Crack Up

Albie Gonzalez was half Puerto Rican and half Dominican. In other words, as he used to say, he was fucked. He lived down on Cherry Street by the projects, and used to come up to the East Village to hang out on Avenue A. I first met him in Blanche's Tavern one night when I had just cashed my financial aid grant and was buying drinks.

Albie, who was wiry with short nappy hair and bright eyes, looked around my age but actually was four years younger. He was a handsome kid with big brown eyes and impossibly long eyelashes, but his body was already starting to slump over from drinking, drugs and smoking. He wore a sly grin on his face, and I was trying to figure out how he had insinuated himself into our circle at the bar, but he seemed to know everyone. His obliging face invited trouble, and I would soon come to know that he made his living off knowing every cop spot and after hours club on the Lower East Side.

By the time a general hilarity had set in, and many rounds of cheap Polish vodka were flowing from behind the bar, a little well known voice in my head started lobbying for some coke to put an edge on things. I briefly considered going to Pony Pack around the corner on 10th Street, but lately the blow there was mostly cut, and since I had money in my pocket I figured I could do better. I looked around the bar to see who would know what was open, and then my gaze fell on Albie, who happened to be staring right at me with a knowing smile. He may have even winked.

'My man, what's your name again?' I asked him. He gave a wide, toothy smile and flashed his eyelashes at me.

'I'm Albie bro. They call you Jimmy, right?' So he knew my name anyway. I noticed he was considerably shorter when I got next to him, and he had the habit of shifting back and forth from one foot to the other as he spoke.

'Yeah, nice to meet you', I said, and shook his hand with some hybrid combination of a soul shake. In those days everyone had a different shake, and it was hard to remember who did what. I figured he was Puerto Rican so I gave him a straight fist bump and then a side shake. 

'Yo, what's up?' I asked.  'Who's got the package?'

At the mention of cocaine Albie's face grew animated and purposeful. He shifted from right to left, and asked me what I wanted. I told him maybe an eightball, and the twinkle in his eyes became a gleam. Smiling broadly he told me there was a spot across the park where he could get an eightball for a hundred and twenty five bucks. He said he could go get it and be back in fifteen minutes. But I wasn't going for it, and told him I would go with him. He never flinched, and cracked the big smile again, saying, 'Of course yo, you wanna come with me, it's all good...but I gotta go in the bodega alone'. I looked him in the eye. He shifted again, and said, 'Until they know you...it's some Dominicans and they ain't no joke, but they cool people.'

So we left the bar and headed across Tompkins Square Park, stepping through bums and around junkies, and always keeping both eyes open. Halfway through the park we came to a convergence of lanes and out of nowhere two big Puerto Rican kids rolled up on us.

'Yo, can my man and me get a dollar?' Said the smaller of the two, who had a lazy eye that was looking right at me. He had a mad smile like he was on dust, and Reflexively I said, 'Nah, sorry no money' and kept walking, but then the bigger kid stepped in front of me and said, 'Why you gotta disrespect my man like that? He only axed you for a dollar yo.'

I looked up at him. His head was gigantic and angular, like the jaw wasn't part of the cranium. He had a Yankees hat on his head that looked like a bobble head doll. It would have been funny if his eyes weren't so dusted and evil. He moved a step closer to me and I realized it was too late to run, so I stepped back and thought about the five hundred dollars of financial aid money in my pocket. And then Albie spoke up.

'Yo Flintstone, what up yo?' Said Albie, smiling at the big headed kid. 'This is my man Jimmy P, he's cool people from down the Hill'. Flintstone broke into a grin and looked at me skeptically. 'Oh snap...Al B. Sure! My bad son, I didn't see you was with your man here.' Then he exchanged a pound with Albie and offered me his giant hand - it looked like a bunch of small, overripe bananas. Then the kid with the bad eye spoke.

'Yo Albie man, I seen your brother over by Impalas...he was with Hector and them'. Albie nodded, and then I shook hands with that kid too. They both looked me up and down, but it was cool now. Then the bad eye kid asked me where I lived on the Hill. I hadn't heard this term before, but I told him I lived on Ludlow Street, near Canal. He smiled and trained his crazy eye on me. 'Oh shit, you a Hill nigga!' He said, and then they all cracked up. Albie looked at me and quickly flashed his lashes.

The cop spot was a fake bodega on 6th Street between Avenues B and C. It actually was a bodega, with Goya beans, cigarettes and detergent in the windows, but inside you couldn't buy anything but twenty dollar pieces, grams, eight balls and loose cigarettes. They had to sell 'loosies' because the clientele demanded them. I stood next door and waited while Albie went in. The action on the block was frenetic. It was a cool Spring night and people were moving quickly. As I waited I wondered if Albie was working with the bodega and could get out the back. It wouldn't have been hard to beat me. But something about his eyes and the way he spoke - he was calmer and friendlier than most hustlers - relieved me, and I knew he was coming back out.

Suddenly I heard pop pop pop from around Avenue D, and everyone scrambled and ducked and I knew someone was shooting. Fuck! What to do? I thought of running up the street toward the park but I didn't want to get separated from Albie with him holding my money. I moved over to a doorway where two girls were huddled, and I squeezed in. The first girl was fat, and wore her hair in big bronze ringlets, with thick gold bamboo earrings. She was spilling out of a bright green mini dress that barely contained her voluptuous dimpled ass. The other girl was dark and slim, with very pink lips and bloodshot eyes. She was wearing tight jeans and a dirty, loose windbreaker. I knew right away she was a Strawberry -  a girl who sold pussy for coke. She was looking me up and down with her red rimmed eyes and then she smiled and said, 'Hey baby...you holding rocks?' I tried to look hard and nonchalant, but I wasn't exactly sure what she meant. Crack was a relatively new drug on the street and I didn't know all the lingo.

'Nah, I'm just waiting for my man'. I said. They both started giggling and the fat one said, 'When he comes out you wanna party?' She gave me a filthy smile and I thought, where the fuck is this guy?

Just then Albie came out of the bodega and saw me talking to the two girls. He came over and looked at the girls and said 'Yo what up Theresa?' to the fat one. She shook her curls and earrings and gave a thin smile that was more like a frown. Albie gave me a serious look, and said, 'I heard people shooting out here yo, let's be out'. And with that we left the girls loitering in the doorway.

Walking up the block Albie handed me the eightball. It was in a pink plastic bag, and it looked legit. The weight felt right, and I didn't mind if he'd pinched some or even stepped on it a little, but I didn't think he'd had time to do that. Any scrambler would have, and I wouldn't hold it against him. When we got to the park we sat down on a bench where the streetlight was shaded by trees. I opened the package and stuck my door key into it, taking a big scoop of the white powder. It stung my nose and I knew it was cut with speed, but it was mostly coke. I did the same in my other nostril and then my brain switched gears with a jerky clutching move, like going from first to third. I felt a jolt of pleasure and a surge  of self confidence, and I scooped up another key and steadied it under Albie's waiting nose. He did two and winked his long lashes at me - I knew we were going to be fast friends.

The coke was good and we had a lot of it, so we stayed right where we were, talking shit and drinking quarts of Colt 45 and smoking Albie's Newports. Electric with energy, I took out a paint pen and started tagging on what was left of the bench we were sitting on - bums had hacked away much of the wood to make fires with. We were soaring from the booze and blow and started talking mad shit. I asked him what his tag was and Albie laughed and said he wasn't a writer, but he used to be lookout for some of his boys who bombed. 'Yo, that's for kids dude', said Albie. I knew that, but I didn't care. I liked writing my name everywhere. I liked the vandalism of it. I was talking about my band, and anything else that had to do with me. Albie was patient, compliant in his ability to wait for the next hit. He listened to my stories, occasionally interjecting things like, 'You da man' and 'That's why you got it like that!' as I mentioned minor exploits.

At some point - we had long since abandoned the idea of going back to Blanche's - Albie asked me if I wanted to smoke any of the coke. We had put some into one of his Newports and we smoked that, but now he was talking about smoking base. I didn't really know about it, but Albie said he could cook it up easily, all we needed was some baking soda. I gave him ten dollars and he walked off towards Avenue B. I sat on the bench drinking my quart with my brain expanding in an effervescent carnival of ego and fantasy. A pretty black girl in curlers, with tight Lee jeans and an Adidas sweat top walked by. She was holding a small boom box playing LL Cool J's 'Radio'. I jumped up and started bouncing to the beat as I mouthed the lyrics. I was wearing Doc Marten boots, sta-press pants and a black bomber jacket. My hair was cut in a tight flat top. I said, 'What up baby?'

'Oh hell no' she said with a little laugh, and kept walking. I didn't care. I was invincible, indestructible and incurable.

When Albie came back with the works he wasn't alone. He had another kid with him who he introduced as Cano. Cano was fair skinned (thus his nickname) and light freckles dotted the cheeks under his piercing hazel eyes. His hair, like his eyebrows, was light brown and he kept it combed back neatly, with a little rat tail in the back. Small wrinkles clawed at the corners of his eyes and the creases by the sides of his mouth told me he was older than us, but he looked like the B Boys I had seen at the Fun House dancing The Jerry Lewis: Tight Lee jeans, blue Puma Clydes with fat white laces, a rayon button down shirt with a small chain and cross in front. Cano was a cooker, and Albie explained that he was nice with it.

I looked at Cano and told Albie there wasn't much left, which was true. I was down less than half the package. What time was it? I looked at my watch and it was four thirty. Damn...we left the bar at midnight. Albie flashed his lashes at me and said, 'Yo don't worry Cano is just gonna cook the rocks and take a few hits, he got some place to be later'. He was assuring me with those big brown eyes and I trusted him. I dumped half the bag into the small glass beaker and handed it to Cano, who grinned and added water from somewhere while he kept his Bic lighter going back and forth under it. The mixture started steaming and he slowly swirled it around as he gently added the baking soda and kept it moving around and around the flame below. Some yellowish blobs appeared in the water and they started to coagulate and form larger islands in the whirlpool created by his circular spinning. Then he pulled the lighter away and kept spinning the beaker around faster until it began to cool and the blobs became white chunks of pure coke and fell to the bottom.

Cano never looked up once while he was cooking, but now he raised his eyes to me and smiled. He was good at what he did; he wanted recognition. I was mesmerized. I had never seen it before so I winked nervously at him and gave him his props. I wanted the coke in my own hands, but he was running the show. He produced a napkin from his pocket and dumped the water into it, letting it run through the paper and collecting the four large rocks and a few lesser ones. He told me to open a dollar bill and I did. Then he scooped away the small rocks (his tariff apparently) and slid the four big ones into my folded twenty dollar bill.

Albie was excited, and he pulled out a glass stem and handed it to Cano. Cano put one of the small rocks into the carbon blackened end and put the lighter to it. Soon the short stem filled with thick coils of white smoke and he kept drawing it until it became less dense, and then all at once he pulled it down into his lungs. Holding it as long as he could, he finally dispelled the smoke, smiling as he exhaled. I couldn't take my eyes off the stem. I was watching Cano and Albie was watching the folded twenty in my hand. I quickly broke off a piece of the biggest rock and put it into the hot stem, filling the whole tube and packing it in. I was being greedy, and Albie smiled at me expectantly, knowing I wouldn't be able to smoke it all.

The first blast of freebase was like learning how to ride a bike, get high and jerk off all at the same time; pure pleasure, unimpinged by any fear or doubt. As I held the lighter to the bubbling white rock, it became yellow and melted into a pure oil while it filled the clear glass chamber with dense white smoke. As I watched it moving into my mouth and lungs, Albie told me to hit it slower, slower...let it cook. Before I pulled the pipe away from my lips I had filled my lungs past bursting and already the coke was smashing its way through my bloodstream to my brain. I handed Albie the stem as I tried to contain the sorcerous substance inside me, but it kept expanding and filling me with power and ecstasy - I was suddenly alone in the park, untouched by human trivialities, pain or worry. I was free. I exhaled finally and after a brief coughing fit I looked around at my surroundings. I saw Albie working the pipe, eyes bulging, flame and smoke coming through his nose, a glow around all. But I wasn't really there. I was still vibrating on a mountain top somewhere, and my ears were ringing with harmonic tones. My brain and body were in perfect synchronization. I noticed Cano saying something, but I didn't hear or care. That first feeling of euphoria and perfection was still buzzing through me like it would never stop.

And then I wanted another hit. And that's all I wanted for the next few hours until the coke ran out. We got rid of Cano quickly, and made our way down to my place on Ludlow Street. Inside the loft we put Boogie Down Productions on, and had 'The Bridge is Over' on auto-repeat.  We sat around the kitchen table smoking, drinking and were very animated,  but really there was only one thing we cared about - that glass stem. Finally when we had massaged the last resinous oil from the blackened pipe, I looked up and the sun was rising. I had a moment of hideous clarity: we were out of coke, out of beer, it was morning and I had spent almost all of my semester's financial aid money.

I quickly banished these unpleasant realities into another part of my soul and looked Albie square in the eyes. 'I have some more cash, but I really can't spend it...I need it for school'. Albie just looked at me with his loyal dog eyes and shrugged. He knew I was in for a pound.  I thought about the Modern Library edition of Les Miserables in my bedroom with three crisp hundred dollar notes between the pages. It was my mad money, and surely I had gone mad now even thinking about it, but I was undaunted. I looked at him and said, 'If I spend it you gotta pay me back yo'. He gave me the full combo; wide smile, full batted eyelashes and finally the wink.

'Yo money, you know I'll hit you back. As soon as I get my check I can hit you off with at least one fifty'. How did he know I had three hundred bucks stashed away? My mind dodged around the question and I found myself heading back to my bedroom.

Outside on the early morning streets I didn't feel so purposeful. It was chilly, and all I had on was a Fred Perry tennis shirt. People were going to work in overcoats and hats. The sun was blaring between buildings, casting long shadows on the pock marked roads and trash strewn sidewalks. The wind was blowing off the East River. We made our way across East Broadway, and down Rutgers Street to the projects. Albie knew where to go and I was along for the backup. Also it was my money and I still didn't trust him. As we crossed over into the Smith Houses, he started talking to the scrambler kids who were up and working just like the suits heading to the office. He kept introducing me to everyone he talked to: 'Yo this is my man Jimmy, he lives up on the Hill'. Everyone gave  me a pound and treated me respectfully. They knew I had the money.

The word was there was a lot of dope on the street but nobody selling coke. Then Albie saw someone he knew well and whistled across the street. We crossed over and started talking to a skinny kid with sunglasses on and fucked up teeth. His mouth looked like a bear trap, all jagged edges and angles. They were brown and yellow, and I wanted to look away but I couldn't. Hector was frail and skittish, and he was the first person who didn't shake my hand. He kept looking around - for the cops I assumed - and then would alternately scan the sidewalk like he had dropped something. Albie asked him if there was any coke around the way, and Hector said, 'Nah, you gotta go up to Delancey Street. But them niggas over by Clinton Street got rocks. Nice chubbies. Yo Albie let me hold five dollars.'

We walked away as Hector continued his paranoid scanning of the sidewalk, and Albie said, 'Yo these kids are selling crack down here, we can get twenty dollar pieces'. I had seen news stories about how crack was a plague tearing through the ghetto. How it was cheap and effective, but left you jonesing for more. How it was making the crime rate soar. I said, 'Let's check it out yo!'

As we approached the houses on Clinton and Cherry Streets, I noticed a lot more kids standing around. The block was hot: there were crews on corners and benches smoking and drinking, younger kids rolling by on low bicycles, their exhalations visible in the chilly post dawn air, and people waiting in doorways. Everyone looked bright eyed and the air of anticipation was heavy. A young kid on a bike rolled by slowly, looking at me sideways and I didn't like it. Albie told me to be cool, he knew people down this way. Then some kids across the street started walking towards us and I tensed up. I was cold, and I wanted to get back to the cocoon of my loft. I wanted a beer.  As the young crew came at us Albie asked the leader, a black kid with a sheepskin  coat and Cazal frame glasses, for a cigarette. The kid looked at him and laughed and I sunk down into my boots a little. Then Albie said, 'Yo what's funny? I'm just lookin' for my people out here...you seen Tony Tee?'

Now the kid changed his stance and adjusted his cigarette to the other side of his mouth. He looked down at his Adidas shell toes and tried to play it off like he wasn't surprised. Behind him, the other three were all looking at me and I just stood, shivering and believing in Albie. The black kid now looked up and said, 'Tee was by here last night, but I ain't seen him out today'. It was squashed now, they knew Albie was down , or even if he was bluffing it wasn't worth risking. Now Albie took charge.

'Who got rocks? My man needs something.' But the kid frowned and said they were all waiting. Then he said there was an old dude selling chubbies over on Cherry Street, and Albie asked, 'What you mean an old dude?' And the black kid said there was an old Jewish dude in an overcoat selling cracks in front of the Cherry Street houses. We both looked at each other, and then back at the kid with the Cazals. He shrugged, and said, 'Yo I guess he just tryin' to make money.'

So we walked over to Cherry Street and sure enough, there was an older Hasidic looking man with a fedora and heavy grey overcoat just standing on the sidewalk in front of a bench. He was by himself and there were only a few people around on the street. We walked up and I thought this must be a joke, but then he eyed us down with a stern look and said in a deep gravelly voice, 'Vhat you vant?' just like the hawkers on Orchard Street, and I thought This is crazy! But my desire to get high and get off the street and back inside were much stronger than any incredulity. Albie asked him if he had rocks, and he answered, 'Tens and twenties...now vhat you vhant'.

We bought five chubbies off the old guy, and I had a sinking feeling we'd be back again before it was over. I kept looking at him and he kept looking at the money and the small plastic vials, strictly business. Albie handed me the vials and I stuffed them into my pants as we walked quickly up Madison Street towards my place. I started shaking my head.

'Yo, oldhead Jewish cuz is outside slinging rocks?' I asked. 'What the fuck!'

Albie smiled and said, 'Yo, like my man said, he just tryin' to get paid too.'

We moved along in the slipstream of crackheads, junkies, hoes, scramblers and decent people with jobs heading the subway for work. The sun was above the ugly, brutal brick projects now and it warmed my back as we darted into a bodega for a six pack and some Newports. I still had a few bucks in my pocket and the day was young.

Heat

  There was an English kid named Sharkey who hung around at the Holiday Cocktail Lounge on St. Marks Place. He was a skinny kid with bad skin, just out of his teens and had a crooked face. His dirty blond hair was short in the Mod style, he wore a pork pie hat and was into Reggae and 2-Tone. Sharkey chain smoked and looked unhealthy, but be had mischief in his eyes and a quick sense of humor. I kept a close eye on Sharkey because he had cool clothes, and it was through him that I discovered Doc Martens, Fred Perry and Harrington jackets.

  My crew met nightly on the stoop of an abandoned building next to the Holiday; a local Ukrainian dive that had suddenly become a gentrified hot spot. We drank quarts on the stoop because none of us had any money, but eventually we would make our way inside the bar to see who we could hustle for drinks. The stoop was usually inhabited by a mix of Mods, Rudies and sometimes Reggae or hardcore Skinheads. On the other side of the Holiday's bent, weathered red awning were stoops that were home to Hardcore Punks, Psycho Billy freaks and Goths. But the abandoned building was ours, and we claimed it on a nightly basis.

  The night that Sharkey found the choo choo I had come out early and was enjoying the entirety of a cold beer on a hot summer's night. I was alone on the stoop and it was around ten o'clock. I had been crashing at a friend's place on Thirteenth Street, and the apartment was crowded so I was out early. I was working for a messenger company on Union Square, and had just been paid the grand total of fifty bucks for the week. It was a shitty job because I didn't have a bike. But I had money in my pocket, and as I sat there I was vaguely calculating that I could buy forty three quarts of beer, if I went across First Avenue to the new Korean deli on Ninth Street.

  I was wondering where my boys were, and just then a kid named Dmitry from the neighborhood walked by. Dmitry was fast talking, diminutive and sleek looking like an otter dressed in black, and he often had good speed on him. He was holding, and since I had a few bucks I bought four black beauties for a dollar each. Wanting to get things going, I ate one immediately and took a long pull from the foamy quart, suddenly energized by the limitless night. I laughed out loud from happiness; I had money, beer, and now drugs - but where the fuck was everyone? I decided to walk back over to Ninth Street for another quart from the Korean as I anxiously awaited the chemical reaction. The anticipation was always the best part.

  Back at the stoop I saw that Sharkey was there with Bebo, who was from Queens, had sleepy brown eyes behind coke bottle glasses and shoulder length dread locks. Bebo was Sharkey's roommate, and they were fairly inseparable. He played bass in a synth band that I didn't care much for, but Bebo was a Rude Boy at heart. The two of them were both wearing rolled up Levi's with eight hole Doc Martens boots with red laces. Sharkey was wearing a maroon Fred Perry shirt and his pork pie hat. Bebo had on a Specials tee shirt that was clinging to his sweaty torso, and there was moisture fogging the inside of his thick glasses. They were smoking a spliff, looking idly in both directions as they took their hits.

  I asked Bebo if anyone was around and he said, 'Nah man, the shit is like definiteleee dead', and he snapped his fingers in conclusion. He drew the word out so that it made the emphasis much stronger on 'dead'. It was a funny tic of his, and I often mimicked it for amusement. Sharkey said there was a house party on Avenue A for girl's birthday and that sounded good to me; there was always the potential for free beer at a house party. Then he mentioned that it was Lane's girlfriend and Bebo and I both groaned. Lane was an Australian kid who passed himself off as being English, not an uncommon phenomenon in the East Village. With the rise of UK New Wave music came many opportunities for fakers and posers. You could get laid off a halfway decent British accent.

  Nobody was around and it was already pushing midnight, so we decided to walk over to Avenue A and Tenth Street, where the party was. By now the hair on the back of my neck was tingling with nervous electric energy from the speed. I gave Sharkey and Bebo each a black beauty, and as we passed Ninth Street we heard yelling and then a bottle smash. Looking up towards First Avenue we saw a crew of Puerto Rican kids running in our direction, so we stopped by the bar on the corner. There were about five of them and they were all wearing shorts, high socks and sneakers; wife beaters or bare chested. They were running fast, and once they got across Avenue A and hit the park they scattered in different directions. I figured they must have stuck somebody up, and sure enough a few seconds later we saw three guys running after them. It must have been over drugs because the guys chasing them looked like young junkies. As they ran towards us one of them, a white kid with a Brooklyn Italian look (hair parted in the middle, small mustache, Pumas) said, 'Where did those fuckin' Ricans go?' But we just shrugged. Then I heard a police siren and I noticed a black kid with them move over to a banged up garbage can in front the next building and quickly put something inside it. It was a quick little movement, but both Sharkey and I caught it. Then the other Italian guy said, 'They went in the fuckin' park!' and the three of them ran across the street.

  It was an everyday occurrence around Tompkins Square Park. Kids coming in from the boroughs or Jersey to cop drugs got beat all the time. In this case the black kid was probably brokering the deal and they decided to beat him too. They may have even known him. Anyway, the main thing was that they would be running around in Alphabet City for a while and Sharkey looked at me and we both started walking towards the garbage can. I lifted the comically battered metal lid, and Sharkey picked up a small brown paper bag, felt its weight and quickly slid it into the front of his jeans. We started walking back towards the park, but then realized the dude might be coming back for it so we turned and ran up the street towards First Avenue. When we got to the corner I asked Sharkey what was in the bag - assuming it was drugs. But then a cop car cruised past and chirped us so we quickly moved up the Avenue. Sharkey had a strange grin on his face.

  We finally circled back around and felt better once we were buzzed into the tenement building where the party was. In the back of the dingy green tiled hallway, beneath the stairs Sharkey pulled the bag out and opened it. It was a .22 caliber 'choo choo' automatic pistol. Eyes wide, we looked at each other. 'I bet we can get at least a hundred bucks for it', said Sharkey. Bebo laughed, but he didn't know either.

  'Three way split', I said, and then I realized that Sharkey had stuffed it down his pants and it was loaded. Now as he handed it to me I saw where the bullets went, and felt it's cool, compact weight in my hand. I had never held a gun before.

The Throw Down

Bruce Balfour was a man of ill repute, and it was mainly for this reason that I liked him. He was floating around Manhattan after being kicked out of NYU, and when I reconnected with him randomly on St. Mark's Place he told me he was living with a High School girl on the Upper East Side. They were living in a condo that her parents were trying to sell, and by that time they had sold almost all the furniture.

His girl friend Marnia was oddly walking behind him, and when she caught up I noticed she was mixed, and had inherited all of her mother's African features - wide nose, full lips and an unruly bonnet of frizzy bronze hair that she fought with a comb - while retaining her white father's pale ochre skin tone. She also had freckles, which combined with her other features created a riot of earth tones. She made an instant impression, not necessarily good. Her saving grace was a pair of wide green eyes, not unlike an Egyptian lion. Marnia was surprisingly sassy for a High School dropout, even if it was Hunter High School she had dropped out of. For the most part she held her own with Bruce, and he was no dummy. She was tall, clever, and knew she had a few trump cards in her hand, most importantly the apartment they were squatting in.

  I bumped into Bruce on a sunny, false Spring day in March. It was still chilly, and the sky made you sad as the grey and white clouds skitted around in the wind. I was walking across Third Avenue towards Astor Place in the direction of a few record shops I wanted to check out when I noticed him coming towards me. I hadn't seen him for a while, and he looked paler and thinner (which had the effect of making him look taller) and he moved with a stiff-legged, purposeful gait. His oddly rag-tag clothes struck me as strange since he had always been something of a clothes horse at NYU - he was a dancer, in the Drama department, and was never shy to wear flamboyant colors or even Capezios on a night out drinking. But now, as he approached me I saw that he was wearing a black turtle neck under a jean jacket, with a blue suit jacket on top. His jeans were pre-washed horrors, and too tight for him. On his feet were a pair of scuffed up tan brogues, and his socks were green. No amount of New Wave sensibility could explain away such a hodgepodge ensemble.

  I eyed him down as he came toward me, thinking I might just keep going, but then he saw me and his thin feral face cracked into a smile as he squinted through the smoke from the cigarette clamped between his lips. Veering my way, we met in the middle of the Avenue and we exchanged hand slaps.

  'Dude...what are you doing right now'? He asked. It was eleven in the morning and I had woken up at some girl's place on Eldridge Street and was still in last night's clothes. Still I looked better than him.

  'I'm heading over to Rubin to see if I can still eat' I lied. Bruce had once lived in Rubin Hall, and a small cloud passed over him as he narrowed his gleaming little eyes at me. I asked him where he was going - heading East so early in the day.

  'Throw down', he said, grinning. 'You down'?

  Now, I hadn't seen this guy since at least August, when we were all hanging out at the Park Inn on Avenue A and skin popping dope. At that time Bruce was still a cocky, handsome guy who pulled a lot of girls. The guy I was looking at now was almost unrecognizable.

  It was a seamy August night, and the city's garbage stunk at every corner. The gutters fumed, and rats were teeming through the chunky black garbage bags with impunity. The city was sweating. Bruce was wearing a pair of old school chinos, white Converse All-Stars and a ribbed cotton wife beater. He looked like a character out of South Pacific, and I'm sure he was aware of that. He sauntered into the Park Inn with Amos Cohen and immediately told me they were gonna throw down. I was in. I had been drinking on my tab, but I borrowed twenty bucks from Ade the bartender and was good to go.

  At that time we still were getting beat sometimes when we copped. The last time I had gotten 10 bags and was walking back along 7th Street between B and C when a crew of Puerto Rican kids rolled up on me with two by fours and knives. They didn't have a gun, and were just teenagers, but there were six of them. I had put half the bags in my shirt pocket and half in my pants, but as I handed them the five from my pants one of them, a red haired kid with Cazelle frames patted down my shirt and they got it all. 'I should fuck you up just for trying to be slick', He said. But they had what they wanted, and I walked away. Half the time they were working with the dealers anyway.

  I didn't want to get beat again, so we started walking through Tompkins Square Park looking for a junkie to go cop for us. This was never hard to do, but then again you had to worry if the junkie would come back with your shit. Of course you had to buy him or her a bag for their trouble. We had circled the park once already and hadn't seen any likely candidates. I was about to go myself (I always went...some fucked up part of me enjoyed it) when Bruce suddenly said, 'Yo, that's Charles 'Ray Ray' Jones'!

  Who, we asked?

  'Man, that dude was the drummer in DeFunkt! He also played with James White and the Blacks'. Oh yeah...I remembered now. I saw him once at the Peppermint Lounge with Defunkt, and he had a crazy drum set, more like a percussionist really, and he was killing it.

  Bruce walked over to him and said, 'You're Charles 'Ray Ray' Jones'. It was very Bruce to call him 'Charles 'Ray Ray' Jones' like it was the back of an album. I felt embarrassed, but Ray Ray didn't seem to mind. He was sleight in stature, maybe five foot six or seven, and had ratty little dreads, but what you noticed right away was his arms - they were muscular, sinewy and perfectly toned. His small face was shiny and his sleepy eyes were kind looking; he had a small moustache. He smiled widely at the recognition, and I could tell he was a nice guy. Bruce bigged him up a bit more, and we made small talk, but everyone knew why we were talking and I could see that Ray Ray was high. Finally I said, 'So what's open tonight'?

  A lotta shit was open, said Ray Ray, but the best shit going down was a spot on Avenue B and 9th street called 'Third World'. I had copped inside Third World before, and it was known to be legit. The problem was outside. So Ray Ray agreed to go score for us and we waited by the chess tables at the south east corner of the park. I went to the bodega for a quart of beer, and it was so hot that by the time I returned to the park the paper bag was soaked through. The cold Budweiser felt good in the back of my throat as I guzzled it down and passed it to Amos, who wasn't a big drinker but was boiling. Bruce kept up a chattering narrative about meeting 'Charles 'Ray Ray' Jones' and chain smoked cigarettes; we were all in a pre-scoring nervous thrall. After a few minutes which seemed like an hour Ray Ray came back and, smiling asked us if we had works. We didn't. He did. I asked where should we go to get high and he said, right here.

  Damn, shooting up in the park...that was some junkie shit. But Ray Ray was in charge, and he started cooking up the first bag straight away. He was nimble with the works, and I remember thinking 'This dude is a junkie'. His fingers were slim and had wide, elongated tips with pink perfect nails. I couldn't stop looking at them as he dumped the powder into a black broken spoon he had on him, and then added water he got from the drinking fountain. All around us people were moving around - running, walking quickly, shouting, whistling - all part of the universe of getting high. A lookout was yelling 'Bajando'! Someone answered 'Tanto bien'! It's all good! A shirtless guy walked past us wearing cutoff jeans shorts with the pockets hanging out, he had long black hair in a ponytail, sunglasses and was pushing along a small pink girl's bicycle. 'Yo, five bucks gets the bike fellas', he said. 'Who needs wheels'?

  Ray Ray had sucked the dope back up into the syringe with his long brown fingers, and I wanted to see him shoot up. He looked up with his gentlemanly air and said, 'who's first'? The three of us looked at each other and before anyone could speak I said 'That would be me'!

  'Alright my man', he said. He was so cool. I loved how he did it. I loved the park, and the junkies and the scrambler kids and the punks, the skinheads, rockers, rude boys and homeboys. I loved it all. I moved closer to him as he sat there at the chess table holding the loaded syringe before me smiling. I started to unbuckle my pants and take them down, ready for the hit. 

  'Man, put your damn pants on'! Said Ray Ray. I had them halfway down my ass and he was no longer smiling. I looked at the others and they were silent. My face was burning. I did as he said, and pulled them back up.

  'Come here, gimme your arm', he commanded. I sat down at the table and started to roll my sleeve up automatically. I placed my arm out on the broken concrete table and flexed it a few times (where did that come from?). Ray Ray held my forearm in his ET fingers, and finding the vein pushed the needle in effortlessly, pulling the stopper back out slightly until I saw my own blood come back up and mix with the clear liquid, a mini lava lamp in the semi-light of the park. Then he pushed the mixture back into my vein and before I could reflect on my first real shot it was already expanding through my body and I coughed. He pulled the needle out and smiled at me with his small, handsome face. The other two were wide-eyed, I was gone.

  I only shot dope a few more times that summer. I was more of a blow and speed guy. I liked the stimulants. I got tired of shooting up and just sitting around nodding, as if that was something to do. I always wanted to go out to the Holiday or Park Inn after getting high, but the others just wanted to sit around and listen to music and nod. So I fell off, and that's why I hadn't seen Bruce Balfour in months.

  'Throw down' he said to me, standing there in the middle of Second Avenue on that breezy March day with his seventeen year old girlfriend. I looked at his beady demon eyes and hard edged grin. I thought about it. I wondered where we might go after we got high, but couldn't come up with any options I liked. I looked at his clown outfit and realized he was wearing his girlfriend's jeans. I told him I had to get over to Fifth Avenue and he said no problem. A junkie doesn't give a shit about you.  

Disco Dan

It was Dan Fine who first got us into skin popping. Dan was a year or two older, a pre-Law student at NYU, tall, boyishly handsome, and had his own apartment in an expensive co-op on Bleecker Street. A couple of my boys that lived in Rubin Hall on Fifth Avenue Knew him. I would often hang out there, and I was known to the guards and dining hall staff, so I could usually eat free there, telling them I'd left my ID upstairs.

Dan used to sometimes eat at Rubin Hall, and that's where I met him. He was from Riverdale, an only child and had a sense of humor; cool with everyone in a political way. But there was no depth to it. I liked him because he always had cash on him, and he was quick to spring for Space Invaders or pool games in the lounge. But whenever we went out to St. Mark's Place to drink and hang out he disappeared.

Dan was into photography, and had a studio in midtown that he shared with a couple of artists. He used to take college girls there to do  'modeling' shoots. This impressed me greatly. He did well with chicks, and once when we lived in the same apartment building he appeared at my door with an urgent grin on his face, asking if I had any olive oil in the house. Slouching timidly behind him was a disheveled, smokey-eyed brunette I recognized from the dorm. 

One day I was about to go find something to eat when he knocked at my door and told me to come over to his place. But first he asked me if I had any money. I had just been paid from my job at a small record label and actually had cash on me, so I followed him down the hall. He was with Amos Cohen and another guy named Bruce, who had dropped out or been kicked out of NYU and who I knew to be trouble. I was happy to see him, and the three of them had an imminent air about them.

As I entered his dimly lit apartment, Bruce who was always impatient and not one to mince words chortled, 'Yo, we're gonna throw down...you down?' He had beady little animal eyes with pale bushy eyebrows, and as he squinted at me he looked like a demon. I looked at the other two for some kind of explanation, and they both smiled like Cheshire cats. Refusing to not know what it meant, I said, 'You know me...always down!'

This brought nervous chuckling from all three, as Dan pulled three small white packets from his tight leather jacket and put them on the kitchen table. At first I thought it was blow, but the bags were too small, and didn't look right. 
Heroin? 
My mind caromed in a few directions at once: The evils of junk, repeatedly impressed upon me since Middle School; The addicts on the Lower East Side defying gravity with their stuporous 'junkie lean'; Needles, which had always made me squeamish. I picked one up, it was thin and light; it felt exciting. A smudged red stamp on the bag read 'Menudo'.

'You guys are shooting dope?' I asked. I looked at Dan. He smiled sheepishly. There was something reassuring in his deep set brown eyes, he was such a nice looking boy.

'Just skin popping', he said. 'It's not as bad as mainlining...mainlining is for junkies'.

I was thrown, not so much that they were doing this, but that they had been doing it and I didn't know. Dan took a small pen knife and slit the tape that sealed the packet of dope, then opened it carefully, letting the white powder land into a spoon I hadn't noticed before. It just materialized out of his sleeve it seemed. 

'So you down or what?' He asked rhetorically.

'I'm down yo. Down, down down!' I said, rocking heel to toe in my chunky Doc Marten boots and giving Bruce a slap on the back. He scowled his squirrel eyes at me, a world of mischief lurking behind them.

I watched as Dan produced a thin white syringe with a blue cap. He removed the cap and dipped the needle into a glass of water, sucking the liquid up and then squirting it back out. The ritual was time honored, like a tea ceremony, and he knew the tools, customs and etiquette...but how? Then he squirted the amount of half the syringe onto the dope and started to cook the clear liquid by running a BIC lighter back and forth slowly under the spoon, producing a dense black carbon smoke that came roiling up as the mixture started to bubble. He took a small piece of filter from one of his Marlboros and dropped it into the cooling liquid. Placing the needle into the filter, he sucked the dope back into the syringe and held it, needle up, while tapping it with his right finger to get any bubbles out. I made mental notes the whole time.

With syringe in hand, Dan looked at me and said, 'Twenty bucks'. I quickly took a twenty out of my pocket (a quarter of my weekly wages) and tossed it on the table. Smiling, he then told me to take my pants down.

Say what?

The others started laughing, and Dan explained that my back side was the best place to skin pop, as it had the most flesh. It felt weird, but I did what I was told - hooked before I even took a shot. With my Sta-Press pants bunched around my knees, I lifted up the tails of my oxford shirt and looked on, completely absorbed as Dan slid the needle into my flesh with a small jab, and then pushed the heroin into my ass.

I felt nothing. My instinct was to just act like a junkie. I closed my eyes and slowly started to buckle my pants up. Then I opened my eyes and looked at them. Dan was already preparing the next shot, but the other two were watching me. I had a moment of intense sadness and I thought maybe I got beat (exactly what they were wondering) when suddenly the warmest sensation I ever felt came over my body, rushed through my head and settled in the back of my throat. I coughed, and then they started laughing. The dope was good.

Rock Box

I met Amos Cohen through another Jewish kid named Dan Fine, who went to NYU with a couple of my boys and later became a junkie. Amos needed someone to help pay the rent on his Aunt’s rent control apartment in Chelsea and I needed a place, so I moved in. I basically slept in the kitchen; on a mattress in a small hallway where a dining room table would have gone. It was a studio apartment, and Amos had the other room to himself. There was a cramped, rust colored bathroom between us. The place was dingy, peeling and hadn’t been painted in twenty years, but the rent was only two hundred dollars a month and was in striking distance of NYU and the East Village, so it had its upside.
Another reason we connected was we were both going to Hunter College. The idea was that we would go to school, take the train together and share the place like a young collegiate Odd Couple. But I soon realized that school was more or less a ploy for Amos to get financial aid and grants. He had a natural aversion to work, and spent most of his waking hours idly trying to figure out how to do as little of it as possible and still live. There was a cat named Skeezer in the apartment and I often wondered how he stayed alive. I would buy him small packets of cat food when I was down at the deli buying beer, or coming home with cold sesame noodles from the Chinese on the corner, but there didn’t seem to be any real method. I was awoken by the sound of grating metal one morning with a deep hangover to see Amos cooking scrambled eggs a few feet away from me in the kitchen. He dumped the eggs on a plate and then scooped out some more into the cat’s bowl and tossed the pan into the stagnant pile in the sink. Cocking my head I asked, ‘He eats eggs?’
‘The cat eats when I eat’ was Amos’ reply.
Across 22nd Street there was a small loft building, and on the top floor was a family of artists with two teenage daughters; a blonde and a brunette. The blonde girl was near perfection to my beery, twenty year old eyes – a lithe and mythical creature that I only caught glimpses of through the dirty twisted blinds in Amos’ room. At random moments while watching the battered black and white TV I would notice a movement, a sensation really - like the sonar of a deer. I would spring up by the side of the window, quickly hitting the lights if it was night, hoping to see her prancing around the loft in a leotard, or if I was lucky, her underwear.
One afternoon I was taking a shower when I looked out of the tiny bathroom window to see her laying out a cot on the roof. It was a shimmering hot summer’s day and she was setting up to sunbathe. Cat-like, I crouched down in the splashing water, patiently awaiting her next move. She squirmed out of a pair of denim hip huggers, and almost in the same motion pulled off her slinky punk rock T-shirt, and revealed a small, perfect white bikini. Sitting down on the cot, she spread her long legs to either side while she rubbed oil on her shins and inner thighs. Then she looked around surreptitiously, and with a flippant wave of her shoulder length straw blonde locks, unsnapped the back of her bikini and lay back to sunbathe topless. Gulping, and moving closer to the window without surrendering my discreet angle, I noticed with feral excitement the adolescent perfection of her pert, tawny little breasts - topped obscenely with large puckered brown nipples that resembled chocolate covered strawberries.
Before long she was wiping away small rivulets of sweat that were spilling over from her belly button and down into the hem of her bikini bottom. All that sweat and cocoa butter - that bitches brew - must have made her swoon, and soon she turned her head slightly to one side (my side) and began to trace her tan line with a slender, multi-ringed finger. The shower had run cool now, but I kept it on in case anyone came home. I leered as she sent an exploratory fingertip to the white nylon tuft between her long bronzy legs; letting one slip off the side of the day bed while the other lay straight. Moving the elastic material to one side she began to massage herself, and bent one leg up as the other tensed and braced, her foot arched against the black tar roof. Heat waves rose visibly from under her cot, and she must have been baking. Slowly the gyrating motions of her fingers gained momentum and pace, finally moving in and out of her silken snatch in deft little motions until the lower leg shot out straight and she arched her back luxuriously…letting everything come down at the same time, tugging her drenched bikini bottom back into place.
I had long since ejaculated and was essentially sharing in the afterglow with her - my mystery muse - when I heard the click of Amos' key in the front door. There was another voice too. A female voice. As I listened, trying to make out who was with him, suddenly the bathroom door opened and there was Amos with his asymmetrical curly brown hair and a crooked grin, holding out his palm to me with six plasticine envelopes, each stamped 'Rock Box'. I thought, what time is it? is there some acceptable time, like five o'clock for a drink, when it's acceptable to snort heroin? Reaching for the dingy, mildew laden towel we shared, I shooed him out of the bathroom with a look of surprise, disgust and glee...this day was just getting started.

BOLLYWOOD IN MUNICH | Jivamukti Yoga

BOLLYWOOD IN MUNICH | Jivamukti Yoga

The Skin I'm In

I just found this (very) short story I wrote last year...

My body has turned against me; it has revolted. I recently decided to do something about this expanding Pal O’mine that nestles between my chest and belt buckle, and what I decided to do was go jogging. Bad idea. My middle aged legs were no match for my teenager's memory, but nonetheless after a bit of cursory stretching I headed out into the park across from my new apartment, that has been silently chiding me since I moved in. ‘Run’ it has been whispering to me…’Run like it’s 1980’. The damp Shanghai breeze implores, ‘Fly maaaaaaan…’
But I didn’t feel like flying. As I waited for the elevator in my jogging gear I felt laden, over burdened. I decided to crack off a few jumping jacks, and by about twenty five I was winded and felt a twang in my left calf. Intrepidly I plowed on; fifty, fifty one, fifty two…thank god the elevator arrived. I was sweating. Well, no need to overdo the warm-ups.
Outside in the false Spring weather, I walked in large stretchy steps towards the building’s inscrutable watchman, who just looked at me blankly like they always do. At the last possible moment we both muttered ‘Ni hao’, smiled, and felt a little better about our relationship (I do anyway). Since he had never seen me do anything remotely athletic, on this day he must have been a bit puzzled as to why I was rocking a pair of brand new brown and silver New Balance sneakers, tight white track pants (where did I get them anyway?) and a stylish blue and orange Kappa hoodie. I was dressed for exercise alright, China style.
As I crossed Chongqing Lu and the massive, many tentacled highway above I started to run in place and kicked my legs out playfully, like a prize fighter training for a big match. I felt like Ali in Zimbabwe, or Rocky getting ready to run up the steps in Philly. Then I felt that twang again in my left calf. Reaching the park I gave the left leg another little stretch, and off I went; not running fast, but certainly quickly enough to easily pass the elderly strollers and backwards walking qi gongers, who it seemed, gave me approving looks as I swished by.
Breathing in the icy wet Shanghai air, my breathing became burdened as I picked up the pace, leaving great crystalline clouds in my wake. I was on my third lap around the little park and my lungs felt like they were about to go on strike; my heart was a pounding and I suddenly remembered the other part of playing sports when I was younger: I’d always hated running. Doggedly I ran on, picking up the pace. My left calf was twanging again.
There was one other guy who was jogging in the park, who was maybe in his mid-fifties and wearing street clothes, a ratty old pair of Chinese Warrior sneakers, and impossibly, a faded black Metallica cap. He was pacing himself and going very slowly, almost walking. The first time I passed I gave him a slightly deferential sideways glance, since after all, he was an old man and I was young, and full of vigor. I thought I noticed the slightest soupcon of a smile pass over his lips, and why not? I was a picture of hale (and stylish) athleticism.
Now as I came up behind him again at an accelerated speed I noticed that the path was in fact slightly slick, and I wondered at his safety. His sneakers were more like slippers, and the soles looked very worn and smooth compared with my own waffle treads which were built to grip the road. Huffing and puffing I came abreast of him and we exchanged small nods with each other. Then I came down on my left leg and felt a stabbing, searing pain shoot through my calf as the muscle seized and my leg gave way; I tumbled down to the icy pathway, skidding the last few feet on the ass of my white nylon jogging pants. Clutching my throbbing leg, I looked up just in time to see the old man shuffling past me in his thrift store outfit, with the faintest smile on his face. He didn’t stop.