SHORTEST FIGHT IN THE WORLD by Peter Nolan Smith

The World on East 2nd Street hosted a screening of the Tyson-Spinks fight on June 27, 1988. The nightclubs's door was handled by the tough guy mooks hired by the Bensonhurst fat boys hosting the event. The fee for televising the fight was $20,000. The Brooklyn boys wanted $25 a head. The NYFD occupancy limit for the old Polish meeting hall was 800. The gate had clicked 1200 entries. Another couple of hundred had been cuffed for free by the owner, Arthur Weinstein. He was my friend.

"Arthur, that's freebies 351 and 352." A fat boy whined as Scottie Taylor and I entered the club. His muscles looked ready for murder.

"Good thing you don't have to count on your toes." Arthur had faced down tougher mugs than these. The Russian Zeks from Brighton Beach never whined like the fat boys. They were stone-cold killers and we walked past the pseudo-wise boys into the downstairs lounge with a smirk on our faces.

"Three Vodka-OJs." Arthur ordered from the cute bartender, who resembled Little Red Riding Hood freed from two years of hard time at Bedford Hills. She only shared smiles with Arthur and bull dykes. The native New Yorker had a way with girls who played for the other team.

"Nothing for me." Scottie was not a drinker.

"I'll drink his." It was a hot night. My first sip downed half the drink. I threw away the plastic cup by the time that we stood before the big-screen TV. "Big fight."

Three years earlier Michael Spinks had won the heavyweight title from Larry Holmes in a 15-round decision. He had lost the crown after fighting Gerry Cooney rather than fight Tony Tucker.

"Spinks is nothing." Scottie loved boxing.

"He beat Cooney." A drug dealer barked over the roar of the crowd. The fighters were entering the ring. Blood fled through all our hearts.

"Cooney was a bum." Arthur said out of the corner of his mouth. He didn't like strangers hearing him. Sometimes I thought he should have been a ventriloquist.

"You got that right."

Scottie and I had seen 'the great white hope' huff cocaine a month before that bout. We had bet every dollar on the fight. 7-5. The outcome was never in doubt and in the 5th round Spinks countered Cooney's lumbering left hook with a overhead right to his opponent's glass jaw. The rest of the fight teetered heavily in favor of Spinks, who pummeled Cooney with a blinding succession of combinations. The referee called it with 9 seconds left in the round.

"Spinks ain't no bum." He had been ringside at the fight in Atlantic City. "But like everyone else he thinks Tyson is a orthodox Rightie. Iron Mike is a natural Southpaw. His left jab has knock-out power. Watch."

"This is going to be Spinks night." A Columbian dealer pulled out a C-note. "Tyson is a punk from Bed-Stuy. He speaks like a girl."

"Bed-Stuy, do or die, but he grew up in Brownsville." It was famed for its hard guys. "Their motto is never ran, never will."

"Tyson runs like rabbit tonight."

I bet the yea-ho dealer straight up on the result. The big screen filled with the two fighters. Tyson versus Spinks. It was time to rumble. The robes came off and the two heavyweights stood in the middle of the ring. Instructions by the referee lasted about a minute. The bell rang for the first round.

Tyson landed a hard left hook quick. Spinks backed up into the ropes. He would have been better off jumping into the front row. The crowd on the dance floor sensed the kill. I grabbed the dealer's arm, as Tyson smashed the champion with a left uppercut and a right hand to the body. Spinks' knee touched the mat. Back on his feet he suffered a vicious left-right set-up and Spinks flopped on his back.

Down for the count after 91 seconds.

Tyson the victor.

The dealer paid the c-note on the spot.

I tried to buy a round of drinks, except Arthur said, "Fugedaboutit. Your money is no good here."

A few customers complained about the brevity of the fight.

"I wasn't in the ring, but tonight was long fight."

"Long?" I couldn't think of a shorter fight, although most of my brawls lasted less than 10 seconds. Tow or three punches and someone was saying 'enough'. I was good at knowing when to quit.

"Shortest fight was 10.5 seconds. Al Couture KO'd Ralph Walton. 1946." Arthur was too young to have seen that match.

"Welter-weight." Scottie added to the fray.

"That's short." Arthur snapped his finger. "But tonight was short, so drinks on me."

The Prince of the Night was generous to a fault. His friends loved him, as did his family and fiends, because Arthur was enough of an artist to see beauty in someone's faults.

"No one's perfect."

Later that winter Arthur and I are walking up 8th Avenue from the West Village. We're headed to the Tunnel on West 27th Street. A Saturday night fete hosted by Curfew. Crazy people. Free drinks.

"I gotta get warm." Arthur pulled me into a local bar at West 13th and 8th Avenue. "I don't like to hear my teeth chattering."

"Are you sure?" I asked inside the bar, for our entrance is greeted by glares from the clientele. Short people. Midgets. Only the bartender is big people.

"Fuggetaboutit." Arthur knew the bartender and dropped a $20 on the bar. "Drinks for all my friends."

We loved Mickey Rourke's line from the movie BARFLY.

"Drinks here are $5." A midget with buck teeth snarled from his stool.

"That's why I'm only buying this big man a drink. Two Vodka-OJs." Arthur headed to the bathroom. The odds of short versus tall went from 20 to 2 to 20 to 1. The bartender was out of the equation. I heard the crackling of knuckles over the music on the jukebox. I REMEMBER YOU by Skid Row.

"What you think of munchkins?" The snarled-toothed shortie asked with a smile, but before I could answer the front door opened and a dwarf entered the bar.

His head was as large as a small Easter Island statue and his hands twice the size of mine. He swaggered into the bar like he possessed an over-sized penis.

The midgets said in unison.

"No dwarves in here."

"No, well, go fuck yourself." The taller midget expanded his chest. All I could think was Munchkins brawl.

That comment sparked a little person riot. The dwarf fought off each midget with the skill of a wrestler. They flew against the wall. His big-handed punches knocked out three of them in rapid succession. The tide of battle turned with a swift right to the mouthy midget's nose.

The fight ended with a TKO.

12 seconds.

The midgets were thrown into the street and the dwarf at the bar asked, "You got a problem?"

"Not with you."

Arthur exited from the bathroom and drank his vodka and OJ.

"Let's go." He nodded to the dwarf, who said, "Good seeing you, Arthur."

"How was the fight?" Arthur pulled up the collar of his jacket.

"Shorter than Spinks-Tyson."

"Funny."

"No, just the truth." It was over in 5 seconds.

"Dwarves are tough on midgets. Go figure." He handed a handkerchief to the midget with the bloody nose.

"Thanks, Arthur."

"My pleasure. Next time keep up the right."

The Prince of the Night knew everyone.

The tall, the small, and the in-between.

The Dry Masaii Savannah

Tsunami 2004 plus 18

Seventeen years ago on Boxing Day I kayaked from the southern end of Koh Samet to a tiny island of White Rock. The idyllic isle was deserted, except for a single Thai family. The father was a sailor and this post required his protecting the untouched forests from loggers. HIs family was there for the New Year holiday, since the island's water supply was limited. He offered to fill my canteen and I wai-ed him a Happy New Year.

The Gulf of Siam was unexpected rough on my return passage and I paddled through a sloppy chop. The sea was blue and the was bluer. The wind was at my back, but getting to shore took longer than I had imagined. My arms were noodled by the exertion and I returned to my hotel thirsty from my efforts. Ordering a beer was impossible, because everyone in the bar was watching a horrific movie about a big wave crashing into Thailand, then I recognized the location.

Koh Phi Phi.

These were no special effects.

Even grimmer VDOs were aired from Indonesia, Phuket, and Sri Lanka. We later learned the death totals numbered in the hundreds of thousands, including the grandson of the Thai King.

Nations mourned this disaster.

For days afterwards friends sent urgent emails questioning about my welfare.

“I’m fine.”

Few possessed a good sense of geography.

Koh Samet was on the Gulf of Siam and at the time of the great waves I was peacefully floating on a plastic plank, thinking what a wonderful world we live in.

And it was and will be.

This year I stood still for a moment of silence to remember the day when the Earth rang like a bell.

Here’s the equation for the force of a wave.

P=pgh

where

P = the overlying pressure in Newtons per metre square, ρ = the density of the seawater= 1.1 x 103 kg/m3, g = the acceleration due to gravity= 9.8 m/s2 and h = the height of the water column in metres.

Hence for a water column of 5,000 m depth the overlying pressure is equal to 5.7 Million tonnes per metre square.

In other words ‘run for your life’.

SANDWICH RUN by Peter Nolan Smith

New York nightclubs closed at 4am in 1979, however many people didn't want to go home after Studio 54, the Mudd Club, Xenon or CBGBs. The Mafia ran the after-hour clubs like the Cisco Disco, the 82 Club and the Nursery on 3rd Avenue. Drinks were served with an undesirable degree of danger, so when nightlife impresario Arthur Weinstein announced the opening of an after-hour club in his apartment on New Year’s Eve, the city’s elite flocked to the Jefferson Theater on East 14th Street to celebrate the coming of a new decade.

After convincing his wife that this illegal venture would coin good money, Colleen transformed their loft with a little paint, mirrors in the wall, art-deco furniture, and eclectic lighting into an Eden after midnight.

Arthur's good friend, Scottie was the bartender, his wife acted as hostess, Arthur spun records, and I worked the door. 11pm passed without anyone entering the Jefferson. Midnight came and went. The four of us drank champagne and Arthur shrugged an apology.

"So it wasn't such a good idea."

Nearing 2am we feared the worst, then super-model Christie Brinkley strolled up the stairs and kissed Arthur on the cheek.

"I hope you're ready." She was with two gay friends.

"Ready?"

"I invited everyone from Studio." The blonde cover girl turned to Coleen. "I love what you did with this place. It's so 40s."

"Everyone?" I whispered to Arthur.

"Anyone mentions her name, let them in for free. For tonight only." Arthur knew his business.

Within the hour taxis and limos pulled up in front of the Jefferson, which immediately became home away from home for those late-night revelers unwilling to call it a night. Movie stars, musicians, models, bankers, politicians, go-go girls, punks, gays, cops, and dealers danced till dawn as if the second-story club was the Noah's Ark of decadence. We thought the party would last forever, then again most of us were loaded on drugs.

Arthur saw it different.

The precinct cops were on the take. Internal Affairs were investigating their involvement at the Jefferson. After-hour clubs had a short life in New York and slightly before Memorial Day Arthur warned his wife to stay away from the club.

"Anything wrong?"

"Just a hunch."

His premonition was on the money.

Two nights later the police raided the club at 3am.

Scottie slinked out the front door through a gauntlet of police and Arthur climbed down the fire escape under a black Halloween cape. Not everyone got away free.

Internal Affairs arrested two 9th Precinct officers, a sanitation cop, a bag man for the fire department, two transvestites, a circus clown, two barboys, the son of a CIA agent, three female bartenders, and me. The sanitation cop put up a struggle. The cops hauled him into the back bedroom and broke his leg with a baseball bat.

They were playing hard ball.

"Anyone else want some." A plain-clothed officer waved the baseball bat at us.

We shook our heads.

Thirty minutes later an ambulance arrived for the injured cop and the officers led the other arrestees into a paddy wagon. We were arraigned in the morning and the judge released me without a charge, recognizing me from the West 4th Street Basketball Cage..

Arthur, Scottie. and I that night at the Ritz. They surveyed the bar with a visible nervousness. A psycho cop had visited Arthur in the morning. A double blast from a shotgun had punched a hole in the ceiling.

"He was from the 9th."

"Guess they want you to keep your mouth shut." I had been slipping their bagman $200 a night.

"What Internal Affairs say?"

"They didn't ask us anything."

"No names?" Scottie wore the same jeans, shirt, and jacket as the previous night. His hair stuck straight up in the air, so he resembled a hobo on the run. He could use a shower.

"They knew your names. Mine too. They said they would be taling with us."

"But not tonight, but you never know." Arthur couldn't help us. We were on our own.

The Jefferson closed its doors forever. Those arrested never went to trial and the story of crooked cops was buried in the back pages of the newspapers. No one said nothing. I tried to find another job, but the summer was a tough time to get work.

Within a month we were broke. Arthur kept talking about opening another place. His wife thought he was crazy, but agreed to decorate the next venue, if he could find a place.

"Think about how we can do if it was bigger." Arthur told Scottie and me. "Bigger means more money."

"Bigger means more trouble too." I was familiar with the West Side precincts, but I had nothing going for me and said, "

“We’re with you all the way.”

Arthur’s search for the right spot took time.

Scottie glommed the bar at the Ritz and I stood at the door of the Mudd Club in the sweltering August heat.

I contemplated getting a day job, then things fell into place as Arthur found an abandoned garage on West 25th Street along with investor to finance the Continental. Arthur informed the landlord that he was opening an art gallery.

Coleen, Scottie, and I were the first people to see the place.

"It just needs a little work." The floors were caked with oil. The walls sagged with mildew, and the ceiling panels hung from the ceiling like limp tongues. "We don't have to make it livable. Only good enough to serve drinks. We can open by Labor Day."

"Who's going to do the construction?" Scottie asked, since the only time we used a hammer was to chip the ice out of the freezer.

"You guys and your friends," Arthur said without saying how. "I'm no contractor."

"How much are you going to pay?" I was only interested in money.

"Not much." Arthur was living on the edge. “But you’ll have a job at the end of it.”

"Throw in lunch and you got a deal."

"Deal." Arthur's word was good enough for Scottie and me.

Werthel, a lanky 19 year-old from the Five Towns, wanted to join the work crew. During the last months of the Jefferson his drug use had gone from daily to hourly. This job was going to be his rehab.

"Why don't you go to real rehab?" Scottie asked at the apartment that Werthel shared with his friend, Richie Boy. "Your father has money."

"I don't want my old man to know about it.” His father was a dentist. He expected big things from his son. Werthel was swearing off blow forever. He gave us the last of his stash. "Have a party."

"You mind if I take some change too." Scottie stared at a bowl filled to the brink with quarters on the glass coffee table.

"Sure, but only as much as you can grab with one hand."

Scottie snatched a handful and Werthel grabbed his wrist, so hard that Scottie's take was decreased by half.

"You're the meanest man in the New York," Richie Boy declared from the sofa. Werthel and he were schoolmates from kindergarten. No one knew him better.

"Do you guys think I'm mean?" Werthel seemed hurt by the accusation.

"I won't, if you let me take another handful." Scottie was ready for double or nothing.

"You had your chance."

"He gets another. No interference. None."

Steve glowered at me, but let Scottie have a free go at the quarters. My nickname wasn't 'Maddog' for nothing and I said to Scottie, "Let's get out of here."

The coins covered a sandwich at the nearest deli. The cocaine went fast at AM-PM, an after-hour club, abutting the exit for the Holland Tunnel. Free cocaine always had a funny way of making you too many new friends.

Breakfast was a coffee and a bagel at Dave’s Luncheonette. There was no lunch.

On Monday morning we showed up to West 25th Street. The street shimmered with heat. Arthur's craggy-faced partner waited for us. Paulie was a model, whose face had graced the cover for a Time Magazine's article on Herpes. We nicknamed Paulie HP.

"You were supposed to be here at 8." HP stood with his twin brother and a friend. Both of them wore very professional carpenter belts with hammers and nails. HP asked us, "Any of you have tools?"

"Tools?" Scottie's only tool was a beer-opener. Mine was sheer muscles.

"I'll take that as a no." HP gave the carpenter friend $40. "Go get some hammers and shit. The rest of you I don't want you talking to anyone about what we're doing. I also want you here on time. 8am. We finish when we finish. No overtime."

"What an asshole," Werthel muttered under his breath. As the meanest man in New York he could have knocked all three of them.

"We work at our pace."Working construction for below-minimum wage was my version of Hell.

Thirty minutes later we were tearing down the walls. Scottie and I loaded up metal onto a trolley. Werthel pounded the walls with a sledgehammer. Decades-old dust covered our bodies and acrid sweat poured out of our skin. Arthur showed up at noon.

"You look like asbestos miners."

"Is it lunch time yet?" Scottie was exhausted from the first physical work that he had done in years. I wasn't in much better shape, however Werthel was running on fumes of his spent addiction ready for more.

"It’s lunch when I say it's lunch." HP countermanded Scottie’s suggestion.

"Who elected you god?" Arthur snidely demanded in our defense.

"I’m paying for them to work. Not have a picnic."

"Don't be such an asshole." Arthur was our union rep and stuck out his hand to HP. "Cough up."

“Cough up what?"

"Lunch money." Arthur was counting on lunch too.

"I never said anything about free lunch." HP was a stingy as a thirteen year-old boy on his first date.

Werthel, Scottie, and I muttered 'asshole' under our breath. Arthur examined the scrap metal.

"We'll get rid of the scrap and be right back."

Arthur and Scottie rolled the trolley onto West 25th Street. The temperature would have been 95 in the shade if there were any trees. The trip took them 20 minutes. The junk dealer had given them $9. They came back with three cheese and mayo sandwiches. Werthel had brought his own, a salami and cheese with pickles on a roll. I could smell it from ten feet away.

"Lunch is over." HP complained about us taking too much time.

"I’ll talk to him." Arthur was good with people, only HP wasn’t people. By week's end we wanted to quit.

Arthur begged us to reconsider.

"You quit this asshole won't hire you at the club." Arthur was powerless to stop HP from being an asshole. I picked up a steel pipe. Arthur shook his head. "We need his money."

Werthel was supposedly attending summer school and his mother gave him a weekly stipend.

Scottie and I ate a $1 slice of pizza. We were losing weight and Werthel was getting stronger. We tried to schnorr his left-overs, but he theow the half-eaten sandwiches in the trash. Scottie and I were too proud to dig out his scraps. He was our friend, but we transferred our hatred from the model to Werthel.

The demolition got harder and dirtier. None of us knew what we were doing. Scottie was nearly decapitated by a falling slab of sheet rock, Werthel fell off the ladder, and I mashed my thumb with a hammer. Arthur suggested that I go see a doctor. HP wouldn't pay for the visit and I wrapped my thumb with a torn tee-shirt.

Worse was our constant hunger.

One day Scottie and I were begged Werthel for some money and he said, "I'll race you for a sandwich."

"Me?" Scottie was short, but very fast.

"No, Maddog." He pointed to me.

I had been a cross-country runner in high school in 1969. My best finishes were 3rd and 4th place. I had drank until dawn with Richie Boy. Vodka drowned my every pore and my legs wobbled in the heat. Werthel was wearing fresh Adidas. "Two sandwiches versus I getting your day's wages."

Arthur and Colleen got out of a cab. HP and the rest of the crew stopped working.

"You're on." My cheap work boots weren't made for a race on cobblestones.

"I'll take some of that bet." HP yelled from the loading platform. "But you have nothing to bet."

"I do.” Arthur pulled $100 from his pocket and Colleen slapped his hand. The money was meant for an over-due bill.

"Straight up." HP was giving no odds.

Arthur looked at me. "You can do it, kid?"

"No problem." Arthur was 35. I was twenty-nine. His saying 'kid' made me feel younger. I loosened up my body.

"Scottie, you hold the money." Arthur and HP handed the c-notes to Scottie. The model glared at Werthel. "If you throw the race, I'll welsh on the bet."

"I’m not throwing any bet. I’m the meanest man in the New Work.” Werthel tossed his sandwich in the trash. This race was a final test of his drug treatment. "You ready?"

"100 yards,” I said, because he was definitely faster for the first 50.

"100 yards it is." Werthel dropped his tools. Scottie was the referee. Werthel and I walked off the distance in the middle of the street. Workers from the street stood on the sidewalk. More bets were placed on Werthel. The odds were in his favor.

"You know we don't have to do this. You could give me the money for the sandwiches and I'll be your slave." I was more hungry than proud.

"No way, Maddog." Werthel walked to a manhole cover and crouched like Jesse Owens, while I stood at ease, both arms at my side.

Scottie shouted from the finish line. "On your marks. Get set. Go."

Werthel and I burst down the street. He pulled ahead. One yard. Two yards. I dropped my head and pushed harder. My feet slapped onto the hot pavement. Shouts filled my ears. We were neck and neck. Scottie was only ten yards away. I leaned forward and beat Werthel across the line by a foot. Colleen screamed with delight and HP called for a rematch. Arthur grabbed the two $100 bills.

"No rematch, Herpes Boy. He won fair and square."

I thought so too, then Arthur winked at Werthel. He gave me $10.

"Maddog? You won your sandwich. Enjoy."

Arthur handed Scottie and me $20 each. The sandwiches from the closest deli were terrible, but victory was a powerful condiment.

That Friday HP said he'd pay us at his apartment. We went to One 5th Avenue after 5. The doorman said that HP had flown to Paris to shoot a commercial about acne. We didn't see him till the following week. After Herpes paid us, Werthel called him an asshole.

"You’re fired."

"You can’t fire me. I quit." Werthel chucked a hammer at HP. The hammer quivered in the wall.

Werthel stomped off the site and HP said, "Don't even try to come to this club."

“Asshole.” Arthur was a good judge of character and we echoed his sentiment with a chorus of mutters.

Later that night we visited Werthel at his apartment. Richie Boy had a good laugh at everyone's version of the race and Scottie asked, "Werthel, how it feel to lose to an old man?"

Werthel put down his Diet-Coke.

I didn’t lose. I threw it?" "You don't like losing at anything. Even checkers when we were kids." Richie Boy was speaking from experience

"I made it look like he won." Werthel folded his arms across his chest.

"Shut up already,” Arthur sat forward on the sofa. "I saw your face. You wanted to win and thought you could beat a drunk and maybe if you hadn't eaten your sandwich before the race you could have beaten him, but he won, because he was faster."

"I could beat him now."

Werthel was right. I had drunk 5 beers. My feet, legs, and heart were on the disabled list.

"Maybe." Arthur wasn’t letting Werthel slide. "But this afternoon who was faster? Maddog was." Werthel waited several seconds and grunted with an off-center smile. "He was faster."

I have a good eye for winners." Arthur was looking at Werthel with a sly grin. "And an even better one for losers and no one’s a big a loser as HP."

"Asshole." We clinked glasses and drained our drinks. Werthel finished his Diet coke and turned to me.

"Sorry being the meanest man in the New York."

"Herpes boy HP is the meanest man in the the city. Not you." We’d get back at HP once the club opened for business. "Thanks, but I can be meaner than HP."

"As long as it's not to us, who cares." Arthur added, because while Werthel might be the meanest man in the New York, he would always be one of us and to this Werthel had nothing to say. He could only smile.

FIFA World Cup Boycott Over

..

The Winter FIFA Corld Cup of Football ended on Sunday with a frenzied finish by France to force a shoot-out won Argentina. My friends called to exclaim how great was the game to whihc I replied, "I boycotted the FIFA cup."

"It 's the greatest game in the world."

"I agree and I have watched every match in 2010, 2014, and 2014, but not a single one in 2022."

My friends chided my boycott as one man's effort in futility.

"You're not going to change anything."

And they're probably right, however my life as a criminal, poet, and working man has always contradicted the general populace's adherence to the status quo and with more than one good reason about rejecting the FIFA World Cup.

FIFA granted Qatar the rights to the World Cup over Australia after the enire organization had been bribed billions of dollars.

What Would Jesus Do?

Jesus stole money from the Temple. He only fed the people one time. The New Testament never mentioning his picking up the tab starving 1000s of people of his era. He didn't visited his mother o'er Hannukah. There is no mention of a child in the Book Of John. Except for narcissist Jesus. And this is their Nailed God. Space Messiah. May He transport all Christians to Disney's Garden Of Eden. Sei gesund. By the way taitneamh a bhaint as yule.

Oi Vey Hanukkah

For centuries Hanukkah has traditionally celebrated the victory of the Maccabees over the Alexandrine Empire, although the real battle was between the orthodox Maccabees and the secular Jews favoring the social liberalism of the Greeks. The latter were the losers and the former rededicated the Temple by lighting the eternal flame. Miraculously the oil burned eight days, instead of the expected one day, and menorah candles are a lasting reminder of that victory for the the forces of conservatism

This rite born out of conflict remains a contentious holiday.

My Jewish friends fight with their family throughout the eight days of Hanukkah. They curse those members who don't give gifts and old ills are brought up at the festive tables like the ghosts of Scroogestein.

After eight years of Obama the far right galvanized the religious fundamentalists to accept Donald Trump as the Orange Jesus. They ignored his affairs, piss perversity, financial corruption , and bald-faced treason, and so many sins, since he backed the Zionist State of Israel to the hilt with the blessing of the Hassidim. The goy celebrated Hanukkah, serving tref from McDonalds. And no one cared, since Trump pledged his support to our influential ally in the Mideast.

Go Zionist death squads.

Get revenge on the Palestinians, even though no one of them or their brethren had operated the ovens at Dachau, unlike the Sonder Commando burning their kindred souls.

Kill all the Palestinians on Hanukkah to bring back the Messiah.

What a Hanukkah Cabal.

Ho Ho Ho Hannukah

Years ago my boss' grandson came to visit her jewelry store with her husband. The holiday season had been brutal. We had yet to make a sale. While her husband parked their Landrover, Jeri taught the six-year-old how to open a safe and once the handsome lad opened the steel cube she asked, "Did you get a Hannukah gift for your mother?"

"I wanted to, but I don't know if I have enough money."

"How much you think you have?"

"$2."

"That's a lot of money. Let me see what we can find."

"I like those." Matthew pointed to a pair of sliced sapphire earring rimmed by gold.

"You have a good eye." Jeri pulled out the earrings. They cost $100. "You said you had money."

"$2." Matthew proudly emptied his coins on the counter. The boy was a goy, but his father was ein bissen Juden on his paternal side and as an Irishman I have a strong respect for tradition.

"$2 and four cents for the tax."

"Tax?"

"Yes, that's what the government charges, so we have roads and TV and lights."

Her husband and I exchanged a glance. We shared another opinion about taxes, but this was Hannukah, a night for good thoughts.

"Today, they sung a new song," interjected his grandfather.

"Ho, Ho, Ho, Hannukah."

"Do you know how to sing it?" I asked from my chair.

My youngest son in Thailand was the same age as Matthew.

Six.

I hadn't seen Fenway in over two years nor Fluke, Noy, or Angie, but I knew they loved their mothers same as Matthew loved his. The six year-old looked to Jeri and his grandfather. A smile broke over his lips and he chanted, "Ho-Ho-Ho Hannukah."

Jeri sniffed back a tear. She wanted grandchildren of her own. We are life. We are light. She kissed Matthew on the cheek.

"You're a good boychek." Jeri handed him the earrings in a pouch.

"Thank you. My mommy will be so happy."

Matthew left with his grandfather. Jeri stared at me.

"What?"

"That was our first sale of the season."

This afternoon a 68 year-old man had refused his wife a fancy-yellow diamond, because he said he didn't have the money. I believed him, but Matthew gave his every penny to make his mom happy and I was happy too, because I would have done the same for my mother and so would Jeri.

Ho-Ho-Ho-Hannukah.

New York Desolation - Poem November 30 1976

A last kiss through cold steel bars
Accompany your parting glance
Our worlds, met and joined
Drift away in this final act
Your steps echo off tunnel walls
Becoming your last trace
And they too vanish under the roar
Of the subway that gives you escape
In that moment I call out desperate
) You don't turn around and I leave the station
On Lexington Avenue the pre-dawn light takes your place
You go to your empty bed and sleep
Pretty boys on 53rd and 3rd greet me
Yawns say hello too
I ignore both
Dwelling in the past
Remembering long-lost seconds we shared at dawn
Once this pain would have crippled me
Today the agony makes my soul steel
I suppose if I wasn't so tired
I might even have cried
Only my soul has long been bankrupt
And the morning haze blocks out the sun
That cursed sun
It's no friend of mine
Nothing is now
Nothing but pain

BRIGITTE NEVER GETS OLD by Peter Nolan Smith

Ten years ago I returned to New York after a long time in Thailand. Culture shock had been minimized by staying at my friend's $2 million Ft. Greene brownstone, however after a week I had acclimatized to fat people with loud voices, young people walking with cellphones in their hands, and the lack of serious conversation. My biographer called and asked me to recount the circumstances of my exile from the Land of Smiles.

"Come meet me at Lucien’s on 1st Avenue. I'm interviewing Taylor Meade.” Dannett was a man about town. He had been a child star as a child. As a man he was still a boy and so was I.

I showed up late. The beat poet had drunk a bottle of whiskey. Dannett was conversing with a young Russian boy, Chad, who was clearly smitten with the respected obituarist’s infectious joi du mots. The magic of Dannett's perpetual youth had that effect on some people and the bon vivant introduced me with an ornate flourish, "Meet my new protege. He likes older women."

"Why doesn't he like older men?" Taylor Meade was upset with the inattention.

"Older women are more intellectual than older men."

"How's that?" I asked in search of finding an answer to why I had divorced my feeling for a married woman madly in love with me.

"Because older men are only interested in younger cock." Chad was street smart which Taylor and I both admired.

"Older men are rarely interested in anything older than themselves." My Thai wife was 24. She was pregnant with my son. I had come back to America to make another fortune. The last had been blown overseas.

"But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking. Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter," the angelic boy quoted Rimbaud and purported himself like a gentleman.

"I prefer 'I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance' It's a little more cheerful." Dannett had a repertoire of quotes memorized as a child actor.

Taylor and I contested their quotes by emptying our glasses, but I was jealous of Dannett's protege. He was 23 and looked 12. His life was life ahead of him. I was almost three times his age and no one had called me young in decades.

"An older women like cut cock," I interjected from behind a glass of wine. We laughed, as Chad assessed the intent of the statement. None of us expected him to say, "That's anti-Semitic."

"Anti-Semitic?" I was having none of this. "Chad, what does a cut cock have to do with anti-Semitism."

"Jews have their penises cut." His cheeks burned with indignation of the supposed slight.

"I was just joking."

"Jokes like that are meant for the Twentieth Century." Americans and especially young ones had lost their sense of humor after the indoctrination of political correctness.

"Lighten up, unless the mohel schobbed off too much prepuce at your Bris. You know that the mohel was buried with all the foreskin he had ever cut off?"

"Prepuce." Chad had never heard the term.

"Yes, the foreskin of Jesus." The Holy Bris of Jesus was reputed to have been preserved in a jar of spikenard and this relic has passed hands throughout the royalty of Europe. "They rubbed it for good luck and it turned into a suitcase without any wheels."

After this quip Chad excused himself from the table. Taylor followed him to the bathroom, looking to get lucky, while Dannett admonished me for riding him a little hard, however I do believe in the Freedom of Speech unlike France, whose courts had been seeking a $23,500 fine against the withered beauty, Brigitte Bardot, for inciting anti-Muslim hatred in her letter to the then Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkosy accusing the nation’s #1 minority of destroying French Culture by not listening to Johnny Hallyday or eating crepes.

I shut off Dannett's lighthearted harangue and drank my wine, thinking that maybe Chad could help her with this problem. After all he has a thing for older women, as do I, especially blue-haired heiresses dipped in Botox, then again I’m no gentleman and Brigitte Bardot never gets old in AND GOD CREATED WOMEN.

LE NECROPHILE by Peter Nolan Smith

Back in the late 1960s the biggest house in Quincy, Massachusetts was owned by a funeral director. His blonde daughters were the most beautiful girls on the South Shore in 1967 and one night they introduced the British rock trio Cream to their admirers. I was one of them. So was an apprentice embalmer for their father. The other suitors joked that Adam made love to the still bodies in the basement of the funeral home. The near-albino played a strange style of guitar. The older daughter loved his licks. Like Ulysses he slayed his rivals with a stringed weapon weapon.

A Fender Stratocaster.

One night when we were high on LSD, Cherie confessed that her boyfriend liked for her to pretend that she was dead.

"I lie on a cold stone slab."

I remembered a similar line from the film IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, in which a cracker cop asked a young white trash girl why she made love in the cemetery.

"Well this man said, "Hey, little girl, you know what the coolest spot in town is?"

And I said "No, Sam. I guess I don't."

And he said, "The cemetery. That's where."

"Cos they got all of them big, cool tombstones to lie on naked."

That was a real 'huh' moment for the movie viewers of the time.

Like what the fuck are they talking about.

I learned what later when I found the photocopied THE JOURNAL OF LUCIEN H. by Gabrielle Wittkop on the quai by the Seine selling books.

I read several passages and paid the seller fifty francs for LE NECROPHILE.

The prose brought to life the passion of a young man, who digs up bodies of the young and beautiful at the graveyards of Paris.

Gabrielle Wittkop wrote most eloquently, "She is not of the dead from whom I have grief in separating myself, the way one deplores having to leave a fiend. She certainly has a mean character, I would swear to it. From time to time she emits a deep gurgling that makes me suspicious."

This lover is dead, but he assigns the young girl lifelike mannerisms. Her resistance to him lasts only as long as the rigor mortis.

Lucien's range of lovers include young children.

He feels no guilt, since he feels as young as his lovers and he sees friend's beauty in the bloom of death.

Their fine powerful odor is that of the bombyx. It seems to come from the heart of the earth, from an empire where musky larvae trudge between the roots, where blades of mica glean like frozen silver, there where the blood of the future chrysanthemums wells up, among the dusty peat, the sulforous mire. The smell of the dead is that of a return to the cosmos, that of sublime alchemy.

Lucien is charming in his own way and when a house maid declares that he smells of vampires. He laughs inside for the common peoples' confusion between a vampire and necrophiliac.

He's cursed by his desire for the dead.

"I can't see pretty woman or handsome man without wising that they were dead."

And he is capable of love.

"Suzanne, my beautiful Lily, joy of my soul had started to marbleize with violet patches. I multiply the use of ice., I want to keep her forever."in their death

Only love and lust.

Lucien dumps her rotting body into the Seine and later remembers Suzanne with tenderness

"Hardly a day doesn't go by that I am not reminded of Suzanne. Her breasts with their large brown aureoles, her sunken in belly suspended like a tent between the two points of her hips, her sex whose memory stirs my own sex.Yet today the ivory of her bones, whit what marine life has it integrated?"

Lucien flees Paris for Naples.

The last lines are "November, which always brings me something unexpected, though it has always been prepared."

Most incredible passage of someone who loves the dead.

Not a serial killer.

Only a man cursed with the desire for death cooled flesh.

I think I have the copy up in Boston.

Probably get arrested for zombie outlawism.

It's probably on the books.

Top 10 White Trash USA Towns

www.roadsnacks.net listed the top white trash towns in the USA.

I haven't lived in any of them, although I've been to several.

Fall River, Mass. is only forty miles from the South Shore.

The methopolis leads the Bay State in assaults, welfare claims, and crime.

It wasn't that bad in the 1960s, but Fall River is only # 2.

1. ) Portsmouth, Ohio is another meth ghetto.

2. ) Fall River, Massachusetts where methheads have no season too cold or hot for their madness.

3.)Sedalia, Missouri has the Ozarks Fair for crackers and grits.

4.) Pensacola, Florida girls sport house arrest anklets.

And meth beach brawls.

5.) Morristown, Tennessee, where meth RVs are fun week out.

6.) Elkhart, Indiana likes meth RVs too.

7.) Asheboro, North Carolina, where meth tow trucks rule the parking lots.

8.) Rockford, Illinois - I've been there.

The town center was a ghost town peopled by oxycontin zombies.

9.) Canton, Ohio - nothing says white trash better than the traitor flag of the slave states.

10.) Jackson, Michigan loves Kid Rock, but truthfully white trash is just another downtrodden minority taught to be ignorant by the neglect of the ruling class.

There are good people everywhere.

Even in white trash ghettos.

THE WONDER WHEEL by Peter Nolan Smith

Memorial Day was America's introduction to summer.
It was a good day to visit Coney Island.

Ellen's Argentinean friends wanted to see the sea.
They walked on the pier.

The Atlantic was cold and the sun was hot.
They walked back to what was once The Great White Way.

The Giant Elephant was gone,
So were the bathhouses,
But the Wonderwheel stood its ground.

Ellen and the Argentines bought tickets.
Their car soared into the sky.
There were no clouds.

Only the beach, the people, and the cold green Atlantic.
From the top of the spin Ellen saw swimmers in the water.
She could feel the cold and thought, "How cold could it be?"

The hoi polloi leaping off the pier knew how cold.
Ellen took photos from the top.
Photography was her art.

None of her models went to the Freak Show.
Ellen was an artist
And artists see the truth where no one else sees it.
Even from the top of the Wonder Wheel.

The Wonder Wheel stopped at the bottom and Ellen got off the ride.
Her friends looks at her, "What next?"
She was not from New York,
But the first time she came to New York,
She came to see Coney Island.

The years had not been kind to Coney Island.
The Cyclone was ready for arson.

NBA star Stephon Marbury came from the Surfside Gardens.
He learned ball on those court.
Those boys had a tough game.

Then was a long time ago
And now was today.
Ellen turned to her friends.

"We can go to Nathans."
Her friend Peter had suggested a hot dog there.
The Argentines said, "Yes."
Nothing was more American than a hot dog
And nothing was more America than Coney Island.
Not in Brooklyn and not in 2015.

It was the world.

THANKS TO ALL THE PHOTOGRAPHERS

I LOVE YOUR WORK.