I nursed wounds from the loss of certain people for many years. People that I had probably given too much to and never felt the need to reciprocate when it was their turn. Anyway, I shouldn't sound maudlin, people all over this great country of ours are capable of acting like total shits.
There is something about New York City that I get that doesn't really exist for me anywhere else in the world. Not that I have been everywhere mind you, but the two great cities for me are Paris and New York. For walking and for the "vibe."
I lived in Gramercy Park, in the last rent controlled apartment, two fifty a month when I left in 1973. I was a scholarship student, at two prep schools, Walden and Dwight York, the site of the infamous preppie murders. I wore a coat and tie, at least to the latter and managed to do pretty well in school.
My mother was dating a host of nefarious characters at the time. Walter, a loan shark, who taught me how to open a common penknife like a switchblade and once poured a bottle of whiskey down my throat. Michael, a printer. Sal, a huge biker who kicked the shit out of me for sport. Tony, a dutch revolutionary, brother to Tom V. from Television. He tried to throw me out of the house, said that a fifteen year old was old enough to be on the streets. We fought one night, maybe for a solid hour, causing multiple contusions and breaking several of each other's appendages and he never came back.
The neighbor came home one day and found his wife in bed with a man, who he shot. It turned out the guy was a cop. They wanted my mother to testify and bugged our phone, to try to blackmail her into testifying. If you are interested, ask me about it in person one day.
I never felt that scared in New York. I feel much more comfortable there than I do in places like New Orleans or San Francisco. Frankly I got that New York swagger that said that I owned the place. Because I did. Broke as I was. I panhandled in Central Park. We all did. I can remember hustling the hookers in front of the Waldorf for subway tokens in the middle of the night. Stupid? Maybe, fearless, absolutely. I do remember pulling a quadriceps muscle during a soccer game and having to walk by some guys in the park past 98th street that were looking at me like I was a thanksgiving lamb on a platter as they sharpened a knife on a rock. I dragged my sore leg past this wolfpack, understanding what the wildebeest must feel like on the veldt when confronted by the pack of hyenas. They didn't budge off the rock. Lucky me.
Maybe I shouldn't romanticize New York too much. It has changed and maybe the palce I remember is long gone. When I used to visit the first thing I would want to do was drive to Harlem. Now it is all corporate and safe. Damn those Clintons. Ditto Canal St., site of some of my greatest hijinx, courtesy of the late Dougie Monroe.
The New York of my youth had great antique stores downtown, and book stores and Weisers and the Automat and Katz's Deli and Second Avenue and Papaya King and the bandshell and frisbee and wacky tobaccy and the smartest people in the world that you ever wanted to meet. And St. Marks and the Academy and the Met. Burnt chestnuts at 59th. Sea broth and oyster crackers for three cents at the Fulton Street Fish Market. The IRT. Lindys. Chock full of nuts. Love to walk up Fifth on a sunday, one little ant in a giant anthill. Jackie O would have to step over the same bum you stepped over in the street. New York, the great equalizer. Rich or poor, you were all floating on the same island. Maybe it's different now, with a condo starting at a million three and riffraff like me long relegated to Jersey or Forest Hills. I wonder why the people in Manhattan seem a bit more together than the people I meet in other places and perhaps a little more real? Or should I say, tempered by a hotter fire? Even if they do only dress in black.
Maybe I am a New Yorker?
