No Good, Not Bad

I recently saw a film where one character ask another “Are we bad people?” (the theme of the film is irrelevant) and I thought about that question. I thought specifically of how I would answer that question if I were asked it. And I came up with only one appropriate answer: “No, we are not bad people, were just not good. We are somewhere to the side of either.” I like to think that! Less for the romantic image that that answer incites, and more for the idea that those paragons of definition are just that; paragons. I think we move across that spectrum and settle, albeit for a short time, at different points of that scale at different intervals in time.

As I said you are a good man! I have always believed that. And over the decade that I have known you, even when you were bad, and when you were neither, you continued, and will continue to be, a good man with fine taste, solid character, a warm heart, and a strong cock. A real person! The type of person who does not need a handshake for confirmation. The reason for that is that you were not made in China, or India, or Mexico, or the USA. You were forged along the long hours and across geographies. That mark, that brand, is clear and it is there. Its at the end of the alphabet. A logo, a character, one which without, the world would be a little less. Less how? Just less.

The rest, the theme, the film, is irrelevant. What is relevant is the spectrum of the alphabet, those other characters, the ones that give one another meaning. The few that define each other. The ones needed to form a sentence. Or perhaps, just a simple word, a brand that moves across paragons and a little to the side of them, settling for a time on a blank page and leaving behind a sentence or two; and sometimes even a paragraph.

Smell My Hole

That's right motherfucker...smell it...smell deep, low and slow, take that juicy ass and breath your first breath...eat it, lick it, let her smother you like the back door of a wet dream. That musty, musky power, take that new world into your view; stay low...watch the beat of the sphincter, the pouting of the hole, see god in a brown star, and never think again about standing straight at the foot of decency. Eat until your spittle dries up; and have whiff of heaven.

Pimpled Grins

The city has long stopped calling me. I do still here its stutter occasionally, see the the glimmer of its pimpled skyline, feel the reverb of its animal souls; the rusted and the polished alike, the virtuous and the vicious; the cold Coltrane glow that hums winter night. I imagine an express zooming by on the middle track, its passenger barely discernible. The world derailed moving along, beset by bandits and honest men, by grifters and dopes, hustlers and peddlers, zombies and super-freaks, one indistinguishable from the other.

A silver car stops on the platform, apart from a collection of used-up Puerto Ricans, two Chop-sticks, and an elderly man petting his service dog it is vacant. Behind me, behind thick glass, in a steel box, under an honest light, a fat station attendant perches on a stool, her ass spilling over swallowing the face of a lesser man, her anal sweat seeping through her jeans, her cunt moist from the erotic novel in her hands.

The trains pulls out. I see a grin, the grin of one of those masks, the relief of a Cheshire cat. I feel the fading sting of a blow to my crotch; the curious sensation of vertigo without the free-fall; the onset of a hard-on. And like that little girl on the station walls I wondered “What next?” No idea, no want of pupose, no definition. I am southbound, Physic and I, and intermittently, beside me inside the obscure tunnels of my bowels, amongst the cockroaches, Maupassant's midnight creep, the Minotaur, and a halide man letting loose the gutter dogs.

Flamingos Fading

A ripe tomato orchard...red and ripe, ready for the reaping. It was easy and now that I had decided that the end was in sight I no longer cared; without borders and without scruples I was no longer fear bound to their standards of ethics. They can escalate it, they can take to the top, to the big man in the big chair fiddling his small fiddle. Or even that hag that ran the HR Talent Management initiative. I was here to do some of my own talentless management, to cherry pick from the bottom stems. I was free to do as I pleased, I would do it because it was easy.

It first struck me in high school, but it sunk in when I went to Brooklyn to see Jake perform a couple years back. I went, not because I wanted to, but out of pity. I barley even knew him; he was a friend's brother; a guy that schlepped the pathetic dream of making it big in the big city. An inconsequential man from every angle. When I got to the cliche warehouse I found her bowels filled with artists and singers, dreamers and drug-addicts, the mutilated and self-abused, the types that end up in the lost and found heap in Vienna's Westbanhof. Nothing out of the ordinary really, but I was shocked to see a group of indy-rock hotties wide eyed and wet oogleing Jake who was perched on a stoll on a small make-shift stage playing his guitar like 13 year old fiddles his fiddle. He moaned and groaned, and wailed, and swayed his oily hair like a spastic in slow motion. The chicks got wetter with each sway, swooning and salivating over Mr. Inconsequential in a part of Brooklyn that no one cared to remember to a song that could barley be called song.

That episode reinforced my long-standing insight that seduction is a matter of style and structure. To reach deeply, deep enough to hook them, you just have to enrobe a finger in some spittle and slide it gently in. That urge to be a part of something that's going somewhere. The potential to be able to one day say "I lived in that circle, I ran with Pan, I ran with the next generation, the stewards of art, music, money, celebrity." That expectation alone, that itch, that hope that first brought them from Jersey, or Utah, or wherever else, to be nestled forever in a relief in history, the potential of one day making it into the MOMA, or as into the b-roll in a VH1 special, that inconsequential hope, the longin, the lust for a life that leaves a little more than a fart in its wake is what triggers the vaginal secretion that open the floodgates, leaving behind it a shallow riverbed the depth of a finger.

This hall was not too unlike that drain in Brooklyn. Certainly a different setting and a different stage, but a stage nonetheless. Instead of Mr. Incosequence, it was I now, that commanded the lights and the microphone. It was I that lulled them with a corporate party line, and the hope to be a part an exclusive bulge-bracket club. The few, the best, the dildo's. That was the membership I was selling. And the selling was easy. These tomatoes were throwing themselves off the stems...even the ones that had not ripened. Salivating from both slits. And they were a bunch of ugly cunts. I wondered if some even carried cunts. I wondered if those small bulges in their black woolen pant-suits were small dicks, micro dicks like the ones the rest of the men in this career wielded with the precision of upper middle class, and with the promise of an executive title and a write-up on the wall street journal one day. It was too easy. They wanted the gilded pony, the shark, the white shoe banker from Wall Street. The guy who was in their place not so long ago clamoring for the same dick in a black wool suite, in leather loafers, a silk tie, and cheap cuff-links special ordered. That was my uniform. I wanted them to know. Except my dick was not micro, it was rotten, sweaty, and strong. I looked, talked, winked, and laughed just like the rest of them. I was a dildo in almost every way. Except in the way I wielded mine. I made ketchup out of cunt, I filled every hole, and puncture every pit. I gave them the real dream, the one they wanted but did not know they needed. The pinball special with a bukkake bonus. Instead of a faded flamingo they got the jackal in the golden fleece.

I was filled with an acute sense of urgency to put an end to this facade. I knew that I was reaching the limits of my act and that soon I would be revealed for what I really was; a Tijuana donkey in zebra stipes. I was tiring of making sterile jokes and sharing empty antecdotes of the banker life with a flat group of canned zealots that had merged with the background when my stare locked on an ass that was as juicy as rump roast on a Thursday night. Perfect in every way. It was the only thing in that hall that was not two-dimensional. The ass belonged to a European who's face hinted at generations of diluted mongoloid genes, one of Ghengis Khan's hybrid offsprings, a Tartar with no tits but an ass that made up for that and also for the traces of Asiatic that marred her face. I approached her and could see that she was drunk. We were both drunk and I could smell her cunt. Without much chatter she came outside the hall and had a cigarrette with me. A half hour later, I had her downtown in my apartment licking her central asian face. As I savored her she went for my crotch and squeezed it hard. I got an instant boner. She was German, so she said, and it didn't bother me one bit. I told her to keep squeezing, so she squeezed harder and I got harder, and so it went, until she said, in a German accent of course: "Now you squeeze my pussy the way I'm squeezing yours."

She was cunt and she knew it, and I loved it that she knew it, so I went for her sweaty cunt and instead of a slit I found a bulge. I was drunk and so was she. We both stunk of cigarretes and booze and sweat and crotch, but none of that explained what I was holding in my hand.

"You like?" The bitch said.

"No, what the fuck is that?" She released my balls and cock and went to undo the side zipper of her wool skirt. I was well versed on the filth that comes out of Germany and the alien ways of Central Asia. I braced myself for regret. She pulled her skirt off and her ass plumped out of them. Only a woman can grow an ass like that. I was making sense of the facts, and the facts made little sense.

There was the bulge, showing through her pantyhose. In a swift move she rolled those off too and with her free hand pulled the suction cup of a rubber bulge shaped in the form of a flacid penis and a set of balls to reveal a perfectly pink slit. I came to when the pantyhose released her crotch stink. That smell was unmistakably woman stink.

Faded Flamingos

They were all gathered in a big open reception area. All the skanks, and gigolos; all the eunuchs, and hermaphrodites; all sipping on mediocre wine and imported beer. The occasional glass of champagne too and plastic grapes and wax cheese and saltine-crackers. It might as well been a dream come true for some; an evening on the stage at the county fair. In an alternate universe I pictured roosted on top the balcony a half dozen men dressed in Roccoco with water pistols filled with piss and paper bags full of shit. And that at any moment they would spray us with urine and hail us with scat. Fully aware that such a universe did not exist, I resigned myself to the hope that some washed-out gangster would appear and splatter us all with a loaded Tommy-gun. Or perhaps a big fucking mortar to take out the worst of us. The faded flamingos, the micro-dick in the black suite talking to the has-been blonde, or the fat spick prick in the purple tie surrounded by a cluster of hindus, a handful of chinks, a kike or two, and a cracker in khaki’s and sport blazer. Take them all out, the plastic grapes and wax cheese, and take me out too. Because the only thing worse than this is to have your father find you dead on your bed with a rubber dildo up your ass, a pump on your cock, and a studded leather collar around your neck.

Rusted Souls: A Short Profile On Eric

Back in the days of the Millennium, during the frenzy of the 2000 bug, and the global axis shift where geeks were the new cool, the new rich, I was in LA about to take off to Tijuana to pick up a lost French-man who had fallen in love with a Mexican stripper and her silicone. As I prepared to leave my brother stopped by with two guys he knew from Stanford. The first was a fat China-man, and the other a short, gaunt, geek in glasses; two all-time losers. He shoved them off to me, and I was driving down the 5 with these two anti-talents. My bigger concern, was how I would find the French-man without losing those two dorks to the jaws of a Tijuana hustler.

We started at the far end of the Avenida Revolucion and made our way towards the old town. Luck would have it that it took us a good hour to find the French-man, who was sunk low in the corner of the bar as his girl danced and her silicone jiggled. He was in a blue mood so I convinced my two geeks and the French-man to come with me to a bar I knew down the street where the girls far out numbered the men, and for a fair price you could have yourself a fair time. It was a good joint.

The geeks were in heaven. Especially the fat China-man. He had two Indian-looking fudge balls rubbing up on him. "Amoooor...que guapo eres..." they wooed him like the Tijuana Zebra woos in the tourist. Even, I was getting into it. A few shots of Tequila and some Modelo Negro I was getting turned on by the Zebra striped Jennies. The French-man continued to sulk. In a desperate effort to nudge him out of his stupor and move the night along I negotiated a good price for four good whores and we all went upstairs into the open court yard motel adjacent to the bar.

The eight of us walked into a bland, somewhat grotesque room with two large queen beds in the center. I was wondering if this would end up a group sex session from a nerds dream. As the awkwardness of the situation worked itself out; the gaunt, eyeglass wearing geek, Eric walked over to the bed butt naked apart from white socks. As he turned around to sit on the edge we all gasped at the we were seeing. This five foot super-nerd had a stiffer pointing straight up It was the length of a first graders arm and girth of if it too. That power-tool of his came all the up to his neck.

In the background, coming from the courtyard, I could hear the mariachi's starting to singing. "Super-Dick!" I said out loud. The whores were giggling; half amazed and half hypnotized by his cob.

"Yo no monto en eso!" Exclaimed the youngest of them. "Yo tampoco!" seconded an other. The fat china man was the one that did not seem to notice or care. He was groping the pudgy native looking one he brought up with him. Who seemed unaware of his molestation and was also transfixed by the enormous cock on that little man. At this point the youngest whore ran out the room and a few seconds later emerged through the door with four Mariachis. I assumed the same ones that had playing in the courtyard adjacent to the bar. I did nothing. I could do nothing. The night had taken a turn of its own, a turn dictated by Superdick! The Marichis made some comments about the size and about the girth. Then a second later, out of nowhere, they started playing.

As if rehearsed by a twisted porn director the oldest whore, the one that I had chosen for the Frenchman, got on the bed in her high heels, pushed Superdick on his back, pulled her g-string to one side and slowly, gently, began inching her way down that first-graders arm. As the Marichi's strummed thier cords, she joined into the song with her own "Ahhhh....Ohhhh....duele....que bueno....que grande...que gordo!" She moved slow, fighting gravity, jamming that enormous schlong into her aged cunt as if it were fine porcelain.

It didn't take much, maybe, because of the grotesque sexuality of the old whore, or the music, or the small audience, or maybe because it was his first time, but Superdick let out into that magnum condom less than a minute into the Marichi's wailing and the old whore's inching.

When the old whore pulled that small monster out of her cunt what remained was a large hole, large enough to see the ridges on the side of the vaginal wall; a dark Tijuana gutter perfect for a donkey-dong in Zebra stripes. In the meantime the fat-China man had jerked himself off onto the motel bed, I was tucking away my stiffy, and the Frenchman was no longer sulking - all for a drive down the 5 and $200.

Serve it Warm

If American men understood the tradition of why Europeans serve their beer warm, I'm certain they would stop complaining. I found the origins of that tradition, and I'm not surprised to learn that it origination on the border of the Netherlands and Belgium; a place that has always been on the cutting edge of perversity. I wonder if the Japanese thought of it simultaneously - perhaps that is why sake is also served warm and how sashimi came about.

At the end all things can be traced back to the cunt. Everything originated from it. Life, love, lust, loathing; even god was born from the feeble mind of a cunt. We have all known a cunt or two in our own lifetime. We should all celebrate the cunt within us. We owe all that is good and bad to it.

UN-Man

In the fall of 2006 a BBC investigation found that "children have been subjected to rape and prostitution by United Nations peacekeepers in Haiti and Liberia...girls have told of regular encounters with soldiers where sex is demanded in return for food or money."

That was not the only case. Three Canadaian "peacekeepers" were convicted of beating to death a 16 year-old Somali boy. Furthermore, they displayed their bravado by posing for a picture over the dead body of the boy, bloody and hands tied. Italians, too. It is "rampant" conceded one UN official; and it is global, in every sense of the word.

As to whether we have been disillusioned...the answer is yes, I suppose. We have had the misfortune of being nourished by the dreams and visions of mans greatness; of his benevolence. Some other breed of man has won out, a breed that has germinated for a long time. It's a breed which fills me with disgust.

For these crimes that have been expiated in some shit-hole of a country thousands are committed thoughtlessly by those who condemn. Like you and I. Crime begins with us; and it will end with us. It is everywhere, in all the fibers and roots of our being. Do you know the foul crimes harbored in your breast? Can you hold a mirror to iniquity when it is close at hand? Have you looked into the labyrinth of your own despicable heart? The executioner is a gentle dove by comparison.

This is the world on the inside; devils masquerading in human flesh and blue helmets going to work with the inventiveness and benevolence that only fiends can muster. You are the cornerstone of man's world, its beginning, its evolution, and its spawn. Let's take a cannon to it.

Plural Faces

The answer to the grand experiment is that hell is nowhere; and neither is paradise. Although a proxy of both can found in the mirror. There is no crocodile. No grin of a creepy cat in the fabled dream sequence of a lost girl. Only the purgatory of the many paper faces reflected back at you. That is why the search needs to be conducted inward.

Taking Kierkegaard's idea that "subjectivity is truth". As a young man he thought that “Interpretive knowledge...is all well and good but...it must come alive in me and this is what I now recognize as the most important of all.” It had been argued that this subjectivity, this interpretive knowledge gets educated out of us. A priming, or bleaching, of our native character, our original face, in order to see the world dispassionately, disinterestedly, objectively. We become unaware of this eradication of self. And the new, interchangeable model in not a real interpretation or operational mode in man, but a mask placed on a sanded surface.

The search I talk about is a "corrective" search; one of re-definition. Even if its down the wrong the fork in the road. We have to go far in one direction to offset how far we have gone nowhere in any direction. The pawn in the Red Queen's race. Running as fast as possible just to say in the same place.

We are talking about ego here, not logical protocol. And these borrowed faces that you have leased along this nowhere run are testament at how objectivity gained the upper hand. The fact that everything is classifiable. I find few things more monstrous than that; classification that is. I want to work against these fixed images that have been classified, images that are monstrous because they have been classified. A fixed simulacra. Fixed like a wart. Paper bonded to skin.

I yearn for the face that dissolves the moment someone tries to inscribe it. And the yearning is real because I can feel that sclerotic palsy behind that rigid simulacra. Twitching and spasaming like the soul of a schizophrenic attempting to find reality in unreality. Knowing, like Kierkegaard, that although "one does not belong to reality, he has much to do with it." Trying to break away from that nowhere race, from Zeno's nightmare to finally, once and for all, come out in the open, erect and fully exposed if not with a demented grin then in the least with no face at all and to finally take a path, any path, even if it does end in a hell that does not exist and a paradise that is not there before I spend a lifetime reflecting objectively a paper mask settled permanently, like a wart, on my face.

Hello Assstuffers!

That's right you nasty fucks...I'm back! Have you missed me? The way you miss your crusted knobs? The way you miss a margarita in the morning? I know you have! You are part of the nastiness now. Far more than me. And you know it; you feel it cleansing all the good, all the dull and commonplace that you have accumulated over time. You can no longer kneel on a pew, hand clasped, looking up to him, asking, waiting. You are now looking at me. And who am I? I'm something brief, uncertain, maroon. Something that you will be soon. So, before you get described in that way go to your corner dive bar, have that margarita which will do some good, and think of yourself; think about that lubed rubber fist you shoved into your hole the other day and try to remember how good it felt to get fisted by me.

The Z Note: Another Postcard from Dubai

Mr. Z is away on research. Occasionally he is lonely and horny enough to send us a postcard. Click on card for larger resolution.

The Dingleberry File: Goodbye Horses, Hello Buffalo Bill

So, I got to tell you a tale. It's a tale I promised not to tell; but fuck it...sometimes you got to fuck it even when it smells like sweaty spaghetti and the slit of a mangina.

Mr. Dingleberry and I went out the other night. On Monday night. We wanted to listen to solid tunes while diving into sweaty pussy. We started off with a nicely rolled spliff some foie gras and fig jam on the Upper West before migrating downtown to a dive bar in the west 20's. After a couple of gin and tonics we ran into three FIT chicks who looked like they could use a dose of strong cocks. Coming off our high and getting on our lush we went with the three to the back of the bar and did a couple of lines. After the fourth hit, I checked the hour and realized that 30 minutes had passed and it was time to pull out what the three over-gayed cunts had come for. So, we pulled them out and slapped them on the table right on top of the left-over cocaine resin. At first they looked incredulous, I could see the red-heads mouth begin to water as she sized up our shlongs and then they ran off mumbling some shit.

Fuck them we said to each other, and hopped into a cab speeding over to the Gramercy Park Hotel.

We thought that maybe we would stumble on a Jew-bitch looking for kosher. I became Shlomo and Mr. Dinlgeberry, well I can't remember any more, I think he may have been Shimon. I was coming down hard and feared that I wouldn't be able to focus, and with the Jew-bitches you got to focus. He gave me a pill; the pill sounded like something you'd give a fat Jew kid stuffed on matzoh. I had some of my own matzoh waiting to stuff the fat of a Jew-bitch. GPH - slim pickings, but the Yids in the room were little competition for two gentile pricks. We soaped up a certain Rachel and placed her in the cab between us on our way to Mulberry St. In the cab Shimon went to work on her fat tits and I grabbed her swollen crotch. I smelled my hand and it smelled the way all-night jew pussy smells; softer than Indian, stronger than blonde So, I pulled it out again, grabbed her little chubby fingers and placed them on my matzoh.

The Paki driving got a glimpse on my shlong and kicked us out of his cab. The episode was to much for Rachel and she wobbled off towards 6th Ave. It was getting late. We had no pussy. No one seemed to want our dongs. The night was failing us fast and that fat Jew-kid pill that Mr. Dinglberry gave me had me grinding my teeth and constricting the blood flow to my cock.

We headed back to Mr. Dingleberry's place. We rolled another spliff to take the edge of the chemicals. He put on on some solid tunes. Then it happened. Oh yea, the song that broke the seal. Q Lazarus, the one hit wonder. Faggotry on steroids. Now, it could have been that it was well past the witching hour, or the strange pill, or our cocks failure but we looked at each other and smiled. There was only one thing left to do.

He brought out some left over make up bag he had. We put on the lipstick, the mascara. We took off our clothes and we pinched our nipples. With our failed cocks tucked snugly between our thighs we repeated, in unison:

"Would you fuck me?"

"I'd fuck me!"

We laughed showing off to each other our sweaty manginas as we danced to 'Goodbye Horses' like unicorns, like two homos on PCP repeating that line over and over again until I began to believe that I was Buffalo Bill, and that Mr. Dingleberry was my reflection in the mirror and that somewhere in my basement I had in my captivity a young piece of ass about to get cocked and another coming to put a bullet in my head.

Cock Fighter: Dignified Treason

In Turgenev’s poem “The Threshold”, a young woman stands before a door. A voice asks whether she is prepared to endure cold, hunger, mockery, prison and death, all of which await her on the other side. We can guess what the answer is. Predictably Russian, the answer is yes and the ensuing conversation is axiomatic and melodramatic.

Similarly in the same vein of melodrama, the Argentine, who have produced in modern history generations of cowards, cry-baby's, and self-obsessed citizens, once dreamed up a fictional man by the name of Martin Fierro who came to embody everything that the Argentine people could never be; weathered, brave, simple men de la Pamapa. The epic poem is about an outlaw epitomized in Jose Hernandez's El Gaucho Martin Fierro and La Vuelta de Martin Fierro. I'm not interested in Martin Fierro. He is a predictable and generic antihero. I'm more interested in Sargento Cruz. Sargento Cruz sets out to capture Martin Fierro after he has willfully killed a man in a bar fight. As Martin Fierro is cornered he fights off the posse valiantly for hours. Impressed by Martin Fierro's courage in resisting the militia, Cruz defects and begins to fight his own men side by side with Martin Fierro.

"Tal vez en el corazon
le toco un santo Bendito
a un gaucho que, pego el grito

Y dijo: 'Cruz no consiente
que se cometa el delito
de matar ansi un valinete"

Cruz's is interesting not because of what he ends up doing, but of the set of circumstances that bring about his decision to abandon everything he stood for. His character acts upon a very raw and under utilized sense of right. He acts on pure principle. Cruz was fiction, but history shows us that there have been real men who re-engaged this higher purpose in themselves and chose treason and betrayal because it was the only choice; it was the principled decision to make. Here is a short list of the traitors who fought to knock down the great column of authority that had been defecated on by adulterers, cowards, and eunuchs.

Antonio Maceo, a franco-african Cuban, who led the indentured Chinese slaves fight for freedom against their Spanish masters.

General Isidoro Montesdeoca, Mexican commander of Filipino slave descent as well as General Vicente Guerrero mulatto General who commanded some of these Filipino soldiers in Mexico'swar of independence against the Spanish Crown and against his fathers wishes.

David Fagan: a black American corporal who defected to fight alongside the Filipino rebels during the Filipino-American war and became known as 'General' Fagan amongst the natives that fought for him and that fought against the US.

There are many more in history. Men, who stood at the threshold; real men, not fictional ones, who broke from the rules because the rules had to be broken; traitors prepared to endure cold, hunger, mockery, prison and death; men who crossed racial, cultural, and class divides to endure the consequences of treason for the simple principles engraved in a higher code of ethics.

Dynamo: American Bellwether - Excerpt III

American Bellwether, is a novel about a young man not unlike you, or, I. It's the violent transformation of an ineffectual boy tracing the last great spin on Wall Street. From 250 Vesey St. to the sewers, from Wharton to a wonderland of cockroaches, American Bellwether is a narcissistic search for the twin sister we lost along the way, and the unredeemed regret of that forsaken lust glimpsed at the end of the alphabet.

Excerpt III:

The bathroom brake had a head-clearing effect on me and seeing that I couldn’t find the blonde tugger or Yuri, I decided to book my losses and crawl of that gutter. I climbed up the stairs of the club and stepped out into a frigid night that froze the stale sweat to my face. The cocaine high had turned into a hyperventilating low; my ego was now wedged under a rotting whale in the Arctic. The paranoia was rusting into me, taunting me, but at least I was able focus for more than a few seconds without a thought running off or my heart up in my throat. I had no clue what part of the city I was in, only that I was on one end of china town and that it could be unsafe. I turned left and walked towards the only set of traffic lights I could see. I was bent into myself trying to keep warm while hoping that a cab might drive down one of this desolate corner of the city. On the other side of the street, further up ahead of me, three men were standing in a semi-circle over what appeared to be another person on the floor. They were talking and laughing loud enough that I could make out what they were saying in their east coast ghetto slang almost 50 yards away.

“Come’on bitch!” then a laugh “Sho’ it to us! Take it in yo hands” then another laugh, this time the laugh was more retarded, like that of a simpleton or a hyena; that's what they were - hyenas, urban scavengers preying amongst the city’s forsaken bends on its vermin. Feeding on the $20 blow job, the pimp-less tranny, or the twinkie trying to make a buck with his sphincter down an alley not far from the East River.

I was at a safe distance across the street, but in the state I was in I would be unable to outrun thanksgiving weekend on the turnpike. There was nothing behind me, nothing to turn back to, no exit which left me with little choice but to continue ahead. I had never seen Manhattan this empty. I was hoping that the three animals would be too busy with their find to notice me across the street. As I walked past them I threw them an inconspicuous glance. I wanted to make sure that they had not spotted me. From the angle I was at I could now see that the person on the floor looked like a woman; a black woman with a fro, clutching a bag between her chest and her knees. She sat there frozen under the amber light looking straight ahead, - looking at me. She was far, and it was much too dark to be able to make out what she was looking at or whether her eyes were even open, but I felt the stare, I heard her whisper “Don’t leave me”. It made my skin tighten up around my bones; I was a rat making its way down the throat of a boa. I stopped a few steps in front of that whisper, leaving it behind me hanging there as a solitary icicle from the cornice of Chang’s shop. I thought about it for a handful of seconds, the whisper that is. How could I have possibly heard it? I thought about it long enough for the cocaine and the adrenaline to stop my shivering, long enough that my heart made its way back into my throat. All I wanted was to go home to wash away the sweaty dew from the acid house and the grime from Rivington, but I was unable to. Unable because I I felt it, felt it as a pinch in my armpit, and it was clear that I had no choice in the matter. I looked around for some tool, a weapon I could use. There was trash everywhere and I spotted what had once been the leg of a chair. I pulled my belt off and wrapped it around my left fist with about 10 inches of slack for the buckle end of it to swing.

I ran across the street without much of a plan wielding a broken leg chair and medicated courage. There was only one other time that I was this terrified, and that was so long ago that I couldn’t recall what it was that had terrified me.