisfy my immense curiosity, he took me with him.  We called a babysitter for the kids and made it a date night.

                I don’t know what I was expecting, Guys and Dolls, some sort of swanky mobster affair.  Men in fedoras with guns tucked in holsters.  Curvy women in velvet and lipstick.  Cocktails and cigars.  Gangsters.  Or maybe James Bond.  Roulette wheels and blackjack tables.  Men in dinner jackets, their women dripping with diamonds.  I had my best shoes on, Tory Burch boots with four inch heels, and wore a tight skirt and my hair down in cascading curls.  We took a cab to midtown, then wandered around for a bit because we were lost.  I was beginning to regret wearing those shoes.  Then we found it, a non-descript office building that was easy to miss.  We took the elevator up and got off at a floor that looked like any other floor in any other office building in Manhattan, one with old, linoleum floors, peeling paint and noisy, grit-laden radiators in the bathroom.  Our destination was off to the right.  We pushed right through – the door was open.  No secret knocks or nefarious looking men guarding the front.  I saw my mistake as soon as we walked in.  My perception of what I would find had been a complete fantasy.  I shot my husband a look – he had been encouraging it.

                The “underground gambling den” was really just one dark-walled room that served as a small business during the day.  Office equipment had been pushed to one side.  The windows were covered with drapes, the lights bright.  There were three large oblong tables that seated about 10 – two tournament tables and one cash table.  There were about 30 people in the room, almost every seat filled.  They used rolling office chairs.  There was a single screen mounted near the ceiling that showed a timer that counted down the minutes left in each tournament.  The guy who runs the poker club greeted us -  he couldn’t have been more than 25 years old.  He was tall and bean-pole thin and wore glasses and had a bit of a moustache that looked like it might have taken him days to grow.

                “Jordan!”  My husband clasped his hand.  “This is my wife.”

The young man looked at me appraisingly but respectfully and with obsequious interest.  Neil had told me that Jordan was very excited about his fledgling business and took it seriously and wanted it to succeed.  I could see it all in his demeanor.

“Welcome.”  He said.  “Can I get you a drink?  Water?  Soda?”

                “Water.”  I said.  “Thanks.”

“You have a cash game going?”  Neil asked.

“Of course.”  Jordan gestured to one of the tables.  “Do you want to play?”  He asked me.

`               “No, thanks.”  I said.  “I’m just going to watch.”

Jordan pushed two chairs closer to the table and I set mine away from the table, behind Neil.

The dealer cut the deck, flipped the cards and began to throw them to the players.  I looked around the table.  It was composed almost exclusively of young single men in their twenties.  They were white, black, Asian, Indian – all American, all dressed in jeans and sweats.  There were only two other women in the room besides me, both of them in their sixties, both heavy and dressed in pants and big sweaters.  “Regulars.”  Neil whispered to me.  “They’re here every night.” 

                There was only one person dressed in any way that was interesting to me, a young man in his twenties, enormously overweight, who wore a dirty baseball cap with a Ron Paul pin in it and a Ron Paul sweatshirt.  He had large jiggling cheeks and smooth-shaven white skin and gigantic dark eyes that made him look like a very intense, overgrown baby.  After his cards were dealt, he put a lucky charm on top of them – a small chess piece, a knight, made of smoked glass.  He did it every time.

                “So do you think Ron Paul’s going to get it?”  Neil asked him.

                “Nah.  I wish.”  

                “What about Romney?”

                “Nah.”  He said dismissively.  “Might as well vote for Obama.”

                Neil had only put in for $40 worth of chips but the young men on either side of my husband and the young man in the Ron Paul hat each had at least $300 or $400 worth of chips before them.  As time wore on, it became clear that, though there were 10 people sitting at the table, the contest here was between these three people.  My husband held his own for awhile but, in the end, was no match for them.  Seeing him flounder was a new experience for me.   He is a decade older than me and always seemed to know things I didn’t know.  This is probably why I’ve always seen him as the kind of guy who, in every situation, wound up holding the reins.

Jordan sat down across from us.  “So what do you think of this?  Monday is going to be ladies night.”  He was not looking at me when he said it but I could tell it was for my benefit.  “I thought I would offer a prize for the best player that night.  Maybe, like, a gift-certificate for a mani-pedi.  And I’ll offer a prize for best female player in any quarter – like maybe a full day at a spa.  So what do you think?”  He still wouldn’t look at me.

“I think Monday should be strip poker night,” said Ron-Paul-hat, grinning in his fat cheeks.

People snickered but Jordan ignored them.  Then everyone fell quiet.  The cards had been dealt, the players now taking it all in.  I sat and watched, understanding little.  I had been sitting there for over an hour watching my husband lose his chips bit by bit.  I was getting bored and was ready to go but then he won a moderate-sized pile and so we decided to stay a bit longer.  More chips to play.

                At one point, a buzzer rang out.  The poker clock up on the screen near the ceiling, set for ten minutes each time, had, again, run itself down to zero.  The three dealers, one at each table, all young men, collected their chips and stood up and new dealers, also young men, took their places.

                “They are all taking breaks?”  I asked.

                “Yes.”  The young man to my right said.  “It gets, mentally, very tiring.”

                Jordan stood up then and addressed the room.  “How about pizza.  Anyone want pizza?”

                “Yeah, pepperoni.”  Said Ron-Paul-hat.

                “How many for pepperoni?

                “No, wait!  Anchovies!”  Ron-Paul-hat, grinning again.  He had little, corn niblet teeth.

                “You’re buggin’”

                “Put up your hands if you want pepperoni.”  Jordan said.  “Okay.  Pepperoni it is.  Anyone want anything else from the outside world?”

                “Hookers.”  Someone called out from another table.

                “Coke!”

                “Yeah, aw right!  Hookers and coke!  The Friday night special!”  Laughter.

                “It’s Wednesday.”

                “Wednesday is meth night.”  Jordan cracked.  More snickers all around.  The dealers kept dealing.  Everyone fell quiet.  Calmly, the young men flipped up their cards at one corner and took a look.

 Elioutte Green is the pen name for a writer based in Manhattan. She holds a MFA from Columbia and her work has been published in various small journals. She is presently completing her first novel.

It takes a while to settle into a new place when you move. The way you think furniture is going to work within a space isn’t usually how it ends up, so we spent a lot of time rearranging. We finally decided we were happy (for now) on where everything was and we would just live with it (for now).

I was meeting people at work, but it was on a professional basis and Susan was writing again, which means she spent a great deal of time by herself. We would cook dinner, have some wine and talk about what we did that day. Susan told me of the progress on her book and how she hoped to wrap it up by the end of the year. I told her stories about my boss and colleagues at the investment firm. We are settling in, we would say, finding our place here.

Warmer weather and longer days had come as we approached Memorial Day. Every morning when I got up, I would look out the kitchen window at the flower boxes. By now, the plants had grown and I could see buds appearing. The promise of summertime flowers.

One day, Susan called me into the kitchen as soon as I got home. “Hey, look at this,” she said. Across the driveway, a woman was weeding and watering the flowers in the flower boxes. She had on a light colored, flowing dress and her long hair would spill over as she tended to her plants. Behind her, I could see two place settings on the table with candles and a small bouquet of flowers. A date?

As we were cooking our dinner, a car we hadn’t seen before, a grey BMW, slowly pulled down the driveway and parked awkwardly on one side of the parking area.
As Susan finished sautéing the salmon, a man with a bottle of wine in his hand carefully made his way toward the balcony, unsure of where to go. Our neighbor appeared, greeted him and asked him in.

We ate our dinner and after the last sips of wine, decided to take a walk through town. It was still warm out with almost no breeze. A perfect evening. As we made our way back up to our place, we heard talking and laughing. We went into our kitchen and took a peek out the window. The date was going well. The candles were flickering, the wine was flowing. But before we went to bed, the BMW started, and the man was gone.

For the next few Saturday nights, this pattern continued. Spring had given way to summer and the flowers in the boxes were now in full bloom. The colors were spectacular and our neighbor made sure her plants were well cared for. Then I woke up early one Sunday morning in July. I thought I heard a noise outside and took a look out of the kitchen. A dog was digging around in the bamboo. After giving up chasing whatever he was chasing, the dog lifted his leg on the tire of the not-so-awkwardly parked grey BMW.

Later that morning, I told Susan that BMW guy had spent the night. “Good for her”, Susan said. “Good for him”, I said. We decided that we would get to know our neighbor a little. I am constantly amazed at how much information Susan can come back with after what always seems to me to be the most idle of chats. Later that week came the report: her name is Pamela, she is about our age, she works at the jewelry store in town, she likes classical music, she moved here 12 years ago and is, or maybe was, single.

August was hot. Early, before the heat of the day would melt everything and everyone, I would go for a run on the beach. On my way out, I would admire the flowers in the boxes, standing bright and colorful, hopeful before another day of baking in the sun.

Cool evenings became the norm as fall pushed summer into the past. The days got shorter. Susan’s book was almost on schedule and the editors at the publishing company were pleased with the progress. For me, it was business as usual. Markets go up and markets go down. There is opportunity in both.

Pamela and BMW guy were together every weekend. While Susan and I cooked and ate in our apartment, they would sit out on the patio, even when it got chilly, late into the night, talking and sipping wine. Good for them.

Then, for several weekends, there were no late evening conversations, no sipping of wine on the patio. Maybe BMW guy was away on business. Then, he was back for a weekend.

We were expected to get a cold snap in the last week of October. Pamela had, in the past covered her plants with a plastic cover to protect them from the cold. I was surprised at how well it worked. The flowers were still beautiful. Then, one weekend, we had a storm. The temperature dropped to freezing and the wind blew 40 miles per hour. The plastic got blown off of the flower boxes. The next day, the sun came out, but the temperature struggled to get into the 30’s.

After a couple of days, it was obvious that the flowers had died from exposure to the wind and cold. We never saw the grey BMW again.

Margolies, however, had one overriding passion. That was handball. He loved any kind of handball – one-wall, four-wall, black ball, pink ball – and its derivatives like paddleball and racquetball. Even when he was a kid, once the exercises were over in gym class, he’d head to the handball court.

Once I asked Mark, whom I met when I worked near his co-op in Brooklyn Heights, whether he played any other games, like basketball or softball. “Well, I learned to swim because I had to. Once I tried touch-football,” he said. “It was horrible!”

When I asked him how he got into handball, he said his father, a working-class Jew from Brownsville, worked for the Post Office, but his passion was boxing. “He was a boxer,” Margolies said, “and he trained for boxing by playing handball. He would go to the Betsy Head handball courts in Brownsville, and I’d go with him and watch.” At the same time, because Mark was very shy and had no friends, he never got into sports like the other kids.

“You know the last time I went to a baseball game? The last year the Dodgers were in Brooklyn—1957,” he said. “My brother took me. I sort of enjoyed it, but I never had any real desire to go again.”

Soon afterward, his family moved to the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn. From there, it was an easy walk to the Brighton Beach handball courts, the mecca of New York City handball. "Everyone," he said, "played there—kids like him, guys in their seventies, A-level tournament players, beginners - everyone." Sometimes he’d have to wait a half hour to get on a court, but he didn’t care. He was hooked.

“When I was playing handball,” he said, “it was like I was taken to another dimension. There was such high energy, I was in such a state of ecstasy, that it was like I was removed from the world. Many of the courts had lights, so sometimes it would be midnight and I didn’t even know it. My parents had to come down and get me. I’d play singles, doubles, sometimes two against one – it didn’t matter, as long as it was handball.”

As time went on, playing on the neighborhood courts got a little boring for him. So he’d get on the trains and go to different neighborhoods all over the city. Even after he got married and moved away from Sheepshead Bay, he continued to go to the courts in Brighton Beach, where the best, most competitive handball players held forth. He went to neighborhoods that most of his peers considered dangerous, like Bushwick or Central Harlem. “Are you kidding?” he’d answer, after someone feared for his safety. “The guys there are some of the best players. They put their all, every part of their body, into it!”

He stopped playing for a few years after he had kids, but when the children got a little older, he went on his handball trips every Saturday and Sunday, while Gabrielle stayed home and pursued her own interests.

 One time I asked him if he'd gone to all five boroughs to play.

“Well, I went all over Brooklyn and all over Manhattan, up to about 168th Street. I never went to the Bronx – it was too far. I didn’t like Queens, didn’t play there except when I worked in a school there. I’d play on my lunch hour, in the schoolyard. The other teachers loved to play me, the custodians loved to play me, even the kids played me. They thought I was over the hill, but when I started to play, they couldn’t believe it!”

Hearing this story, I asked whether he was an “A-level” player. “Definitely not—I was a B-level player. But who cares!” he answered. “Besides, A-level players in handball don’t get that much recognition anyway—it’s just that they get into the record books.”

When Mark was about 45, his wrists were beginning to go, so he switched to racquetball – “not paddleball,” he’d say, “the wooden paddle was too heavy for me.” He joined the Eastern Athletic Club in Brooklyn Heights and played there. When his legs and his back started to go, he switched to ping-pong, but soon, he wasn’t even able to do that.

I saw Mark recently sitting at a counter at the Park Plaza Diner in the Heights. His hair was white, his beard was gray and he had a cane at his side.

“Been playing any ball lately?” I asked politely, thinking that the answer was no.

“No. My doctor forbids it—you know, my back,” he mumbled.

“Do you go to the handball courts at Brighton Beach to watch?” I asked, trying to salvage something good for him.

“Yeah,” he said, sighing. “But that’s all I can do.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” I sympathized.

“I’m not sad,” he said. “Handball gave me more than 50 years of fun. I’m can’t complain!”

And I said goodbye to him and walked away, satisfied that he had lived his life exactly the way he wanted to; that he had done something with it that he considered worthwhile.

Raanan Geberer is an editor at a local newspaper in New York and lives with his wife Rhea and his cat Bonnie in Chelsea. His hobbies include vegetable gardening, working out at the gym and playing rock music with friends. He is a lifelong railfan and has an overriding interest in politics, religion, history and literature.

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, with an irreverent sense 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.

The woman had parked her shopping cart several yards away and was rummaging through the nearby garbage cans, gathering bottles and whatever other odd pieces of trash she found useful or interesting. I was gaping at her unabashedly, since, as I said, the reality of the situation wasn’t really registering. This seems to happen to me frequently: Reality doesn’t quite register—but when it does, suddenly and without warning, it crushes me.

Like right now, when to my surprise, the woman stopped, looked right at me, and spoke. Her teeth were black but her eyes were sharp and intelligent. I pulled my headphones out, embarrassed to have fallen into such a solipsistic trance. She smiled: “Have you been downtown yet?”

I stared at her, struggling to understand.

“The protest downtown,” she said. “You look like you’d fit right in.”

The protest. It was September 30, 2011. I’d heard about Occupy Wall Street, of course, but I was startled to hear myself being cast in this light. My hair and beard were overgrown, certainly—after all, at that very moment I was waiting for an appointment with my barber—but had things really gotten so dire? I tried to smile back at her as I shook my head “no.” In all likelihood, she meant it as a compliment, but my vanity was wounded. I’d like to imagine that my beard is much more grand, more regal, than the scruffy growth on some young protester’s chin. Not knowing what to say—how to defend myself, how to explain my extreme self-importance to this poor old woman—I fell silent, and eventually she shuffled back toward her cart.

I got up and hurried off to my appointment with the barber. Obviously it was long overdue.

*****

Several weeks later, on my way home one night, I got stuck behind a man on the 8th Street subway stairs with a bag on his back that was large enough to fit a small piano. Oversized bags of any kind in Manhattan are a pet peeve of mine: Rolling suitcases that drag like dead tails behind the crisscrossing hordes of office workers in Midtown; giant strollers with enough pockets for a baby and its mother to live out of for a month; piles of shopping bags so vast they take up two seats and the entire floor on a subway car. I loathe all of these things. But, for some reason—my arbitrary, peevish mood, perhaps—this guy with the enormous bag was more than I could stand. He was blocking the entire staircase, teetering slowly back and forth. I raced up behind him scowling, hoping he could feel my contempt. But when he turned to look at me, his smile was disarming. He was young, in his early 20s probably, with blue eyes and the scruff of a man who might one day grow a very respectable beard.

“Youfromzoocotty,” he said.

“What?” I said, although I wasn’t even sure he’d asked me a question. As always when I’m talking to a stranger, I felt like I understood nothing.

“Zuccotti,” he repeated. “You from Zuccotti?”

That clicked. It was November 15 and that morning in a surprise raid the NYPD had cleared the protesters out of Zuccotti Park and removed their tents and other belongings, using the pretext that the park needed to be “cleaned” and made “safe” for other New Yorkers to “enjoy” as well. According to Mayor Bloomberg, “Health and safety conditions became intolerable.” I had laughed into my morning orange juice when I read that; it sounded so phony. I could have mentioned this to the man with the piano on his back, which I now realized was probably everything he owned (or at least whatever he’d brought with him to Zuccotti Park), but instead I just blurted out: “Oh, no I’m not!”

And I probably delivered it with some contempt. But not contempt for him or his cause. Once again, I was bristling at being misidentified as part of a group I had no actual relation to. And with that dismissive exchange, our inchoate bond was broken. He turned away, and I pushed past his giant bag and fled into the rainy night.

*****

Two days later, November 17, Occupy Wall Street held their national Day of Action, with marches throughout Manhattan (and other cities too) and a rally at Liberty Park that night. I watched the event streaming live on the Internet from my cubicle at a magazine in midtown, where I was freelance editing for the week. At first, I felt like watching a video of an anti-corporate protest from my desk at one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world was a bit too brazen. But as the hours passed and I got more and more excited text messages from friends, I thought, Fuck it, I don’t really care what these people think and I barely care about this job either.

In fact, I would have been thrilled to have been scolded for watching the video feed. I probably would have even escalated the situation myself. After all, quitting a job is one of the most life-affirming experiences a person can have, and I was itching to get up and leave this one forever. If I was being really honest with myself, I’d have liked to have been downtown, rallying in favor of better jobs, or better benefits, or something. The only thing keeping me at my desk was my sense of commitment: Despite the low pay, long hours, and endless frustrations, I had agreed to do this job and I would see it through for that reason alone. But I certainly wasn’t going to enjoy it.

The next morning, on the subway back to work, the gloomy silence of the commute—the rows of ears plugged with identical ear-buds and eyes trained on rows of indistinguishable electronic devices—was interrupted by the voice of a rabble-rouser: One of those bold men that sometimes takes advantage of a captive subway car to push his own crazy agenda. A hero! The speaker was a black man, middle aged, with a strong beard and a sly smile. He was wearing a high-school-football-style jacket, but on the left breast where a name is usually printed, instead it said simply: “Somebody.”

“Listen up, folks,” he said, looking up and down the subway car at a timid crowd that would not meet his eyes. “Slavery never ended! It has just been given a new name. You all think you’re important people, going off to your jobs, your careers … but you’re no better than slaves.”

He held up a copy of the Daily News. The cover photo was of the bloodied and distraught face of a protester at the previous day’s march, with a condescending headline that read: “For Cryin’ Out Loud.”

“You all work hard, right?” the man went on. “Forty, 50, 60 hours a week, and you think you’re lucky. Well, there’s a lot of people in this city who aren’t going to do anything today.” He smiled, and by this time I’d taken out my ear-buds and was smiling too, almost laughing. “You know what Mr. Bloomberg is doing today? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. Well, maybe he’ll have another press conference to remind everyone what a nuisance the people that do want to make a difference in this city are. And there’s a lot of other people doing nothing all day too. That’s what they have you for: To do the hard work, to slave away all day at jobs that make them rich.”

No one looked at him. Perhaps they were too ashamed, or angry, or they thought he was the nuisance, another crazy black man on the subway who ought to be ignored. I felt my body getting hot, starting to tremble. He was articulating my feelings so exactly: The dread I feel every morning when I get up to go to work, the despair I feel when faced with the complacency of so many of my peers, the humiliation of being stuck in what feels like a trap. The subway doors opened and people began filing off the train.

“I’ll tell you what,” the man said, still smiling, as people pushed past him, their eyes downcast: “You all should learn the words to Kumbaya. Trust me, it helps.”

As I passed him, on my way out the door to spend another eight hours staring at a computer screen, checking blogs and chatting online while intermittently doing a bit of work, I nodded, as if in solidarity, as I had something real in common with this man. Maybe I did. And maybe I’d had something in common with the man on the subway stairs I’d acted so contemptuously toward. And with the woman in rags who’d been so polite, so genuine in her assumption that I was part of something. Part of what, however, I still couldn’t say ... and I was worried that this, whatever it was, was already coming to an end, before I’d even had a chance to understand ...

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

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.