Hakkim Is Dead

Guns On Avenue C - 1986

In the 1970s I always said that the East Village looked like Rome three days after the sack of the Visigoths 410 CE. Buildings burned day and night. The overstretched 9th precinct triaged the streets beyond 1st Avenue. No patrols ventured farther than Tompkins Square Park. Shooting galleries outnumbered bodegas and hordes of thieves fearlessly prowled their newly-won turf for victims. Nobody honest could survive in a neighborhood more burnt-out than a junkie’s vein and families of all races, colors, and creeds fled the outlaw DMZ for the suburbs.

256 East 10th Street was my home. Sinse dealers ruled the 1st Avenue corner. We got all well. They showed respect for how my friends and I had scammed the 9th Precinct at our after-hour club on 14th Street. East of Avenue A life was tricky. Gunfire was heard day and night. My neighborhood was rough. His was dangerous. Very dangerous.

My friend Uncle Carmine lived on East 11th Street between Avenues B and C. The first time I visited the Sicilian plumber at his ground-floor office. We discussed military history, while Carmine sucked on an unlit cigar. He ate them more than smoke them. We had a good laugh. Our conversations were between two men with convictions about truth and justice. We discussed some schemes only involving us. We were sworn to secrecy. Not Omerta. Carmine was connected, just not that way.

As I got up to leave, he said, "Wait a second."

He reached into his desk and pulled out a 38. He slid it over to me.

"For your protection, this neighborhood is fucked."

I laughed and asked, "Where are all the bullets? I'd emptied this before I reached B. I don't need a gun. I need money."

"Don't we all." He stashed away the piece. "I'll see what I can do for us."

"Thanks." I walked onto East 11th Street. Hakkim was across the street, scoring dope. The junkie thief glared at me. He had a death wish. I was glad not to have a gun. At heart I was a hippie sometimes. Thou shalt not kill.

JOURNAL ENTRY - AUGUST 5, 1978 - EAST VILLAGE

AUGUST 5, 1979 - EAST VILLAGE

No sign of Hakkim on East 10th Street, but the two young boys, Flacco and Manny, warned, "He ain't done with you. Hakkim a stone cold junkie, but he's stone cold baddd too."

"Fuck him. I fucked him up once. Next time will be worst," I boasted,but walked around the ower East Side looking over my shoulder, especailly in the morning taking Alice to work at the yogurt shop.

Last night Rick Guadacanal, the Heartbreakers' roadie, turned me onto cocaine. We snorted blow in CBGBs toilet. Cocaine is everywhere in New York City and the USA. Last month I dealt a little. It's easy money, if you keep your nose out of stash, a feat for men stronger than me.

Living on East 10th Street means cooking at home instead of eating at Greek diners, although there's nothing like bacon, eggs, and toast at the Kiev after a night of punk music.

This morning I woke up in a hospital. The only time I stayed overnight was at birth.

May 29, 1952.

Sixty-nine years ago.

It's forty-two yeasrs upstream from my first days at that apartment at 256 East 10th Street. Alice is living in LA with her husband. I haven't told her that I'm ailing; my blood count in low after expelling the bloodfrom my stomach, my blood sugar count was 450, and the doctors have scheduled an ultra-sound for tomorrow.

With all the tubes in me, I can't move around too much. Just to the toilet. I called Guadacanal to keep him the loop. I had visited the punk guitarist in Jersey City during his COVID quarantine. He was now home with his wife in Kansas City. Rick listened to the news and said, "Don't worry, you'll be fine. I got what you probably have ten years ago. Medicine has advanced since then."

"Yeah, right," I said with the enthusiasm of a hypochondriac. My belief in eternal life had been challenged by the fact that I was wore a shameful 'johnny'.

"You'll be out soon enough, but no more drinking."

"No more, unless the doctors tell me to get my affairs in orefr, then it's back to the 169 to Dylan Thomas body and soul. THe poet had drunk himself to death at the Whitehorse tavern.

Oh, the glory.I researched on the internet for John Thunders.

The Curse Of Gentrification

Building by building a city dies for the sake of greed.

People care.

But not enough.

And when it's gone.

It will be gone forever.

Or at least until Hakkim the Junkie comes back from the dead.

Journal Entry August 2, 1978 - East Village

Today Alice and I moved out of my West 11th Street SRO room. The temperature was rising into the 90s and I sweated bullets, loading a taxi with our possessions. Jumping in the back seat, I shut the door and we crossed 10th Street to 1st Avenue, where the driver stopped at the curb and said, "I don't go any farther than this. Alphabet City is too dangerous and this corner ain't no bargain." He pointed out the sinse dealers on the corner and spat out the window. "They're hippies in comparison to the junkies. You're not really going to live here?" "Yes, but we found a cheap one-bedroom apartment for $180 a month." I unpacked the taxi, putting our boxes on the corner." "Let me guess. Bathtub in kitchen. Water closet in back. Very 19th Century." He was visibly nervous about having stayed on the corner this long. "Very quaint. Good luck." The Checker burned rubber up 1st Avenue. My twenty-two year old girlfriend shrugged, "We're home one way or the other." 256 was only three stoeps from the avenue. Two scrawny kids ran up to us and asked excitedly, "Mister, you need help?" "$1 each to carry a box to our new apartment." I pointed to the third stoop on the south side of the street. "Can we trust them?" whispered Alice. Her eyes were two different colors; green with tints of red. The latter was the color of fire.

"It's not like we have anything to steal. We let them help and no one will think we're stuck-up white people trying to take over their neighborhood?"

Carrying the boxes the kids joked about us being Mr. And Mrs. Opie, then fell silent at our new address.

A pockmarked junkie sprawled before the door and the taller kid said, "That's George."

"Is he dead?" asked Alice.

"No, he ain't dead, just fucked up," said the shorter of the two boys.

"Let me see, if I can wake him."

I called his name several times and then climbed the stairs to lightly nudge the comatose junkie with my foot. As he slumped from the doorway, an enraged voice shouted from behind me, "Who the fuck are you to kick George?"

"Oh shit."

The two kids dropped the boxes and sped toward Avenue A. The kids in the spray of the fire hydrant scurried to their parents. A bare-chested black man wearing jean too tight for his muscular build approached us with yellowed eyes bellowing with fury.

My girlfriend stepped behind me.

"I'm not goin' to ask you again. You kick George?"

"I didn't kick him. I touched him with my foot."

"You callin’ me a liar, you white piece of shit?" the junkie snarled from the sidewalk.

"I’m sorry." I couldn’t look him the eyes.

"Too late for sorrys. You're fucked." The veins on his neck pulsed with thick throbs of blood and put a foot on the steps. "I’m gonna to kick your ass."

Countless scraps with Southie gangs had taught me the value of not fighting fair and I threw the boxes at his chest. Their weight knocked him off balance and his body slammed onto the sidewalk. The crack of his skull on the pavement echoed off the opposite building. A trickle of blood seeped from under his head.

The street was very quiet. Everyone had been surprised by effect of my attack.

George rose from his slumber and stared at his friend and then me.

"What you done to Hakkim? You fucked yourself good. My man gonna come for you and your little girlfriend. Take your clothes, TV, jewelry and fuck her."

Anyone stupid enough to threaten you deserved a beating and I kicked him in the head. My girlfriend stopped me and said, “We better leave before the police come.”

”Ain’t no police coming here.” I opened the door and carried the boxes to our third-floor flat. We tore the previous tenant's artwork from the walls, twice washed the floors, toilet and tub. The air in the tenement flat was breathlessly still. We soaked naked in the lukewarm bath and my cock began to get hard. I asked the ingenue actress from West Virginia, "You want to make love?"

"Not in this heat," she laughed in this heat. She was right. My body was sapped on all libido, but I was at Alice mercy coming to money and she liked my acting as a hustler. Luckily we had one fan and after drying off laid in the futon naked, awaiting for Hakkim's revenge.

A little past 11AM Alice said, "Nothing is going to happen tonight."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing bad," the lithe brunette said, as if she had been born on the Lower East Side instead of the good end of an Appalachian hollow. She slipped across the futon into the arms.

We were home, far from our suburban roots. The first time I walked these streets was in 1970. Wayne Shepherd and I hitchhiked from Boston to New York City. His sister lived on St. Mark's, two blocks west from 256 East 10th Street. Alice was asleep and I thought about everywhere I had lived in my twenty-seven; first breath - Boston Lying -in, Hingham until 1954, Falmouth Foresides before moving to the South Shore of Boston in 1960, I left that suburb in 1971 and rented an unheated apartment in Brighton's Bug Village, a Brookline basement with a sixteen year-old lude dealer, Park Slope with the jazz impresario James Spicer and now here.

With Alice.

From here into forever.

AUGUST 2, 2021 - CLINTON HILL, BROOKLYN

Yesterday afternoon I rose from bed at the Myrtle Avenue Punishment Cells and walked into the kitchen. A wet belch burbled from my lips and I wiped away the bright red wet with the back of my hand and a second later blood spewed from my mouth into a metal bucket. Another four heaves covered the pots' bottom and the color darkened to near-black. I repeated this several times.

There was no pain, but I instinctively understood that my stomach was fucked.

The retching stopped throughout the night and this morning I packed a night bag with a 1979 journal, Cookie Mueller's book, A Bernie Gunther novel, two changes of clothes, chargers et al and crossed the East River on the Manhattan Bridge heading for NYU hospital. I wasn't feeling too good, but felt no urge to vomit.

At the Emergency Ward check-in the nurses immediately led me to the holding pen and I laid in bed.

"We need you to stay overnight. This blood thing is dangerous," said a young doctor and two hours later I was brought upstairs to Room 2205 hooked up to three feeders. a number of failing vital signs threatened my existence.

I wasn't scared.

I've died before.

I picked up my journal and saw the first page was from August 2, 1979.

Forty-years ago.

I vividly remember the heat.

Alice.

Hakkim.

The one fan.

The crackling of thunder raising the ghost of Rip Van Winkle.

I'm 69.

A man my age don't remember everything.

No one can.

OCTOBER 24, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

The phone rang this morning and Alice answered, then groaned, "It's Mark."

It was 10.

She handed the phone and I asked gruffly, "What do you want?"

"Can you come into work?"

"Why? You need someone to blame when you lose money?" Mark was always plundering the petty cash for ALBEE DIRECTS ALBEE.

"Edward came in and asked where you were. He wasn't happy to hear you had quit."

"Did you tell him why?" I was sure he had made up something that blame me.

"I said I thought you were stealing."

"And he said you were wrong."

"Yes."

I put my hand over the mouthpiece and asked Alice, "Would I be an asshole to go back to work for Mark?"

"Ask for a raise." She rolled over to sleep. The hillbilly directress had come back around dawn. She smelled of another woman's perfume at least not belonging to her witch partner, Susan. Revlon Charlie.

I had been getting paid $150 a week and said, "Pay me 180 a week."

Mark said 'yes'.

"I'll be in there shortly."

Shortly meant getting out of bed and feeling the window overlooking the alley. The pane of glass was cold and the cypress tree was shedding the final leaves. I pulled over autumn clothing for the first time this year; a sweater, heavy boots, a thick leather jacket, and new gloves from Bloomingdales. On the walk over to Veselka I shivered in the wind. The sun was weakly shining through the clouds. I loved the cold, because it drove most of the junkies inside. There was no sign of Hakkim, the scourge of the neighborhood. After breakfast at Veselka I walked up to Mark's apartment building. Mark answered the door. I glared at him and he wisely said, "Let's forget the past and look forward to the future. Edward really likes your work."

"I'm sure."

We made phone calls to various theaters across the USA. The Albee retrospective was immensely popular featuring; THE AMERICAN DREAM, THE ZOO STORY, COUNTING THE WAYS, FAM AND YAM, Counting the Ways" and assorted other plays and my favorite QUOTATIONS FROM CHAIRMAN MAO, which I had seen in rehearsal. The day passed without incident, but this calm was all a facade. Mark was an asshole screamer, when things went bad and some people never change.

GRANT STITT general counselor NRP

The New Zealander emigrated to the USA to study modern dancer. He is 28, homosexual, a good gossip, and a vegetarian. He has nom lover just dalliance without count. His dancing is modern which suits his lanky body. Grant is a devote NRP member in charge of the Surrender Army, which will be the military gay arm of the Party dedicated to giving up before a shot is fired on the front line to corrupt the Soviet troops. Hopefully he won't become the Eric Roehm of the NRP, the homosexual Nazi leader of the SA troops, which was crushed by Hitler in the Night of the Long Knives.

Keith Richards had his day in Canadian court for heroin possession. His sentence of a year's probation and a gig before blind children surprised the Silent Majority press calling for his blood. The Stones haven't thrilled me since their hit BROWN SUGAR and that was because a fan named Paul O'Malley had shouted out the title 'BROWN SUGAR' during the recording of a live LP. Every at my graduation from Boston College seniors yelled BROWN SUGAR throughout the ceremony upsetting the Jesuits.

In the punk world Sid Vicious of THE SEX PISTOLS' bass player attempted suicide with a lightbulb.

He should have used a razor blade. They are very effective slicing lengthwise. I would never killed myself that way or jumping or with a gun or hanging or pills or a unlit stove like the poet Sylvia Plath. How I don't know, but if necessary I'll fix it out. Still it's funny to see how sturdy is the human body.

Back when I was driving taxi for Boston Cab I ran a stop sign before the Roxbury projects at Lamartine and Heath Streets and t-boned a Mustang at full speed. Time collapsed to a blur, then resumed normal speed. The force of the collision threw me across the Checker Cab with a snapped-off steering wheel in my hands. The other driver Mitch Lipcomb was unhurt as well and the soul singer confessed outside court that he had fallen sleep at the wheel. We laughed and then realized no one had shown up for the hearing.

"Let's get a drink."

Sid Vicious was probably avoiding a court date for the murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen at the Chelsea Hotel. Rumors had it that Sid had taken thirty Tuinals and had been in a drug coma during the killing on Columbus Day. His shows exposed his total lack of musical talent, but punks crowded CBGBs and Max's to see the disaster sing Frank Sinatra's hit MY WAY. Record producers ignored his heroin addiction and bizarre behavior in favor of filthy loot, but Sid's performances echoed the coming untalented assault of New Wave led by the Lounge Lizards and Teenage Jesus. each dreaming of gold-plated sneakers, suit jackets from near-extinct seals from Italian designers and China White #4.

White heroin was nuch better than Mexican Brown.

Woof woof woof dogs at the door. Don't you go outside Rabid hounds snare for revenge Fangs snap at the glass. The mongrels wish they were Poodles Or Pekinese. Dogs are scared of water Dogs are scaring me I drop my trousers and piss on them all. Arf Arf arf

Alice and I met over a year ago through the designer, Timothy Dunleavey. They were friends from North Carolina. I was going to a birthday party for Jancy Stephenson from Texas. After a few drinks I asked Alice and her friend to go someplace more private. They were staying at a West Side townhouse with a pool in the cellar. The water was unheated, yet the two of us stripped naked. Her friend puked after a few minutes of sex. Alice came from Coal County. The good side of the tracks had her kind tough and she called for God, as I finished in her. I was not God, but her orgasm was divine.

Tonight I lie in bed and she sits at the kitchen table speaking to her consort, Susan. Her voice was low. I could only pick out a few words. The conversation could have been between two lovers. I fear the worst. I came into the kitchen with a towel around my waist. She turns away from me. I open a bottle of Chateau Bourdieux from France liberated from Mark's wine chest. It's better than the usual crap I drink. I ask Alice if she wants some. She made a face. She only drinks with the cast of NEW WAVE VAUDEVILLE.

"You want to make love?"

She shook her head and returned to speaking on the phone. Women try to seduce me at CBGBs. I refuse them and wonder in Alice's celibacy is contagious. I hope not. I like fucking, but I also want tobe monogamous. I wander the streets alone. A libertine in love instead of in lust.

It was late in Butte, Montana When I arrived at the cowboy bar. I order a whiskey and beer And search the place for my wife. Rumor had it she was living here now. Not with anyone Playing the tramp Mona wasn't here I drowned my drinks and ordered another round Last call in Butte Montana. I can't forget Mona Her face fills empty mirrors Two weeks ago she left the state line Tired of living in a tent. She started breakfast While I was in the shower I came back to burning eggs. She took my money and caught a ride With a trucker heading east. She knew how to leave fast Any other woman from Reno could do the same I ate the burned eggs. She always burnt them I dressed for work building shitters For the new highway rest stop West of Missoula I earned enough working overtime in the snow I borrowed my boss' truck I bought a pistol in Drummond. Planning to shot here dead Last call in Butte Montana The gun is in the truck I ain't gonna kill no one Only myself and soft I order two more. The bar is empty The bartender wants me gone I tell him about Mona. "Her. She was here a couple of Days ago. Said she was heading to Laramie with a rodeo bum But a girl like that don't ever have a destination Only someplace she had done." I thanked him for the info He gave me the drinks to go in a paper cup It's only Friday night And she gotta be out there I'll drink my way across the west till Sunday Then come on back to work Still hurting from work and Mona and sleazy bars Always last call in Montana.

WHY I MISS JUNKIES by Peter Nolan Smith

Most New Yorkers depend on air-conditioning during the summer heat waves, however AC always felt to me, as if a dirty old man from the Arctic was breathing down my neck and that dirty old man wasn't Santa Claus.

Truthfully after so many years in Southeast Asia I liked the heat and any temperature under 92 was survivable with the aid of a strong metal fan and a couple of cold beers. Above 92 Fahrenheit required multiple baths in my kitchen tub and the drinking countless liters of water, however as July 1999 stretched into its second week of body-sapping heat I surrendered to the weather.

I needed cold.

Renting a car for a drive north was not an option, since the oppressive mugginess smothered the Eastern Seaboard from Cape Hatteras to Eastport. My bank account held enough money for a small 6000 BTU AC. The nearest appliance store was on 14th Street and I staggered out of my apartment onto the breathless sidewalk of East 10th Street.

Santa John exited from the Russian Baths. The white-haired junkie walked toward me, as if his feet had no bones.

He was not a friend. No junkie is anyone's friend, however my Uncle Carmine let Crazy John sleep in his basement. The scrawny addict was due his inheritance soon and he had promised to reward Carmine for his charity. Personally I thought the ne'er-do-well was full of shit. Most rich people are when it comes time to pay their debts. Especially rich junkies.

"John, you weren't schvitzhing today?" I loved the baths, but not in the summer.

"Why not? It's so hot inside the steam room that outside on the street is like winter." Santa John's blood ran cold as a snake. "You should try it."

"No way." I was scared of an internal heat implosion. "But I need to get cool."

"Why don't you go swimming in the East River?" His eyeballs were narcotic pools the color of mercury.

"The East River?"

"Yes."

"You have to be joking."

"Not at all." John was as serious as an OD.

"Only the Dead End kids swam in the East River and that was in the movies."

"You're right, but a peninsula of construction rubble sticks out from East 20th Street."

"I see where you mean." That spit of sand covered an abandoned sewer outlet a block south of the gas station underneath the FDR Drive."

"That's it and I've seen people swimming there. Not me, so I can't vouch for the quality of the water, but billions of gallons of seawater flush the river twice a day. My friends tell me it's okay for swimming."

His only friends were the heroin addicts haunting the blocks between Avenues A and D.

"I'm not sold."

"It's closer than the Hamptons. Give it a try and let me know. I might join you one day."

Santa John sauntered off toward the East 4th Street shooting galleries. Heroin ran like ice in a junkie's vein. Sweat ran down my face. The sidewalk radiated heat. I reflected on Crazy John's suggestion.

The East River had served as a sewer for centuries, but the East River was closer than the Rockaways. I returned to my apartment and changed into shorts and reef-walkers. The purchase of an AC was postponed, until I checked out Crazy John's information. Hitting the street again with a towel over my shoulder I headed toward the river.

No one shot hoops on the asphalt frying pan of Tompkins Square Park. Old men in tank tops listlessly played dominos under the wilting trees of East 13th Street, while a pack of children scampered through the feeble spray from an open fire hydrant. I resisted its temptation and slogged past the Con Ed power station. The river wasn't far now.

An elevated section of the FDR Drive shaded a cluster of improvised shelters. The derelict inhabitants lay on cardboard boxes, as if they were exhausted from praying for winter. Come January they wouldn't be so happy about having their dreams coming true. I strolled across the road.

The broad East River separated Manhattan from Brooklyn. A tour boat steamed upstream and two jet skis skated through its foaming wake. The air was scented by the evening's incoming tide and I hurried to the sand spit projecting into the green water from 20th Street.

Several old-timers basked on lawn chairs and sea gulls perched on the waterlogged stumps of a forgotten pier. The lap of waves dampened the rush-hour traffic on the FDR Drive and I climbed over a railing to set foot on the algae-slick sewer outlet. The water emanated a chill and I tested the temperature with my foot. It was cold and I cautiously inched into the river, because anything could be stuck in the sandy bottom.

Seconds later the river swallowed me and I thought the East River was mine, then a man's head popped from the river and he wiped the wet from his eyes.

The swimmer smiled with a broken grin.

"C'mon in, the water's great."

He wasn't a stranger.

"Jamie?"

"The way you say that makes me think you thought I was dead."

Jamie stood up like he was tottering on an unsteady perch.

"I heard a few things. Prison was one of them. OD was another."

"I'm too crazy to die, but I heard you died too." His beard was a grizzled gray, but he was unmistakably alive. "Somethin' about a bike crash in Burma."

"It was more a near-death experience than the real thing." A bent left wrist was a reminder of that head-on accident and I hung my shirt along with my towel on a stump.

"Hey, those are the worst kind." Jamie was as wiry as a meth addict's pit bull. "Are you going to swim or what?"

"Is it really okay?" A flotilla of plastic bottles bobbed past him.

"It ain't the Riviera, but it's better than Coney Island with a million people pissin' in it and I haven't broken out in a rash."

"It does feel good." I waded into the river and goose bumps popped on my flesh.

"If the water looks clean and smells clean, then there's a good chance it won't kill you." Jamie swam on his back. "Don't be a chicken."

Those words spurred my diving underneath the water and I rose from the shallows refreshed by the cool plunge. The few of the sunbathers ignored us.

"So what you think?" asked Jamie and I replied, "It's almost as good as Jones Beach."

"Hey, why shouldn't it be? This water comes from the same ocean. Just don't swallow any of it?" Jamie breathed in the river and glided on his back for the current to tug him away from the shore. He broke free of the river's grasp with a frantic flurry of flailing arms and kicking feet. Reaching me, Jamie said, "Damn, it's dangerous. Excitin' too."

"I have to admit it's nice swimming in the city." I had always avoided the public pools.

"They're forbid us from doing it." His tone made no bones about who 'they' were. "A friend of mine dove off the helicopter port. The authorities decided he was a suicide. The fire department and police tried to rescue him. He kept on doin' the Australian Crawl. Hah. Even the police divers were scared to enter the river, but it's not too bad once you're used to it."

Pedestrians stood by the embankment and gaped at us. It might be another ten years before normal people chanced swimming in the river. They walked away shaking their heads.

"Where you been lately?"

"The Bellevue doctors diagnosed me as manic-depressive and I wasn't in any condition to argue with their assessment. They sent me to a hospital near Binghamton, where I discovered that the State was hiding hundreds of madmen and women in these old nut houses. Most of them not really crazy. Only homeless."

"What do you mean?" I was suspicious of conspiracy theories from such a dubious source.

"You ever wonder where those Squeegee men went? No, cause you were too happy with them off the streets."

Very few New Yorkers missed the hordes of beggars, although their near-extinction posed a very sinister mystery.

"I figured the Mayor had hired a death squad from Columbia to kill them."

"He's too cheap to pay more than the price of a bus ticket."

Up on the promenade an old man shouted from a bike.

Jamie waved and returned to the beach.

"Friend of yours?"

"I met Dynamite upstate. He was once was a fighter, but too many punches left him a little brain-dead."

Jamie picked up a torn tee-shirt.

"You want me to meet him?"

"Dynamite's a little touchy around strangers." Jamie motioned for me to stay in the water. "He should be gettin' help, but they emptied the hospitals, cause our mayor's thinkin' of runnin' for president and he can't piss off those upstate hicks, so you'll be seein' lots more of my friends."

"I'll keep my eyes out for them."

"See you when I see you."

Jamie climbed the embankment to the old man.

I saluted him with a raised fist and exited from the river. The sun dried my skin in seconds and I sniffed at my arm. My skin smelled clean, but I reckoned that a quick bath was in order after this adventure.

Back at my flat I scrubbed my flesh raw.

That evening the weather broke and the temperature dropped into the 70s.

The next day I told several friends about my swim. Their faces warped between disgust and disbelief. I fought off a grin, since I hadn't witnessed such boldfaced distaste since the grammar school nuns had condemned my wearing a leather jacket to Mass.

I swam a few of more times in the East River without running into Jamie.

As the summer rounded the homestretch into September and his prediction bore fruit.

Legions of homeless people begged quarters and harangued passers-by with demented litanies. Most East Villagers ignored them in the hopes they would disappear with the change of the season.

After Labor Day NYU opened for the fall semester and one afternoon I stood on 3rd Avenue in awe of the passing parade of young students. The pudgy collegians strolled heads-down to their cellphones. I considered their craving for online contact an addiction yet happiness beamed from their clean faces infecting the East Village with a suburban blandness.

The traffic light turned green and the insensate students disregarded the 'don't walk' signal, which I might have obeyed forever, if Jamie's gravelly voice hadn't hijacked me back to the present.

"Nothin' stays the same."

"No one said they do." I turned to face Jamie.

He was wearing a sweat-stained rumpled suit and yellowing bruises discolored his face. His hand deftly covered his mouth and slipped on a cap to fill the gap in his grin.

"Remember the way it used to be." He pointed up 3rd Avenue.

"This was a fucked up neighborhood back then."

You got that right. Junkie prostitutes worked out of decrepit vans in the parking lots and Johnny Thunder used to pawn his guitar at the hock shops. Shit, the director of TAXI DRIVER filmed Jodie Foster at that SRO hotel on 13th Street. I even saw William Burroughs shuffle down the sidewalk skin in a gray suit on his way to Eldridge Street.

His fond nostalgia for the 1970s was scary, since the bad from those times was so much more memorable than the good.

"Burroughs is living out in Kansas. Some university town." I headed to Stuyvesant Street. Jamie followed me, speaking with a belligerence better saved for the start of an argument.

"Yeah, he's gone and we got these kids in return. I hate them. They wear bicycle helmets and condoms for sex. They stare at us like we don't belong here, but it's them that don't belong," Jamie snarled at two teenage punks.

"They're kids. You were young once too.

"But never young like this and I'd love to run a gang of thieves, pickpockets, conmen, and grifters. I rip these spoiled brats off for every last penny and send them back crying to their fat-ass parents."

"Only one problem. They don't carry money. Only credit cards and cell phones."

"Useless fucks."

"A little angry this afternoon, Jamie?"

"Damn right, I'm angry." His eyes twitched without focus. "I just finished a weekend bid in jail."

"For what?"

"This film crew was tearing branches off a tree blockin' their fuckin' shot. I told them to stop and they ignored me. I punche

d out the producer and the pigs arrested me for tryin' to save a tree."

"That's very green of you." I liked saving the planet, though not enough to go to jail.

"I didn't give a rat's ass about the tree, but I hate film people believin' the shit they film is truer than life."

"Did you make bail?"

"No, the producer dropped the charges, but then I get out and find out they hospitalize Dynamite for observation, because he was rantin' about a fight he might have lost twenty years ago and if that's a crime, they'd throw all the assholes talkin' on cellphones in the looney bin too. I wish I had a hockey stick to slapshot them off their ears. I mean who are they talkin' to anyway? Their stupid friends?"

Jamie seized my arm. His fingers bit into my bicep and I pried them loose. It wasn't easy.

"You gotta calm down."

"Don't tell me to calm down." Jamie spun on his heels, as if a sudden spurt of vertigo might shift the time twenty years into the past.

"Suit yourself and don't calm down."

"Calm, not calm." Jamie staggered to the fence around a weedy garden. "You gotta remember why this ain't how it was."

"Why?" I was stumped by his question.

"Because Hakkim's gone."

"Hakkim?"

"You don't remember Hakkim?"

"How could I forget?"

"And the night they shot him?"

"We were at the Horseshoe Bar on Avenue B."

"Good, you haven't forgotten. Sorry, I lost it, but I get a little crazy, if my blood sugar gets low. They still have egg creams at the Gem Spa?"

"Same as ever." The Asian owners had bought the recipe from the old Jews.

A family of Pakistani might have taken over the newsstand, but they honored the ancient recipe of chocolate syrup and seltzer water.

"I drink one of those and I'll be good. You have money?"

"Yes, but if you go crazy and you're on your own." I walked him to the corner of St. Mark's.

"Hey, I've been sober ten years. I'm just havin' an egg cream. The evaporation of his rage had left him a fragile shell. "But can you do me a favor?"

"What?" I hoped that he wasn't contemplating robbing the Gem Spa.

"For once it'd be nice for someone to wait around, instead of runnin' away." He almost sounded like an orphan. "Can you do me that solid?"

"Yes, but hurry."

I couldn't refuse this small boon and waved him inside, while I examined the street to recall what remained of the East Village from twenty years ago.

In truth very little.

Back then East Village resembled ancient Rome a week after the Goths had sacked the city. Apartment buildings had been left to ruin or torched for insurance by indebted landlords.

The Ninth Precinct had unofficially declared the streets east of 1st Avenue a 'no-go' zone, but my West Virginia girlfriend had fallen in love with the rundown neighborhood and she wasn't the only one. The East Village was the center of the universe for punks, musicians, artists, runaways, B-grade models, painters, dancers, actors, and sculptors recolonizing the burnt-out blocks between 1st and D Avenues.

Alice and I made our move on an unbearably hot July 1st, which was terrible day to move, especially since the taxi driver emphatically refused to continue past 1st Avenue.

"It's only a little bit down the block," Alice pleaded with an Appalachian accent. Speaking in tongues was one of young actress' gifts.

"I don't care if it was five feet. I'm not going another inch." The driver pulled over to the curb.

"Thanks a lot." We unloaded our bags onto the sidewalk and I tipped him a dollar.

"You said a good tip, when you got into the cab."

"It is a good tip for not taking us where we wanted to go." I slammed the door and the taxi driver cursed me in Greek before racing uptown.

"Thanks for not losing your temper." Alice smiled her gratitude.

"I didn't want to start off on the wrong foot." I looked down the block

Near-naked children played in the spray from a hydrant and their parents lounged on the steps.

"Guess we're home." She beamed and lifted a box.

"No, home is upstairs." I tried to manage with the other four. One toppled onto the sidewalk.

"Mister, you need help?" Two scrawny kids ran up to us.

"$1 each to carry a box to our new apartment." I pointed to the third stoop on the south side of the street.

"Can we trust them?" whispered Alice. Her eyes were two different colors; green with tints of red. The latter was the color of fire.

"We let them help and no one will think we're stuck-up white people trying to evict them from their neighborhood?"

I handed them each a dollar and the kids joked about us being Mr. And Mrs. Opie, then fell silent at the door to our new address.

A pockmarked junkie sprawled before the door and the taller kid said, "That's George."

"Is he dead?" asked Alice.

"No, he ain't dead, just fucked up," said the shorter of the two.

"Let me see, if I can wake him."

I called his name several times and then climbed the stairs to lightly nudge the comatose junkie with my foot. As he slumped from the doorway, an enraged voice shouted, "Who the fuck are you to kick George?"

"Oh shit."

The two kids dropped the boxes and bolted toward 1st Avenue. The kids in the spray of the fire hydrant scurried to their parents. A bare-chested black man wearing jean too tight for his muscular build approached us with yellowed eyes bellowing with fury.

My girlfriend stepped behind me.

"I ask you before. You kick George?

"I didn't kick him."

"You callin' me a liar, you white piece of shit?" the junkie snarled from the sidewalk.

"I'm sorry." I couldn't look in his maddog yellow eyes.

"Too late for sorrys. You're fucked." The veins on his neck pulsed with thick throbs of blood and he put a foot on the steps. "I'm gonna to kick your ass."

Countless scraps with Southie gangs had taught me the value of not fighting fair and I threw the boxes at his chest. Their weight knocked him off balance and his body slammed onto the sidewalk. The crack of his skull on the pavement echoed off the opposite building. A trickle of blood seeped from under his head.

The street grew very quiet. The people had seen this show before. Their eyes read 'bad ending'.

George rose from his slumber and stared at his friend and then me.

"What you done to Hakkim? You fucked yourself good. Hakkim gonna come for you and your little girlfriend. Take your clothes, TV, jewelry and fuck her scrawny ass."

Anyone stupid enough to threaten you deserved a beating and I kicked him in the head. My girlfriend stopped me and said, "We better leave before the police come."

"They ain't no police coming here." I opened the door and carried the boxes to our third-floor flat.

That night I lay awake on the futon waiting for Hakkim's revenge.

A little past 3AM Alice said, Nothing is going to happen tonight."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing bad." She slipped across the futon into the arms.

The next morning we awoke to birds singing in the alley and made love on a dusty futon. The two of us shared a bath in the kitchen tub. She washed me and I shampooed her hair with the sun streaming through the willows in the alley.

Later I went to buy groceries and the domino players across the street greeted me with a wave.

On my way back Hakkim appeared sporting a stained head bandage. George had a black eye and a swollen cheek. Their eyes followed me, but neither man tried to attack me that night or any other, however their unexpected leniency didn't curtail their reign of terror against the neighborhood.

Two models, Valda and Mary Beth, moved into an apartment across the street. They heeded my warnings about Hakkim and installed theft-proof grills on the windows.

For several weeks they were spared the unwelcome wagon treatment, but only because Hakkim had been busy elsewhere.

One evening they returned home to discover Hakkim had chopped through the walls to steal their money and defecate on their beds. They moved out the next morning.

A musician friend devised the unusual strategy of leaving his door unlocked.

"I have nothing worth stealing." Kurt upped this security measure by throwing his trash onto a growing garbage heap in the corner.

"That's all I have and, if anyone wants it, they can have it."

A lack of cleanliness was meaningless to a criminal so far removed from godliness as Hakkim and one day I spotted him in a jacket, which Kurt had buried under a pile of Chinese take-out boxes.

Observing my horror, Hakkim warned ominously, "I been waitin' for you. Waitin' real patient for a piece of your girlfriend too."

A friend gave me a gun. I stashed it in the closet. I felt safe, but I had to tell my girlfriend the news.

Alice shook her head and thrust the Village Voice in my chest. The weekly was opened to the APARTMENT FOR RENT section and she didn't mince words.

"Find us an apartment quick. I don't care where as long as it's not East 10th Street."

I called the landlord of a one-bedroom in Gramercy Park.

It was available and my girlfriend said, "Go over and sign the lease."

"Right away." I left the apartment and walked to hail a taxi on 1st Avenue.

Loud shouts rang from the corner.

Hakkim and another junkie were arguing about the split of swag from their robberies of apartments.

"You gonna throw down on me? You a punk bitch same as the rest of 'em. I own you all."

He was threatening his partner in crime, but I snatched a wooden stick out of the trash. Hakkim saw me coming and scrambled between two tightly parked cars, as I swung at his head. He ducked the blow and stumbled into the avenue to be struck by a Daily News truck.

Its fender sent Hakkim flying fifty feet in the air.

When he landed on the other side of the street, a bone audibly snapped and his body tumbled to rest.

I expected the other junkie to blame me for causing this terrible accident, instead he rifled through Hakkim's pockets and cried out with joy upon discovering several glassine packets of dope, then fled east shouting, "Hakkim is dead."

Long-time residents emerged their apartments and stood over the fallen thief.

Everyone was getting in their kicks.

Only the arrival of a cop car prevented a murder and the crowd begged the police to leave the scene.

The officers apologized, "Sorry, we have a job to serve and protect. For him as much as you."

People swore at the cops, as an ambulance carted him off to Bellevue, but no one was afraid to pray aloud for their tormentor's death and that evening people walked on the block with newly purchased TVs, radios, and the stereos, that they wouldn't buy as long as Hakkim controlled the streets.

"You still want to leave?" I asked Alice. The sun was setting in an orange sky. Children laughed beside an ice cream truck. She tucked her arm around my waist.

"If he's gone, then we're still home. You want vanilla or chocolate?"

"Both."

Within a day of Hakkim's accident flowers sprouted in the beaten ground underneath the trees. Supers swept the sidewalks and music filled the street. This miracle's lasting forever was too much to ask from a place so beyond the pale of civilization as East Village.

Two weeks later I sat on the stoop with my upstairs neighbor and his face went white.

"What's wrong?"

"Look."

"No way."

Hakkim hobbled down the sidewalk on crutches. His admirers toasted his resurrection by ripping the flowers out of a recently planted garden.

"Hey, you motherfuckers." Hakkim waved a clump of roots over his head. "Get ready for a Christmas in the Springtime, cuz I been hearin' you bought a lot of shit for me."

Everyone shirked his gaze and I shook my head.

When I broke the news to my girlfriend, she cried.

"It's not fair." Alice believed that Hakkim was coming for her.

I said nothing to Alice and left the apartment.I went to Uncle Carmine on the Far East Lower East Side. I asked the Sicilian plumber for a throw-away 38.

"You sure about this? You refused the last time I offered." A scarred hand reached into his desk and he slid a five-shot revolver to me. I held the steel pistol in my hand. It had a nice weight.

"Times changed."

"Hakkim?"

I nodded, because his guess was on the money.

Only a few words of advice. You see him wait until he's alone. Walk up behind him, bang him in the head, and plug that scumbag in the chest. Junkies like Hakkim don't die easy. Finally drop that gun in the sewer and don't run, walk away slow. Got it."

Another nod and I left without another exchanged ors.

We had said enough. away slow. Don'

Out on East 11th Street I carefully tucked the .38 behind my back. It had no safety. The gun was hardly the most accurate weapon in the world, but if I could get within ten feet of Hakkim, he was a dead man.

Hakkim wasn't at Brownie's or the East Village Artist's Club on 9th or at any of the shooting galleries on 4th.

I ran into Jamie Parker at the Horseshoe Bar on Avenue B.

"Have you seen Hakkim?"

He pointed to a group of passing Puerto Ricans.

"They're hunting down Hakkim. He ripped off their bruja. This fucked with their juju, so have a drink and let them do Hakkim for you."

"No, I have___"

"You don't have to do nothing. Sit down and wait." He pulled me onto a stool.

I drank a few beers, but kept on imagining Hakkim on the ground before me. The gun was in my hand. My finger was on the trigger. Jamie sensed the rising tide of vengeance and ordered me a shot of whiskey. I pushed away the shot glass.

"I need air."

"Don't go far."

"I'm not going anywhere."

The night was still and the streetlights were black. Someone had knocked them out. Running feet slapped against the pavement. It was George. No one was catching the little junkie.

"Who was that?" Jamie exited from the bar.

"Fucking George. Hakkim can't be far behind." My hand slipped inside my jacket to the revolver.

"Help me. Please help me." Hakkim wobbled along the street on his crutches with five young men behind him. "They gonna kill me. Call 911."

"No one's callin' the police." A gang of Puerto Ricans mocked him.

"Help me. Help me."

Scores of people were on the street and many more watched from the windows.

I started to cross the street to kick him off his feet.

"This doesn't concern you." Jamie restrained me from joining the fray.

"It does."

"Not anymore." Jamie wouldn't release my arm and I watched, while Hakkim swung a crutch at barrio toughs. Six more kids ran up carrying pipes. There was no escape for the terror of the East Village.

"Help me for God's sake," Hakkim screamed with his head to heaven.

"Anyone want to save Hakkim's ass?" a teenager in a black satin shirt mercilessly asked the onlookers.

The people in the windows shut them. Those on the streets walked away. The courts might accuse us of being accessories to murder, but that night we were the judge and jury giving the junkie a death sentence. None of us would lose any sleep about our verdict.

I returned to our apartment.

"What happened?" Alice sat on the futon. She was wearing a plain white cotton shift. Everything about her said West Virginia. Not the East Village

"Hakkim's gone." I stashed the revolver in the closet. Alice knew for her own good to never look through my things.

"Gone?" The question bristled with hope.

"For good." I lay down next to her and pretended that I was Lil Abner, as I explained what I had seen on Avenue B. "I had nothing to do with it."

"I know." Her reward was sweet.

That night was a long time ago and I turned my head in time to catch Jamie coming out of the Gem Spa.

He finished the egg cream with one long suck.

"Damn, that was as good as it ever was."

"I'm glad to hear it?" I stepped aside for a quartet of gym scholars dressed in new leather. They bumped into me as if to demonstrate the toughness they had learned from TV Wrestling.

"Watch who you bump into." Jamie's eyes shone with danger and they hurried off like rats with their tails on fire. He tossed the empty egg cream into the overflowing trash bin. "Stick pussy wannabes."

"Jamie, I didn't need your help."

"I didn't say you did, just my way of sayin' thanks for not walkin' away, while I was in the store."

"Jamie, good seeing you. I got to be someplace. You be careful."

"That's good coming from you. I remember you hunting Hakkim that night. What you think would have happened, if you had shot him."

"He'd still be dead. You take care."

"That might be asking too much from people like us, but I'll try. You too?" Reacting to my facial expression, he added, "Don't worry, you ain't seen the last of me yet and I ain't seen the last of you either."

To prove his statement, Jamie strolled across the avenue, daring the traffic to hit him. A cement truck lurched to a screeching halt and he yelled, "See, I'm invulnerable?"

Reaching the other side of the avenue, Jamie stopped to speak with a fat coed on the sidewalk. He must have told her a funny line, because she laughed with a hand covering her mouth. They vanished into the crowd of college students. Jamie was lucky with girls, although it was the kind of luck that few people wanted anymore.

In the following weeks I expected to see Jamie again, except he had slipped into the cracks of the East Village.

He might be living with the fat coed.

More likely he had lost his temper and the police had thrown him in jail.

If not, I hoped that he had left town and whenever I stopped at the church on East 14th Street, I lit a candle for Jamie.

Maybe he'll return, once the neighborhood reverted to its old wickedness.

Maybe not.

That East Village only existed once and in some ways I do miss junkies. They never say 'Oh My God' and kept a city honest and no city can achieve the future without its past.

Especially without Hakkim.

Lazurus II and the East River.

The East River Spit in Winter

Lori on my birthday.