MAYBE TOMORROW - A novel by Peter Nolan Smith Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

The November sun flashed off a West Village window and the wavering reflection stalked the Christopher Street pier to a lone youth tuning a battered guitar. The bleached blonde twenty year-old broke into a sly smile and the sapphire shimmer transformed the leather boy into a fallen angel regaining his halo. Nearly every mother and father in America would have ordered their children to avoid him as the complete opposite of America's Bicentennial Spirit. His skin pallor rivaled the paleness of the rising moon and no suburban mall stocked his black leather jacket, torn T-shirt, or heavy engineer boots. Most teenagers would have obeyed their parents' command, but not all of them.

The heavenly mirage disappeared with a windmill slash against the steel strings of the Les Paul. Johnny Darling shut his eyes and envisioned a small stage. Overhead lighting enveloped a drummer, bassist, and keyboard player. A teenage Lolita rasped words of love and no tomorrows in imitation of the Velvet Underground's Nico. The imagined feedback of Marshall Amps buzzed in his ears. The audience might have materialized within his eyelids, if a young boy's voice hadn't shattered Johnny's trance.

"Hey, man."

This time of night only gay bashers and leather freaks frequented the derelict Christoper Street piers and the guitarist waited for the last chords to fade beneath the subsonic range before turning to address the intruder. The Puerto Rican teenager in a distressed leather jacket was two inches shorter than Johnny and his slanted eyes hinted at a drop of Han blood in his Taino veins. Times Square johns found Frankie Domingo pretty, despite the scars crisscrossing his seventeen year- old body. Johnny thought the same.

"Thanks for letting me finish?"

"I been waiting thirty minutes." A gust blew a shank of greased hair across

Frankie's olive eyes. "That a new song?"

"Just three chords strung together." Johnny's thumb rubbed his calloused fingertips.

"Doesn't get more basic than that." Frankie rattled off a drum roll with frayed sticks.

"Got these from Jerry Nolan at Max's Kansas City last night."

"How were the Heartbreakers?" Johnny had skipped the last night's show to entertain a customer.

"Straight and the crowd loved them." Frankie hunched his shoulders with a shiver. "They got paid a $100 each. When we gonna get a band together?"

"Now I have my guitar back, we can audition for the other members."

"Great." Frankie stepped from side to side to relieve the damp seeping through his sneakers' paper-thin soles and stammered, "Johnny, you got ten dollars?"

"The pawnshop took my last fifty." Johnny slapped his guitar.

"Damn, I wish we could get out of here." Frankie moaned like a runaway in need of a dime to phone Mom for a bus ticket home. He blew on his fingers. He hated the cold.

"To go where?"

"What about Florida?" Frankie pointed to the cars on the Westside Highway overhead and glanced south, as if the Sunshine State lay beyond the New Jersey docks. "How far away is it? Five hours?"

"More like twenty-four, if you drive straight through the night."

"What about by plane?" The young Puerto Rican's teeth chattered at a 10/10 beat.

"Where we getting the money for two plane tickets?"

"We hijack a plane. Tell them to give us a million dollars like in DOG DAY AFTERNOON?" Frankie had seen that bank robbery movie five times on 42nd Street and pumped his fist in the air. "Attica, Attica."

"Aren't you forgetting how the cops shoot Pacino's friend in the head?" "Movies aren't real." Frankie had seen enough of films on 42nd Street. "DOG DAY AFTERNOON was based on a real bank robbery."

"It was?"

"Yeah, but it ended the same way. With his friend dead." The guitarist grabbed the young boy's thin arm.

"Your parents live in Florida. That sounds like a ‘happy ever' after to me. If you called them, would they wire you money to come home?"

"Yes, and tomorrow night we'll be eating my Mom's homemade apple pie." "I love apple pie." Frankie licked his lips.

"Only one problem." Johnny gestured toward Manhattan.

"Don't say what I think you're going to say."

"I'm not leaving this behind."

"Fuck this city?" Frankie spun on his heels and chucked the battered drumsticks into the river. "All I got here are hustles, an empty stomach and the smell of old man's hands on my skin, and you don't have it much better."

Johnny slipped the guitar into its case and walked toward the elevated highway. "I left Florida for the same reason you want to run away from New York."

"I hope this isn't an intro to the gypsy lady story."

"Why not? The first day I arrived here, this fortune teller in the Village read my palms. LEft for the past. Right for the future. She said my name was destined to be up in lights." Johnny stopped on the curb of West Street and turned to Frankie. "Me and you are going to make it here as rock stars."

"But not tonight." Frankie kicked an empty beer can into the gutter.

"No, not tonight." Johnny couldn't lie to his protege. "Tomorrow Max's will put on a turkey feast for us orphans."

"So tonight?" Frankie could handle anything as long as he was with Johnny.

"Tonight we go to work." The uptown light on West Street changed to green and suburb-bound cars accelerated to catch up with the synchronized signals.

"53rd and 3rd?" Frankie had had his fill of the sissies at those piano bars.

Across the street men prowled the sidewalks in search of nameless sex. There was success for all in the shadows. A few lurked between the trucks parked underneath the elevated highway. How they were celebrating the night before Thanksgiving was no mystery.

"No, tonight we're competing with midnight cowboy crowd."

"Times Square?" Frankie sighed with resignation.

"Times Square is about luck."

"Heads I win, tails you lose and never give a sucker a break."

"Exactly."

"How I look?" Johnny slung the case's strap over his shoulder and pulled up the collar of his torn leather jacket.

"Like a prince." Frankie once more blew on his numb hands. He was cold. "Where anyone from Jerome Avenue meet a prince?"

"My grandmother read fairy tales. They really have princes and princesses?"

"Real as you and me, except they were born in a palace. Not a Barrio in the Bronx or Queens." The chilled air scrapped over Johnny's right lung like a boat striking a reef and he touched his chest. His cough wasn't a cold.

"You meet one?" Frankie was oblivious to his friend's discomfort.

"Not this side of the silver screen." Johnny fought off the shakes, feeling his ‘jones' knocking on the door. "Princes and princesses are like any suckers. We meet one and what we do?"

"We take them for everything." Frankie snapped his fingers.

"And leave them begging for more." The ache faded from Johnny's chest and he draped his arm over the younger boy. "Just one more thing."

"I know what you're going to say." Their conversation tended to be scripted rituals on these occasions.

"You're going to tell me not to trust anyone."

"Trust no one is survival rule # 1 in New York." Times Square killed lots of people who broke that rule. "That means me too."

"I'm a big boy." Frankie accepted the warning, since his childhood had revealed the worst New York had to offer the young.

"Then let's head to Times Square." Johnny dashed onto West Street.

"Watch out, Johnny."

Two taxis swerved to avoid the guitarist.

"For what? I'm going to live forever," Johnny shouted from the other side of the street. Believing in anything other than his immortality was a sacrilege, at least until he reached twenty-one and that birthday was more than a year away and a year was an eternity when you were twenty.

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The Ghosts Of Times Square

Throughout 70s and 80s the Times Square thrived as a haven for XXX theaters, go-go girls, pimps, whore houses, rent boys, hustlers, thieves, dealers, and lowlifes on the make.

Police and city authorities declared the area as DMZ for crime and sex and the 1977 debut of Show World across 42nd Street from the Port Authority Bus Terminal was the high-water mark for Times Square's Era of Errors.

Successive mayors attempted to clean up 42nd Street, but the Mafia-owned establishments relied on the Free Speech Amendment to protect their wicked fiefdom. Finally in 1995 Rudy Giuliani enacted in radical adult zoning laws and the Deuce's magnificent wickedness ended the following year with the closure of every XXX theaters and porno shops.

I happened to be walking on West 42nd Street on that rainy day in 1987.

Aficionados of perversity cried on the sidewalk, as the moving crews loaded their salacious merchandise onto trucks. Urban planners had rented spaces to major retailers and restaurants, including Disney. The disgruntled XXX patrons stood outside in tears chanting, "Fuck Mickey Mouse."

Later that evening a friend of mine lamented the disappearance of Times Square.

"NYC has been thrown into a blender and homogenized into a bland and boring urban pastiche. This city once had character and disparate neighborhoods. Now it's just numbingly the same wherever you go. I was driving around the city yesterday and occurred to me that downtown-uptown, west-east, it all looked the same now. Same store fronts, same hideous developer apartment buildings, same gourmet coffee, same gentrifications, same shame."

My friend wasn't speaking about egg creams and luncheonettes, although those hallowed institutions have been replaced by Starbucks and Burger King.

While Times Square's wickedness disappeared like the Wicked Witch of the West melting in the WIZARD OF OZ, we still retain our memories.

Divine Wickedness.

ps Fuck Guiliani.

Times Square Redux

Since the onset of Covid in March 2020 New York had been cut off from the rest of the world and also the USA. Americans were scared by the reports of crime and foreigners were banned from flying to JFK, however in the last months the restrictions have been downgraded to allow vaccinated international travelers to enter the States.

On a Friday in November 2021 my godson Edward Brial arrived at JFK airport en route to visit his girlfriend studying at Cornell. He was traveling to Ithaca by bus and we met at the Port Authority once the most wicked bus terminals in America. I was surprised by the sheer volume of people coming to New York and going to destinations near and far. Times were changing, although I preferred the void of last winter, when the city belonged to us again. That desolation had never been destined to last long.

We had time to kill and I suggested a beer.

“You’re not bothered by my drinking.”

“Not at all. It’s been over a hundred days since my last drink and I’m quits.” I haven’t had the least urge to reclaim by life as a hard drinker. My life depended on this strict regime and I was happy just to be with Edward, who has called me the Brown Ranger in his youth. We chose the Beer Authority. Ed had a draft and I ordered a cranberry juice. He had just been in Glasgow attending the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

“There was a lot of hope, but the corporations have no interest in stopping their rape of the planet.”

“Sadly the vast majority of people reject any action that would result in the end of cars and potato chips. The entire capitalist system has been ruined by the shifting of industry to Asia. We have no factories. No industry and no control over the production of everything other than more pollution with the advent of AI robotics. Everyone wants to think they are not the problem and that type of thinking is a barrier to a real solution. World population 2050. 500 million.”

Edward rejected my view. His foundation worked on reshaping agriculture for poor farmers in India. He hoped to avoid the impending doom and I changed to subject to my impending appointment to be the writer-in-residence at London's Goodenough University for the Head Chancellor, my good friend Alice Walpole. His departure was scheduled for 6pm and we walked over to the bus station. I was surprised to see an advertising poster for XXX films and books at the stairs leading down to the entrance of the A Train. Edward took a photo and I explained how in 1989 Mayor Guiliani had closed most of these shops to allow Disney and various other family-flavored franchises to replace the streets of sin.  "Successive mayors attempted to clean up 42nd Street, but the Mafia-owned establishments relied on the Free Speech Amendment to protect their wicked fiefdom. Finally in 1995 Rudy Giuliani enacted in radical adult zoning laws and the Deuce's magnificent wickedness ended the following year with the closure of every XXX theaters and porno shops. I happened to be walking on West 42nd Street on that rainy day in 1987. Aficionados of perversity cried on the sidewalk, as the moving crews loaded their salacious merchandise onto trucks. Urban planners had rented spaces to major retailers and restaurants, including Disney. The disgruntled XXX patrons stood outside in tears chanting, "Fuck Mickey Mouse."  When I finished, we passed the subterranean 300 Video Center, where time resisted the will of an evil Mayor. "We still have someplace to go. We wicked." I bid Edward adieu at the station and walked him to the gate for his upstate bus. It was the right thing to do. And while I have stop drinking 100%, I might participate in some wickedness in the months to come. As the Spanish director Luis Bunuel once said, “There is no pleasure without sin.” Nothing like his film BELLE DU JOUR with Catherine Deneuvue.

Meeting Sharon 1978 - The Nursery

The first time I ever saw Sharon she was not physically in the movie theater, but up on silver screen of a Times Square theater fellating the pizza boy’s cock, while doggie styling the man acting as her husband. Neither of the men were particularly attractive, probably so the audience might identify with them, however Sharon was a young brunette with a lithe acrobat’s body. Her ass was perfectly curved and her belly pouting with the right amount of fat. Her breasts were small. Almost like a boy. Once the action started, she became an animal unleashed on mankind. 

It was obvious neither man on the screen had any idea what to do with her and the director was also at a loss with this vixen, so she released the pizza boy’s cock and looked over her shoulder at the camera, a pink tongue snaked out to lick at cock-bruised lips, then her hand reached back to pull apart her asscheeks to provide the cameraman a better shot at the stiff penis rooting her vagina. She moaned, “Oh, yeah, fuck me, baby!” then dropped her head down onto the pizza boy’s cock, until the head lodged in her gullet. 

It wasn’t a deep throat, but I had my zipper down and cock in hand mimicking each thrust of the man from behind. Every man in the theater came together, as the pizza boy spattered the brunette’s face with a load of cum and her ‘husband’ blew his wad over her flawless ass.   

After leaving the theater I searched the porno shops for any photos of this slut, but found none. I asked the clerk overlooking the aisle, if he had any glossy mags with her and he sadly shook his head. “I know exactly who you’re talking about. I got nothing. That’s her first film, but trust me we ain’t seen the last of her yet.”  

Since the porno industry was centered in LA, I figured she was never coming to New York. A wraith in my fantasies and dreams.

Three weeks later I was playing the SLASH pinball machine at the Nursery, an after-hour club in the East Village. My fingers twitched over the buttons and my hip banged the machine, so the ball defied gravity beyond any of Newton’s laws. The score fast approached ‘best ever’, then someone bumped into the side and tilted the machine. I turned to the right, ready to swear, then my mouth went numb upon seeing the brunette in the shag-cut from the movie. 

Her lingerie barely hid any skin and she appeared to have just fucked her way through the entire bar. Stiletto heels gave her another three inches of height and she regarded at me imperiously, as she asked, “What are you looking at?”

“You t-t-tilted the machine,” I stammered, but before I could tell her how much I enjoyed her film, she snapped her fingers loud enough to be heard over the Ramones and two gnarly bikers grabbed me by the arms. In less than three seconds I found myself out on the sidewalk, exiled from Eve. 

Several thieves lurked in the shadows, ready to pounce on any hapless drunk. I scrambled to my feet to show that I was not worth the trouble. Skanky whores lined Third Avenue and junkies popped into the fleabag hotels for a quick shot. The arctic wind sent a shiver through my body. I only wore a thin leather jacket, a tee shirt, and torn jeans. I didn’t care, because I was

She only took a minute to come out alone. A tight-high rabbit fur coat covered her near-naked body. A gust of chilled wind blew the bangs off her face. Herr eyes coldly examine me before she stepped forward, opening her coat and pressing her fatless body to me. Her teeth nipped at my ear, before she asked breathlessly, “Well, where we going?”

“If it was warmer, I’d fuck you right here in the street.” I looked across the street to the Victor Hotel. It was a flophouse, but close. She smiled lewdly, then commented, “How romantic!”

“You have a problem with it?” I asked, fingering her ingrown nipples to erection.The style with which her hand rubbed my crotch told me neither of us should confuse this moment with love. We exchnaged no words crossing the avenue or climbing the hotel’s creaking stairs to room 33. The 40-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling was enough to light the room, as she shrugged off the coat. 

Standing with her legs spread and arms akimbo she let me admire her body for several seconds before dropping to her knees. Her hands expertly undid my zipper and withdrew my iron-hard cock. With one hand gripping my balls the actress’ mouth slithered onto my shaft like a snake swallowing its prey, proving the scene in the film had not depended on special effects. Her tongue flickered under my cock’s throbbing vein, while her hands wantonly rubbed that nether area behind my balls. Normally I would have shot right then, but she fell back onto the floor, then crawled onto the soiled bed. 

 I fingered her ingrown nipples to erection.

“Get naked!” the brunette commanded, then swiftly undid her bra and slipped out of her panties. Her thighs spread and she reached down to her vagina with both hands, so the fingertips peeled back her labia to reveal a wet slick cunt. 

My jacket hit the floor first, then I threw my tee shirt in the corner. My pants only came down to my knees, as I shuffled across the dusty floor to the bed. Kneeling between her legs, my tongue torpedoed into her warm wetness, as my hands wrestled off my boots and jeans. 

“Suck on my asshole!” She pleaded, as her middle fingers desperately scratched at her thickening clit. The tip of my tongue ricocheted off the sides of her inner ass before striking at her wrinkled asshole. Each time I pressed the flat of my tongue to the coppery pucker, the muscle flexed in jerks. Her panting became more frenzied, as my tongue probed through her sphincter like a harpoon.

Thinking she needed something more inside, I enlisted my thumb for his anal expedition, only to have her knock my hand away.  I couldn’t argue and lapped at her now clean asshole, until she shivered uncontrollably and her free hand seized my hair to pull my face forward. He fingers were a blur on her clit, as she called out, “Oh, yeah, fuck! FUCK! FUCCCCCK!!!”

Her spine arched and labia throbbed, as she came with a vengeance. I half-expected her to spend some time graining her breath, yet she rolled onto her stomach and begged, “Fuck me with your cock! Fuck me like a mercenary!”

Both her hands gripped her ass apart, so there was no mistaking where she wanted my cock. I stabbed forward and buried my cock, till the head rammed against her cervix. I had never felt so big and she told me the same, cooing, “Oh, baby, it’s so big. Split me in half with that log. It hurts so good!”

I fucked her like a barbarian fucking a nun who had been praying for Jesus’ violation all her life. Her pussy juice dripped from her cunt and formed a creamy froth around my shaft, as the walls of her steaming hole clamped on my member like we were two dogs in heat. The room stunk of her come and I bucked into her hole, as she screamed, “Fuck me harder!”

The guest in the next room banged on the wall, as I rammed in and out, until a geyser of sperm boiled out of my balls and erupted from my cock into her cunt. She moaned slavishly, as I milked the last shutters of pleasure from my orgasm. 

When I rolled onto my side, my heart pounding, my skin sheeted with sweat, and my lungs sucked of any air, she slithered down the bed to slurp up every trace of our mutual slime on my cock and balls. Finished she licked her lips, then stuck a finger into her slit. Bringing the tip to my lips, I sucked the ooze from her digit. She kissed me with cum-stained lips and said, “You’re sweet. My name’s Sharon.”

“I know. I saw your film ABDUCTION OF JOY.” I groaned, as her fingers stroked my penis back to hardness.   

"How was I."

“You were great.” I squirmed, as she pinched my nipple. I returned the favor to her once-again inverted nipple, and she squealed, “I bet you say that to all the girls in fuck films.”

“Yeah, all the time.” I wished it was true, but she was the only woman I had ever met who fucked on film. We fucked two more times before I crashed out between her thighs. When I woke, Sharon was dressed and at the door. I asked, “Where you going?”

She posed like a tart, sticking out her ass before throwing on her coat. 

“You need any money for a taxi?” I sleepily reached for my jeans, which seemed farther from the bed than I remembered.

“No, I’m good. We’ll see you around.” Sharon blew me a kiss and the door slammed shut before I could ask for her telephone number. I lay back in bed, then picked up my Levis. Going through the pockets I discovered why she hadn’t needed taxi fare. Sharon had ripped me off for every dollar and penny. Pulling on my jeans and boots, I swore madly, then ran out into the street, but the only person in sight was an old wino crumpled on the corner of East 19th Street. 

Across the street the dregs of the evening stumbled out of the after-hours club. I supposed I could have gone inside to see, if Sharon was there, but confronting her in a drug-maddened den of iniquity might prove a little more than dangerous to my health. She had fucked me and fucked me good, so I called it a night and walked home, thinking that she had gotten what she deserved. Next time it would be vice versa and next time wasn’t a long time coming.

Nothing 2015

Someone once told me, "How you spend New Year's Day is how you will spend the rest of the year."

After a pleasant dinner west of Times Square I walked down 42nd Street to catch the N train at 7th Avenue. The sidewalks were crowded with revelers and the police were struggling to load a drunken overweight female onto a NYPD golf cart. Alcohol had turned her bones to Jello and she slipped from their grasp like a greased pig. I was glad that I was neither the cops or the drunk woman. Neither were starting the New Year in Paradise.

Instead of heading back to Brooklyn I rode the train to 5th Avenue and 60th Street. My boss Jeri was on holiday in Florida. Her two pugs needed company until her return. Jeri lived on Madison Avenue. The dogs and I were good friends. The doorman greeted me with a smile.

"Happy New Year."

"To you too." I had drunk wine and champagne throughout the evening. It was barely 2am. I intended on being in bed within minutes.

I entered the luxurious 12th floor apartment. The dogs, Samson and Delilah leapt from from puppy pad and howled 'Hallo' or at least it sounded like 'Hallo' to me. I cut them up an apple for treats and stripped off my suit. The dogs wanted to sleep with me.

"You got it, puppy dogs."

I lifted them into bed and joined them under the covers. I called my daughter in Thailand. It was her 11th birthday. I wished her 'Sawadee wan hurt'. Angie asked when was I coming to see her. It had been over two years.

Two tough years.

One of them working in a metal shop.

One of them hardly working at all.

"I'm coming soon," I told her in Thai. "Lak khun, luk."

I hung up the phone and laid back on the pillows.

They were softer than mine in Brooklyn.

The dogs were snoring a soft song of sleep.

I joined them within seconds.

Sleeping with dogs wasn't a bad choice to spend New Year's Day, but my real goal was to do nothing.

Nothing at all.

It was almost as easy as sleeping with dogs.

A Personal Ban On New Year's Eve

Rain pounded the Brooklyn streets in sheets on the last night of 2018. Shannon and Charlotta traveled to a Fellini soiree on Park Slope. I had planned to spend the evening with Doctor Nepola, except on Sunday I discovered my old college friend invitation was for Christmas Eve.

"Opps."

Geoffery invited me to a Lesbian party in Bushwick.

"There might be ten people there."

"Food?"

"Pizza."

"I like pizza, but the only pizza in that neighborhood in Dominos. Drink?"

"Shots of Bourbon."

"Jack Daniels almost killed me in 1970." Foreign consprators had tried to the same to Cary Grant in NORTH BY NORTHWEST.

"It's a ten minute walk from my house. The B54 runs to my corner. That's your bus, right?"

"I'll think about it."

I hung up and popped the cork of a bottle of Frexenet sparkling wine. I liked how Spanish had Xs.

The dawn was breaking on Sri Racha and Wat Singh. I called my children in Thailand. I wished my wives 'Sawadee Pii Mai'.

My daughter was born on January 1. She was named after my mother.

I have loved her from the moment of conception.

Angie's fifteen.

I am lucky to have her in my life.

Same as my son Fenway.

Noy

Noy.

Flukster.

And crazy little Pen.

"You go out tonight?" asked Mem from the other side of the world.

Nu asked the same.

I told them the same thing.

"I'm staying home. Kin Khao Kundeo. Dim Kundeo. Mii Monsoon."

"I hated winter rain.

I phoned Ty Spaulding in Hawaii. We had met in the Himalayas in 1990. He was going to the movies in Honolulu.

I told him about the rain.

I wished it was snow.

I come from Maine.

When I was a young boy, winter was winter.

Not anymore, but no one now wants to hear about the then-before.

"Is it snowing." Ty wasn't a fan of snow.

"Not at all. Rain and lots of it. I'm not leaving the house."

""Harder than Oahu."

"Yes, and colder."

Ty loves his island.

So do I.

What was there not to love about Oahu?

It's New Year's Eve 2019.

The rain has let up.

A half million people awaited the dropping of the ball in Times Square.

I might have seen it once, maybe twice.

I remember being with the Prince of the Night.

Arthur Weinstein.

We were in the MTV control room two stories about Broadway.

A top executive sneered at the hoi polloi below him and Arthur said out the side of his mouth, "Without them you are nothing."

Only the executive and I heard those words.

The exec cringed with rejection.

Arthur's club THE WORLD was the best in the city. He knew cool better than anyone. The executive knew nothing but profit.

The rain stopped tonight.

Hundreds of thousands of people are stuck inside the police cordons.

There is no leaving for security reasons.

Drones float overhead. Cameras studied the crowd. No drinking allowed.

Yet at ten seconds to the new year and the masses count together.

"Five-four-three-two-one." The voices of the people.

Happy 2019.

One and all everywhere in the world.

And I am happy.

Because I am not wet.

Good night and sweet dreams."

GASLIGHT PINBALL by Peter Nolan Smith

Pinball was banned as a game of chance in New York City throughout most of the 20th Century.

In 1976 a pinball wizard proved the contrary to a courtroom by calling out his shots to the amazed judges.

The ace later acknowledged that his called shot was pure luck, however pinball machines once more populated amusement arcades and bars. Coming from Boston I had spent hundreds of dollars in the amusement arcades along Washington Street, honing my skills on the slanted playing field.

In 1976 I quit my job as a substitute teacher in Boston and moved to New York in a stolen car. I lived in Park Slope and ran the lunch at a gay restaurant near the UN. For being the waiter, cook, busboy, barman, and cashier from 10am-3:30pm, I earned about $50 a day.

After work I wandered over New York's premier entertainment area. Times Square was packed with porno store, go-go bars, massage parlors, XXX movie houses, bars, and amusement centers, which were filled with good players. The best was a Frenchman. We competed head to head once a week. Michel had soft hands. His flipper work was extraordinary. He won most of the time, but not always.

Michel worked as a bartender in Park Slope. The Gaslight Pub on 7th Avenue had cheap drinks, a good jukebox, a few beautiful girls from the neighborhood, and a great pinball machine. It was also two blocks from the apartment that I shared with a gay jazz impresario.

The straight crowd at the bar didn't like queers. James didn't care whether they liked him or not. He was a drinker and bought drinks for the old regulars, who never questioned his largess, especially since I was friends with Davie Corr, an insane bank robber, who once robbed three banks in Flatbush back to back to back.

Whenever a stranger challenged me to a pinball game, Davie backed my play. A dollar for 1000 points. I sometimes won by 100,000. A c-note was a good money for a game of skill.

Michel and I battled regularly on SLASH. I maintained an advantage since he couldn't leave the bar long enough to get into his rhythm.

One night I entered the Gaslight and ordered a Jack and coke. The men at the bar kept turning their head to the corner, where a dark-haired skinny girl with big breasts was bumping the pinball machine with her pelvis like she was on a burlesque stage. The brunette was wearing a band-aid of a mini-skirt and a skimpier tube-top showing skin was as white as a zombie. Stiletto heels made her my height.

Michel lifted his eyebrow and leaned over the bar.

"She had been playing like that for an hour."

"Non-stop?"

"Non-stop." He motioned with his head to go play with her. She wasn't his type. He liked black girls.

"Anyone play with her?"

"No one here good enough to beat her."

"Thanks for that vote of confidence."

At that time I had a theory that the way someone danced was the way they made love. Extending this hypothesis to pinball was a leap of faith and I asked the pinball player, if I could play a game.

"Pinball?" Her voice was pure Flatbush. She was a hometown girl.

"It's the only game in here." I slotted a dollar's worth of quarters into SLASH. We played for a half-hour. I beat her by only thousands, since I was mesmerized by how savagely her hips thumped the machine. After the tenth tilt I risked a slap in the face and asked, "Do you make love the same way you play?"

"Only one way to find out."

She drained her drink and took my hand. I waved goodnight to Michel. James was walking down the block with two tough boys. He was into rough trade. Seeing me with Fran he smirked at the both of us without saying a word. He knew better than to cockblock a friend.

Fran lived a few blocks away from the bar. She taught kindergarten. I told her about teaching in South Boston during the busing riots. Her school was in Bed-Stuy. Her pupils were good kids. None of them ever saw her this way.

"Enough talk about school." She pulled me inside her ground-floor apartment and secured a series of locks. The windows were covered by heavy curtains. She didn't bother to switch on the lights.

"I have a crazy ex-boyfriend. He won't leave me alone." Fran stripped off my clothes, then kneeled on the floor and shucked off my jeans. "You don't mind if we do it on the floor. I like it that way."

"Not at all."

It took Fran three seconds to naked. She left on the high heels. They scraped over the wooden floor like spurs on a horse's back. Her white skin was covered with baby powder and she left a trail across the room. Her pelvis was breaking my bones, but she wouldn't let me go, not even when someone knocked on the door.

It was her ex-boyfriend.

"Fran, I know you're in there." He called out her name and pounded on the door.

"Don't stop. He'll go away." She humped upward with the same power as when she had been playing pinball. I was her SLASH and there was only one way for her to tilt me.

The ex-boyfriend left the front door only to bang on the window. The good kindergarten teacher whispered dirty talk in my ear and whimpered out a moan of release.

"That was good."

"For me too." It was more wicked and I had no intention of leaving her apartment, until I was certain that her ex-boyfriend was gone. We did it again.

Back at the Gaslight Pub Michel set me up with a beer. I was exhausted from the first, second, and third times. James was in the back with his boys. He pretended not to see me. The rest of the bar was drunk. I had been gone two hours.

"So how was it?"

Normally I never discussed the secrets of the bedroom with another man, however Fran and I hadn't used her bedroom and Michel was a fellow pinball player.

"She did it just like she played pinball."

"I thought so." Michel winked at me.

Fran was back at the machine.

I went over to the pinball machine. My pelvis was bruised and my hands were weak. I tilted SLASH on the first go and that lack of skill had nothing to do with luck. Fran won with ease.

She was good at pinball, but better at another game and that was winning.

After all pinball was good a game of chance."

maybe tomorrow chapter 1

The November sun set behind the Jersey Palisades and flashed a feeble ray off a West Village window. The wavering reflection stalked the Christopher Street pier to a lone youth tuning a battered guitar. The blonde twenty year-old appeared unaware of the approaching glow, then he broke into a smile shy of surprise, as the sapphire shimmer transformed the leather boy into a fallen angel regaining his halo.

Nearly every parent in America would have ordered their children to avoid this heresy to the Bicentennial Spirit. His skin pallor rivaled the paleness of the rising moon and no suburban mall stocked his black leather jacket, torn t-shirt, or heavy engineer boots. Most teenagers would have obeyed their mothers and fathers, but not all of them and the guitarist disintegrated the heavenly mirage with a windmill slash of his fingers against the steel strings of his Les Paul. The chords sizzled in his ears and Johnny Darling shut his eyes to envision a small stage.

Overhead lighting enveloped a drummer, bassist, and keyboard player whose music meshed the Kingsmen with the MC5. A teenage Lolita rasped words of love and no tomorrows in imitation of the Velvet Underground’s Nico. The imagined feedback of Marshall Amps buzzed in his ears and the audience might have materialized within his eyelids, if a young boy’s voice hadn’t shattered Johnny’s trance.

“Hey, man.”

This time of night only gay bashers and leather freaks frequented the derelict docks. The guitarist waited for the last coda to disappear beneath the subsonic range and turned to address the intruder.

The Puerto Rican teenager in a distressed leather jacket was two inches shorter than Johnny and his slanted eyes hinted the taint of Chinese blood. Some Times Square johns found Frankie Domingo pretty, despite the multitude of scars crisscrossing his seventeen year-old wrists, front and back. Most of those wounds hadn’t not come from fights.

“Thanks for at least letting me finish?”

“I been waiting thirty minutes.” A gust off the river blew a shank of greased hair across the young latino's eyes. “That a new song?”

“Just three chords strung together.” Johnny rubbed his calloused fingertips. The mirrored incandescence waded into Manhattan.

“Doesn’t get more basic than that.” Frankie rattled off a drum roll with frayed sticks. “Got these from Jerry Nolan at Max’s Kansas City last night.”

“How were the Heartbreakers?” Johnny had skipped the last night’s show for a date with a customer. Business had to come before pleasure for hustlers.

“Great and the crowd loved them.” Frankie shivered with hunched shoulders. It was getting colder. “I saw them get paid $100 each. When we gonna have a band?”

“Now I got my guitar back, we can audition for the other members.”

“Great.” Frankie stepped from side to side, as the damp seeped through his sneakers’ paper-thin soles, and then stammered, “Johnny, you got ten dollars?”

“The pawnshop took my last fifty.” Johnny slapped his guitar. It had been out of his hands for two weeks.

“Damn, I wish we could get out of here.” Frankie moaned like a runaway in need of a dime to phone Mom for a bus ticket home, but frankie had no one at home in the Bronx.

“And go where?”

“What about Florida?” Frankie glanced south, as if the Sunshine State lay beyond the New Jersey docks. “It got beaches and sunshine and palm trees. How far away is it? Five hours?”

“More like twenty–four, if you drive without stopping.”

“What about by plane?” The young Puerto Rican’s teeth chattered at a 10/10 beat.

“Where we getting the money for two plane tickets?” Johnny was down to his last$5.

“We could hijack a plane. Tell them to give us a million dollars like in DOG DAY AFTERNOON?” Frankie had seen that film five times on 42nd Street and each time pumped his fist in the air to Pacino's cry, “Attica, Attica.”

“Aren’t you forgetting how the cops shoot Pacino’s friend in the head?”

“Movies aren’t real.” Frankie had seen enough of films on 42nd Street.

“DOG DAY AFTERNOON is based on a real bank robbery.”

“It was?” The drummer shook in his sneakers.

“Yeah, it didn’t have a happy ending either.” The guitarist grabbed the young boy’s arm, which was almost as thin as his own.

“Your parents live in Florida.” That was a fairy tale ‘happy ever after' to him after living on the street for years.

”So what?” Johnny’s mother and father were Frankie’s answer to everything.

”You called them, then they wire you money to come home?” Frankie lifted his eyebrows in hope of hearing Johnny say ‘yes’.

“Yes, they wire the money and tomorrow night we eat my Mom’s home-made apple pie.” Teasing the young boy with this dream of warm weather and a full belly was cruel, but Johnny couldn’t help himself.

“I love apple pie.” Frankie licked his lips.

“Only one problem.” Johnny gestured toward Manhattan to reel the young drummer back to reality.

“Don’t say what I think you’re going to say.”

“I’m not leaving this behind.” The Drifters' lyrics floated in his ears. He could make it here just Rudy Lewis sang on ON BROADWAY.

“Fuck this city?” Frankie spun on his heels and chucked the battered drumsticks into the river. “All I got here are hustles, an empty stomach and the smell of old man’s hands on my skin, and you don’t have it much better.”

“That’s true.” Johnny slipped the guitar into its case and walked toward the elevated highway. ”But I ran away from Florida for the same reason you want to run away from New York.”

“I hope this isn’t an intro to the gypsy lady story.”

“Why not? It’s true. The first day I arrived here, a gypsy lady in the Village read my palm for free. She liked my eyes and said my name was destined to be up in lights and I’m going to make it here. It was her who gave me the name Johnny Darling.” Johnny stopped on the curb of West Street. “Me and you are going to make it here as rock stars.”

“But not tonight.” Frankie kicked an empty beer can into the Hudson.

“No, not tonight.” Johnny couldn’t lie to Frankie. “What were you doing the night I met you?”

“I was at the hot dog stand across the bus terminal talking to these guys from Jersey.”

“Two chicken hawks wanting to rape you was none of my business.” Minding your own business was one of the first rules in New York.

“And you’ve never explained why you helped me.” Frankie blew on his hands, warming the tips.

“Yeah, and I’m not going to now, but since that day you and me have been a team and that’s more than what most people got in this city. Tomorrow Max’s will serve up a turkey dinner for us orphans and we’ll be okay tomorrow, right?”

“And what about tonight?” Frankie could handle anything as long as he was with Johnny.

“Tonight it’s time to go to work.” The uptown light on West Street changed to green. Cars accelerated to catch up with the synchronization of the signals.

“53rd and 3rd?” Frankie had had his fill of the sissies at those piano bars.

“We’re not competing with the midnight cowboys tonight.”

Across the street the bars filled with men in search of nameless sex. A few lurked between the trucks underneath the elevated highway. It was no mystery how they planned on celebrating the night before Thanksgiving.

“Times Square then?” Frankie sighed with resignation.

“Times Square is all about luck.”

“Luck being when head I win, tails you lose and never give a sucker a break.”

“You’re learning fast.” Not all of Johnny’s lessons were good advice for a young boy, but they had kept him alive for now.

“I try.” Frankie regarded the snow-skinned guitarist as a veteran of the streets.

“How I look?”Johnny slung the case’s strap over his shoulder and pulled up the collar of his torn leather jacket.

“Like a prince.” Frankie stuck his frozen hands in his leather jacket.

“Where anyone from Jerome Avenue meet a prince?” Johnny was two inches taller, ten pounds lighter, blonde and white than the teenager. Johns cruised him and ignored Frankie, unless they were after young meat.

“My grandmother read me fairy tales.” The old lady had only read Frankie the ones with happy endings asked, “They really have princes and princesses?”

“Real as you and me, except they were born in a palace, instead of a dumpy apartment.” The chilled air scrapped over Johnny’s right lung like a boat striking a reef. He spat out an unpleasant taste and touched his chest wishing his fingers cure whatever festered beneath his ribs.

“You meet one?” Frankie was oblivious to his friend’s discomfort.

“Not this side of the silver screen.” Johnny fought off the shakes, figuring his ‘jones’ was knocking on the door. “Princes and princesses are like any suckers. We meet one and what we do?”

“We take them for everything.” Frankie snapped his fingers.

“And leave them begging for more.” The ache faded from Johnny’s chest and he draped his arm over the younger boy. Family might more suitably define their relationship, except they were more comfortable with never saying what they were to each other. “Just one more thing.”

“I know what you’re going to say.” Their conversation were scripted rituals on these occasions.

“You’re going to tell me not to trust anyone.”

“Trust no one is survival rule # 1 in New York.” Times Square killed people, who broke that rule and he turned to Frankie. “And that means me too.”

“I’m a big boy.” Frankie accepted the warning with stubborn resignation, for his childhood had revealed the worst of what the New York had to offer the young.

“Then let’s head to Times Square.” Johnny dashed across West Street between two taxis. Both vehicles swerved to avoid hitting the guitarist and he arrived on the other side without a scratch.

“I’m going to live forever,” Johnny told himself. Believing in anything other than his immortality would have been a sacrilege, at least until he reached twenty-one and that birthday was more than a year away and a year was an eternity when you were only twenty.

December 20, 1978 - East Village - Journal

My Christmas shopping is nearly complete, except for my brother Frank and sister Pammie, but accomplishing that should be easy thanks to a bet at OTB with Bill Yusk coming through. Wise Philip at Aqueduct. An unexpected boon thanks to a dream about the race. Like DH Lawrence's The Unrealistic Dream Of A Horse Rider. A naked man with a cowboy har riding a bathtub gave me a name. Wise Philip. I had once dreamed him before and Bill and I had bet of Johnny D ridden by Stevie Cauthen. The naked man came through again. I told Bill to not talk about this to anyone.

"It might break the link."

LATER

Alice called from West Virginia and said, "I want to travel."

Her father had given her an Amex card for Christmas. She didn't mention anything about her missed period. She hasn't said anything about an abortion either. I'm thinking about being a father. She doesn't really want to have a baby. She hasn't said anything, but she wants to be an actress and there aren't too many roles for pregnant women in the movies.

I want to travel too and not just to West Virginia, but Boston is the only possible destination for the foreseeable future. It's been over four years since I hitchhiked to California, something I had done three times from 1972 to 1974. I've been stuck here on the East Coast for years. I doubt I'll ever hit the road again.

Alice on the other hand could leave me in a heartbeat and I couldn't blame her. Her absence was felt this week as I walked home from CBGBs along the dark street hurried by winter winds, searching the empty sidewalks for faces, finding none only the shadows of destroyed buildings. The ruins of the Lower East Side. AS much as I fear her fleeing to Paris or LA, I'm sure she will return. Where else can she go? Anywhere.

A bullet struck Malcolm X Snipers struck at JFK A sniper killed Martin Luther King Assassins surrounded RFK.

These men died before their time Why did they die and I outlive them? Boy Dylan also lived Nixon survived his disgrace Why did he live with so many others died Thousands of American dead in Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Million of Cambodians. A curse on Kissinger

In 1960 my friend Chaney drowned in Sebago Lake

If he had lived He might have died in Vietnam AS I might have If my mother signed my enlistment papers At age 17. I so wanted to leave home. James McNeil, a hometown boy, died in ASia, Struck my lightening. The young die young. Kissinger still lives Nixon, Pol Pot, and the Shah The Pope too The Eternal Church.

My only choice. Live a joyous life With the evil far away Worshipped by the people Not as Gods, but as leaders, Leading us the Armageddon Where the evil and good will be burned in an atomic hell Freeing Earth of Man For anyone that remains the charred flesh of the living The crumbling bones of the dead. Paradise.

John Kemp and Grant Stitt are coming over. I haven't told anyone about Alice's lateness for her period. We were heading up the GG Barnums, a Times Square transvestite disco with a trapeze act appealing to the three or more genders of humans. I like a brunette there. Shannon. Skinny and looking like a Vogue model. Maybe I'll see her there.

FINALLY by Peter Nolan Smith

All through the summer of 2014 I had been jokingly asking couples about the chances of us having a menage-a-trois with me. The response varied from disgust to a laughing rejection. I spared no one my query and no one accepted the challenge.

The ludicrous proposition was strictly a joke, but last weekend I attended the screening of the first 35 mm adult entertainment film JOY.

My good friend Sharon Mitchell had starred in the DEATH WISH take-off.

The producers Distribpix.com had flown out the founder of AIM Health Center to speak to a full theater of 1970s XXX film buffs.

Most of the fans at the Anthology Cinema were in their 50s and 60s. The veterans of the wicked White Way of 42nd Street were starstruck by Sharon's presence. My two guests were my godson Fast Eddie and his university friend, Jean Namur. Neither young man had been to an X-rated movie and I introduced Sharon to the twenty-year olds.

Fast Eddie said the retired actress looked young.

"Hell, Mitch, you look good for any age," gushed a frail bald septuagenarian. "I can't wait to see this film. 35 mm and full-screen. I hate TV porno."

"Thanks for coming." Sharon posed for a photo with my guests.

Other young men and women were in the audience. They were devotees to the genre of 1970s blue films. From the short Q & A session before the filming these neophytes revealed their devotion to the history of XXX films such as THE OPENING OF MISTY BEETHOVEN and BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR.

The event's organizer asked everyone to take a seat and the cinema lights went dark for Harley Mansfield’s, 1977 classic with Sharon cast as a reverse rapist in a New York of dark alleys and empty trains. Her crimes lead to a spate of copycat sexual assault on men by her devotees. The viewers in the theater laughed throughout the film. It was funny.

After the lights came up, Fast Eddie and Jean Namur biked off to Pratt Institute. They had graduate engineering classes in the morning.

"Thank Miss Mitchell for us."

Fast Eddie knew how to be polite.

The second Q & A was longer and I waited for Sharon. We were getting drinks together.

Old friends and stars had popped out of the woodwork.

I knew none of them.

"I need a drink," Sharon whispered to me.

"Me too."

We ended up at Planet Rose, a karaoke bar on Avenue A.

The owner was Sharon's friend. He bought us drinks. Steven Morowitz of Distribpix got the next rounds. Sharon basked in the glory of another night of fame.

"It was great being a movie star again, but watching me in JOY was like watching my granddaughter on screen."

She introduced me to the king of the peepshow loops.

He had stories of Times Square.

Strippers, porno actresses, fat boys, dirty cops, bag men, and connected producers.

"Just don't tell anyone these stories," he cautioned me and looked around the room. "Some of those guys are still alive."

"You got it." I can hold my sand as can any one of 'Us'.

A small blonde man rocked on the mike singing Judas Priest. Sean came from Tulsa. I told him about passing through town in the 1970s.

"I drank with the Speare Sisters." They were good girls and true to their church, but liked a good time in the speakeasies of that Bible Belt city.

Sean loved Sharon.

He danced cheek to groin with her.

Out west she lived near Big Sur.

Crystal Creek was a small town.

She liked the big city.

Same as Sean.

I saw my opening and joined the two, as a fat girl sang Taylor Swift's YOU BELONG TO ME.

Her voice was brutally flat.

I liked it.

Sharon loved it.

Sean loved it too.

Technically nothing happened, but this fully-clothed encounter was as close as I was getting to a menage-a-trois this summer or any season to come and that was probably a good thing.

For everyone who said no.

There was only one yes thanks to the magic of JOY.

Fotos by Daniel Karpus and Peter Nolan Smith

To order JOY, please go to the following URL

http://www.distribpix.com/film/joy/overview

AUGUST 6, 1978 JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

4 am in Times Square. Bums, crazies, and the poor camp on the sidewalk. I step over them, as if they were the dead. One wino rises his head and burbles from a flaky rotting mouth, "Gimme some change."

I drop some quarters in his hand.

Enough for two cruellers at Disco Donut on East 14th Street

I resist asking for the coins back and pick up my pace. I still have $7 in my pocket. Enough for breakfast at Leskos for Alice and me. No sign of Hakkim.

Eric Mitchell, A B-movie star, said at Max's with this strange Apache-French accent, "The bums are colorful."

"And he was right.

Red Tate lived in a aluminum septic tank at the town dump.

Every afternoon he traipsed through the woods to the corner store across from the church. His life was simple. He bought beer for underage kids and drank Thunderbird wine. Three bottles got him drunk. My Uncle Jack, once a Marine officer at Chosin Reservoir said he had been a hero in Korea and always gave him a buck.

Some people said bad for him.

Never us. He bought us beer.

Red Tate lies on the pavement Helpless, flat on his back If his mother saw him Tears and asking, "Why?"

Red Tate drink Ripple Sometimes he has Thunderbird The fortified wine drowns out Korea Soothes the shattered nerves. Not a bum Just someone trying to forget

AUGUST 6, 2021 NYU HOSPITAL

Joseph Cotton steals CITIZEN KANE with his performance on the New York hospital's solarium. Jed Leland is an elegant ne'er-do-well living out his last days basking in the winter sun. Even at death's door he wants a little something.

The Ultra-sound and MRI have revealed the seriousness of my condition; Hep C, Cirrohsis, growths in my liver. The attending physician entered the room with two younger doctors, who I figured for interns. The main MD explained that my body was still functioning, albeit not at top form. He put his hand on my knee and said, "Everything should be okay."

The other two said nothing and I suspeceted that the attending physician had brought them along to teach how to break bad news to a patient. I almost wanted to ask one, "What do you think?"

Not that I cared.

At least I wasn't going to die tomorrow, but I never again have a drink. Sixty years of alcohol has wasted my body and soul. I admitted depression to another doctor. "No, go right ahead. I have nothing to hide."

My first drink was in 1960. I was eight. My uncle-in-law, the head of the Boston Homicide Squad, offered a cold beer. We were at his beach cottage on Marshfield's Rexhame Beach. After a sip I put the can on the table. "I don't like it."

All the detectives laughed and one shouted, "You will, boyo, you will."

He was right.

I liked beer, wine, vodka, and gin-ginger throughout the Covid binge.

I was not wearing a silk dressing coat and foulard like Joseph Cotton in CITIZEN KANE. My ass was hanging out of a 'johnny'. I hadn't seen the sun in days and asked the nurse, if I could walk to to the solarium. It was on the same floor. She asked, "Sure, but I'll come with you to make sure you don't fall."

There was no arguing with the nurses. They were relentlessly right. I took my time and turned left before the elevators. A helicopter lifted into sight from the riverside landing pads. I sat down and pulled out Cookie Mueller's WALKING THROUGH CLEAR WATER IN A POOL PAINTED BLACK. She was three years older than me, but started the life in the early 60s with the books's first line, "I had two lovers and I wasn't ashamed."

I never saw Cookie ashamed.

They grew them tough in Baltimore.

Foto by Anthony Scibelli.