“They serving!” I heard someone yell outside. Because there were only those sanitary, “deodorizing” blow driers, I gently patted my face dry with the coarse toilet paper.
Outside the bathroom, a network of fluorescent lights revealed a large barracks-like room packed with men, mainly black and old. Many of the beds were already empty I took a sheet off one and wrapped it around my naked body. Then I followed the others out to the stairwell. There was a long motionless line along the right banister. I got on the end of the line and waited, trying to hold that filthy sheet around me, toga style. It kept slipping off. Several times, I had to move up a step because the big guys were cutting in down in the front. Finally the line started moving, one step every minute or so.
“There’s my main man.”
“Shake my hand, Ernie.”
“Go get ’em Ern.”
“Hey Ernie, is you still datin’ dat Loni Anderson girl?”
A fat middle-aged guy with apple cheeks, cauliflower ears, and a potato nose wore a fresh T-shirt and a white apron, and as he moseyed up along the procession of broken and dilapidated men, each one either offered a hand or a comment. I held the banister tight in one hand and the sheet tight in the other, and waited for Ernie.
“Where the hell are my clothes?”
“Well, would you looky here,” Ernie said in a loud and humiliating volume and added, “New Jersey’s awake.”
“Huh?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“This ain’t Saint Patty’s day and you ain’t at McSorley’s. I’m talking about how on every major weekend the cops dump me with you drunken Jersey boys. Do me a favor when you get home and tell your friends that before they pass out here, the least they can do is wear an ID tag. Even luggage has that much. Bed space is a hot commodity in these parts.”
“Hold on.” He talked too fast for my shaky comprehension.
“You hold on. When things calm down you can call Mommie and Daddy in my office—collect.”
“No one I know would accept the charges,” I replied drunkenly but he didn’t seem to hear. He just kept walking away down the stairs, and I stood there holding the banister.
Finally I could see the front of the line moving down the stairs. The men were disappearing into a doorway. When I went through the doorway, I first picked up a tray, then a bowl, mug, spoon, and napkin. Next, someone in white put a small carton of milk on the tray, and the next guy in white put a full ladle of oatmeal in the bowl, and another guy put an orange on the tray. The last guy filled the mug with coffee. Then I took a seat. There was no exchange of words. I had trouble doing this while holding the sheet around me. Men ate everything completely, but due to my sickness, I could only eat one or two bites of the oatmeal.
“You want the orange?” someone asked me, I shook my head no.
“Geez, let him have a chance to finish.” Big Ernie appeared behind me.
“Da man say he didn’t wan it.”
“You can hold on to the orange until you get hungry” Ernie said to me.
“I got nowhere to put it,” I replied, referring to my nakedness.
“Follow me, I guess it’s time for that collect call.”
“I got no one to call.”
“What d’you mean?”
“I mean this is it.” Ernie looked to the floor and was quiet for a moment. “You telling me you have no family?”
“Right.”
“How ’bout friends?” I shook my head no. “You must be at least twenty-five.”
“Twenty-three,” I corrected.
“You seem like an intelligent, well-mannered white boy. Tell me how an intelligent white boy can live twenty-three years without a single friend? There must be someone.”
“I ain’t from here. I used to have friends, a lot of them. But…” My toga slipped, I caught it and tightened it around me again. He looked at me with pity and waved for me to follow. Leading me back up the stairs, he quickly took me to a dark and windowless side room. There, he nipped on a light revealing a mountain of old clothing.
“This is kinda the lost and found.” He then paused and smiled and added, “Actually, it’s more like the live and die. Take what you need. Winter ain’t over yet.”
“I know you don’t have to do this. Thank you.”
“If I let you go out like that,” he said, “I’ll have mini-cam crews down here doing their breaking story about how we set our boys naked to the streets.”
He then left and I rummaged through the pile of old clothes, mainly rags. They were filthy and stinky and full of holes and fleas. I dressed in layers. The cleanest undergarment that I could locate was a pair of itchy wool plaid pants that had the seams sliced open. I put these on. Over them, I pulled on a pair of army khakis with a big shit-resembling tar stain over the ass. There were no finds in that pile. For an undershirt, I found a paint-speckled T-shirt that read, “I Survived The 1980 Transit Strike.” Over that, I used a petroleum-based, fluorescent red short-sleeved shirt that felt carcinogenic. Over that, I put on first a sweater, then a jacket, then an overcoat. On my head, I placed a beanie. There were only two pairs of shoes that didn’t have serious ruptures in them; a pair of hiking boots that smelled like something had died in them, and a clownishly floppy pair of white tennis shoes. There were no socks.
I left the sheet and walked back out to the auditorium. Ernie was nowhere to be seen. Some of the guys were filing out in small groups. Ernie had a point; there had to be someone out there. I had to sit awhile. Ever since that beating, my energy was depleted easily.
“Nice wardrobe.” Ernie suddenly appeared.
“I’m sure I’ll be laughing about it tonight and I’ll make sure you’re well compensated for your generosity.”
“Are you going to be all right?”
“Oh sure, I must have someone out there. I mean, this is too absurd.”
“Well, we’re here if you need us.”
“Thanks for last night, but there’s no way I would’ve come in here of my own volition. I mean, my being here is an accident. I’m no…you know.” He nodded and departed, so I followed a gob of men leaving. Out front, some men headed east, and some west, but most just hung out front. I walked over to the Bowery. Most of the guys were just standing around a big oil barrel with a fire in it. Some of the more industrious ones were washing the windshields of cars that had been trapped by the red light. I used to see them from inside cars and think they brought it on to themselves, and they probably did but now it didn’t make a difference. I went over to the fire and warmed my hands with the group. I looked at their faces: idiots, criminals, retards, schizophrenics, paranoids, rejects, fuck-ups, broken-down failures. Alone, once children, never asked to be put on this earth, they ended up as jurors. Their lives were the verdict: the system, man, something had failed.
Heated, I walked away from the barrel and started walking west on Third as it turned into Great Jones. I passed the Bowery, passed Lafayette Street. On Broadway I vaguely recognized the restaurant on the corner with the big clean windows filled with yuppies, and then I remembered. I had eaten there with Ternevsky. It was Caramba.
Drifting up Broadway, past the youth industry, complete with all the latest fashion outposts, I was a ghost. I tried to look into eyes, but if anyone cast a fearful glance at me it was only so that they’d be sure they were avoiding me. I was no longer a member of the human club. But I had to get back in. I kept reassuring myself that if I thought hard enough I could find a solution. But I was working under a ruptured brain. Thoughts braced against the incomprehensible, straining to pick up a weight just an ounce too heavy for my thought muscles.
There had to be a way out. I had undaunting faith that by tonight I would be carefully bathed and then nestled away in a warm bed, a full meal, full in stomach. Someone would be comforting me.
When the dust settled, the most obvious choice emerged—Sarah. The circle seemed complete. She was the only possible person I could think of. A corner pay
phone. I made a collect call.
I could hear her phone ringing and ringing until the operator finally asked me to call back later. I called another operator and again it rang repeatedly, and again the operator said call back. The operators were obviously screwing things up. I hung up and marched over to her apartment. When I finally found her building, I kept my finger on the door bell for about a half an hour, but got no answer. The front door was locked. I sat and waited on the chilly front stoop. Occasionally tenants passed by giving me the look—a filthy bum on their stoop.
Eventually as they passed I would rise, distancing them from the dreaded me. Finally as one old fellow was leaving I was able to catch the front door before it slammed shut. The doorbell had to be broken. I banged on Sarah’s door for about five minutes. And then I just listened silently, not a creature was stirring, not even a cockroach.
Back on the front stoop, I thought about Sarah’s phone ringing. Where the hell was the answering machine? Finally I went up to look at her mailbox. Her name was there, but tagged next to it was another name. She probably had adopted a new boyfriend. Quickly it neared five o’clock. People filled the streets streaming homeward. As Sarah’s neighbors dashed back into the apartment, I noticed some of them mumbling between themselves. I could almost hear them, “Yeah, he’s been hanging out here for hours.”
As the street lights blinked on, I sat in front of Sarah’s door and recalled how many times I had thoughtlessly strolled through this hallway on the way up to Sarah’s apartment. Finally, despite or perhaps because of the cold, I started drifting to sleep.
Suddenly someone said, “Time to get up.” A cop was standing over me with some lady behind him.
“No, officer.” I rose to my feet. “I’m waiting for someone who lives here.”
“Come on,” the officer started swinging his night stick. “Get out.”
“I’m waiting for Sarah Oleski in apartment five.”
“She’s no longer here,” the lady standing behind the officer informed him.
“Where is she?”
“Hey, I’m not playing with you anymore,” the officer said, and then he whacked me on the forearm; years before the Tompkins Square tumult.
“I just want to know where Sarah is. I was her boyfriend. I’m concerned.” I was backing out of the building, cradling the forearm.
“She went off to school,” the lady told the cop. School, she was going to graduate school. It all came back to me. And out in the cold I started walking. It was night now, and I had no idea what to do. I walked by the Zeus Theater. From across the street I watched guys enter and leave. Soon it was midnight. I started back to the Men’s Shelter on Third Street. The big door was closed and locked. I knocked until someone answered. Quietly I was led into a room, where some guy asked some preliminary questions. I was required to take a shower. Then I put my clothes back on, as crappy as they were. They were all I had. I was assigned a bed, but I didn’t sleep at all that night.
The next morning, I pissed and joined the line in the hall. When Ernie started walking up the stairs banging his ladle against the pot, I lowered my head so as not to be seen. My pride wasn’t completely dead yet. I gulped breakfast down quickly and got a second helping. I then shoved my orange in my pocket and before Ernie could spot me I was out the door. I wasn’t sure where I was going to spend the upcoming night, but felt there was no way I could return to that shelter. I spent the day walking around places I had known when I was alive. Even if I saw Glenn or someone, I wondered whether I would have the guts to approach them. That night I went over to the Path Train stop on Ninth Street and without paying I rode the train from terminus to terminus, over and over.
Back in the early eighties, the cash machine enclosures were not nearly as ubiquitous, so subways were the predominant sleeping sites. The Path was much cleaner than the New York subway, but it was also better policed. Several times I was thrown off the train. The next afternoon I was accompanied off the train at the Christopher Street station. The cop who escorted me had thrown me off the train earlier. He told me that if he found me sleeping in his train again, he would walk me into the tunnel and shoot me, and that in six months’ time the rats would have completely devoured my body. I’m not sure if he was serious, but I admired his rich use of detail. I walked down Christopher to the river, where I envisioned old bodies floating on the surface. Manhattan on the Ganges. Some guy came up to me, and mumbled, “The Pier is closed at sunset.”
I reentered the labyrinth of streets and started getting very hungry. Passing an outdoor Korean fruit stand, I carefully snuck up to the very edge and slowly put my hand on a cantaloupe. When I removed it, others came rolling down, and the cashier guy ran out at me with a big machete.
“I’m fucking hungry, asshole!”
“Fug yer!”
“My great great grandfather fought in the Civil War!” I yelled back before I limped away. He probably didn’t even know about that war. Soon I spotted another street person holding shopping bags, an old ugly guy. With nothing else to do, I followed him. When he got to the corner, I watched him going through a garbage can. He ferreted out some kind of discarded food product, which he carefully scrutinized and then he only ate several bites. Fumbling through the garbage, he pulled out a couple beer cans, which he emptied and shoved in his shopping bag.
“How do you know you’re not going to get sick eating that shit?” I stepped up and asked him. He only looked at me and then walked away; some were idiots, some were psychos, and some were just luckless.
Imposed distinctions started fading. Periodically I had to stand in a doorway or over a subway grating in order to thaw out a little. After that, I had about a fifteen minute duration before the cold started hurting again. Inspired by other foragers, I found a bag. I went from trash pile to trash pile rummaging for cans; I did this mainly because it was something to do. Only a couple of times did I actually cash in the cans for the nickel deposits. While working the can circuit down Greenwich Avenue, I looked in the window of the bookstore at Greenwich and Sixth Avenue and spotted the new issue of the Harrington. Leaving my bags outside. I went over to the magazine and flipped through the pages to my poem.
“Shoo! Out!” Looking up, I saw the cashier, a well-dressed guy with long wavy hair and wire-framed glasses.
“I wrote this poem. Want me to sign it?”
“No thanks,” he replied, plucking the issue from out of my hand and escorting me out the door. It was then, while picking up my bag of cans, that I remembered. Owensfield was rich and he respected my talents. It didn’t occur to me that he might feel screwed by the theater deal. I took the cans to a deli. The guy didn’t want to cash them, but I started crying so he just handed me a quarter. I found a pay phone outside and got the number of the Harrington offices. Putting my quarter in the slot, I dialled for salvation. The receptionist answered.
“This is one of the contributors to the current issue,” I said professionally “I’d like to speak to Mister Owensfield.”
“I’m sorry Mister Owensfield just left town.”
“Left town!”
“I’m afraid so. He’s on his first vacation in two years.”
“When will he be back?”
“In about a month.”
“A month!”
“The next issue doesn’t come out for another three months. Rest assured, there’s plenty of time for any submissions.”
“No there isn’t!” I groaned.
“Perhaps I can help you?”
“Listen,” I said desperately, “I’m nothing, I’m a fucking street bum. I’m eating shit out of the garbage and I crap in doorways…” The phone went click. I had made a faulty approach.
Wandering, I begged, I looked for little bites here and there, for possible places to grab some shut-eye, for discarded garments that might come in handy. I addressed remote questions I never imagined I would have to consider: How badly does food have to be decomposed before it’s no longer edible? How cold should I be
before I need warmth? Shame diminished; I was becoming accustomed to expelling waste in public. Pain became a passive verb: I no longer hurt, I was just in pain. I hadn’t really experienced hunger before, now it was a constant.
It was an interesting phenomenon to sit and watch streets flood with people, sidewalks that were bone dry just an hour earlier. Time, now, was something for those who could use it. At night, I would go through the exit door in the subways. Occasionally a cop would catch me. But they never arrested; sometimes they’d hit me. Usually they’d just throw me back out, a fish too small to keep. Then I’d just go to another subway station and go through. Now and then, at night, a cop would expel me from the train. Usually though, I’d awaken in a train packed with scrubbed, well-dressed people swarming around me. Instantly I’d know that I was heading toward the city and that there was daylight above the tunnel.
Slowly the world seemed to be curving around my view of it. I kept hearing people screaming my name, a name that had outlived its purpose since no one knew it. My identity was my experiences. Everyday sights were turning into aberrations of a past breaking through; garbage in front of a lamp post resembled my grandmother from a half block away. I could’ve sworn that a discarded pile of newspaper was my old dog.
SEVENTEEN
I avoided the cold, dark, and dangerous and adhered to the dry, warm, and lit. On the occasions when I misjudged the two I usually ended up incurring some form of pain. Even though diarrhea had set in and I’d gotten uncleanably filthy, the smell didn’t affect me. Ever since Junior’s pals had kicked my nose in, I barely smelled a thing. One night, though, I perceived this strange phantom odor of flesh decaying. I had a bad flea infestation and I had scratched my skin raw. Like a vegetable out of a fridge, I had started to rot. I had no preservatives, a poor shelf life. I was getting more sick, tired, dull, and pain was no longer even painful. Based on the fact that I didn’t know how I was going to turn out, I should have been either helped or executed. Death is the final shield from life.
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