Survivor June 2009

In the course of my 57 years I've stayed in a hospital once. The week of my birth. My parents took me home to Jamaica Plain. Since that day my health has been unchallenged by illness other than colds, poison ivy, and hang-overs. The last year I had thrived in the unhealthy climates of New York. One year without a serious ailment and last week I bragged to a friend, "I haven't been ill this year."

Two days later a cough invaded my lungs. My body was wracked by a low-grade fever. My strength was depleted by minimal exertion. I stayed home one day from work. I would have been fine if I had said nothing. My doctor's diagnosis excluded 'swine flu'.

"A cold. A summer cold. Nothing more." He suggested rest, fluids, and cough syrup.

I followed his advice and slept like the dead thanks to the cough syrup. I drank hundreds of gallons of water and juice. Theraflu was my sole form of entertainment. No beer. No wine. No pizza. Life was meaningless. I don't do sick well. My bed became my empire. I watched all of STARGATE-ATLANTIS Seasons 2 and 3. It's been one week. I almost feel better. I survived being sick.

The weirdest thing was that everyone else in New York looked even sicker.

But then they eat crap.

BILLIONAIROPHILES UNITE

Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels were always perplexed how the English people had not rebelled against the ruling class ie the aristocracy, the royalty, and the capitalist during the continental Revolution in 1848. Professor Berthel Ollman in his works suggested that the filthy rich had bought them off with small gains and the threat of a deeper poverty. Dunt has put the USA in great danger with his cuts to the budget to favor tax cut to the rich as well as his entering a War wth Iran in support of Zion's strategy of Lebensraum.

In various media outlets like the Wall Stret Journal and the NY Post and Fox News online the comments are against taxing the rich and very pro-war. Mamdani is attempting to balance the city's budget after decades of the real esate developrs an city councils and politician getting rich by allowing taxless luxury condos undercutting the tax base. According o Google AI His plan includes a 5.88% city income tax rate for those earning over $1 million, a corporate tax increase to 11.5%, and restructuring property taxes to target those tax-free luxury properties.

The despicable AI bots fill the comments with attacks on anyone asking for the rich to pay taxes

It's either tax those that have and don't pay or taxed those that pay and don't have. The choice us simple. ps none of you are rich and I don't hear the b-aires complaining o ly those who think one day they might be wealthy. Dream on. There are only three ways to become a billionaire; birth, marriage, or theft. Hard work. I done hard work all my life. All I have is a good life and the best pizza in the world in NYC.

All Hail Babylon

Yesterday evening torretial rains capped a stormy day flooding various parts of New York City. New Jersey too. Many people in social media blamed the neglected infrastructure. Not surprising, since 10-15% of Americans fervently rejected climate change due to humanity, although on the coasts that percentage is even lower due to events such as yesterday's deluge. No planned flood protection program can compete with the future.

This is not about the sewer system. This is about climate change. The water melting from the glacier not only goes into the oceans but also the atmosphere which is saturated with humidity. Don't worry AI will help us answer the problem by convincing humans there is no problem

World population 2050 - 500 million

Deconsume.

Made In The USA 2012

It's been eleven years since 9/11. Last night I erected my own Twin Towers. They cost $4. Made in the USA. Drank in NYC.

RAIN RAIN RAIN by Peter Nolan Smith

September 10, 2001 was a rainy day in New York. The Weather Channel predicted precipitation throughout the afternoon.

I exited from my East 10th Street apartment at 9.13 and headed toward Velseka's on 2nd Avenue. My breakfast of a bagel and coffee came to $2.11 and I gave the waiter a dollar tip. My funds were low, but it was one thing to be broke and another to act broke.

Tony thanked my generosity and refilled my cup to the brink. At least someone was happy to have me back in New York after a six-month stay in Pattaya.

My friends were busy setting up autumn projects or putting their children in school. They answered my phone call with trepidation. Few were in a position to lend me more than $20.

>I exited from Velselka's Diner and watched the NYU co-eds run through the rain. Innocent smiles suited their young faces. They had their lives were before them and like any old person approaching sixty I was jealous of their future, but I still had one too and went over to Astor Place to catch the Lex Line train to Grand Central. I got off at 42nd Street and walked over to the Diamond District on 47th Street. The rain hadn't let up and I bought a cheap umbrella for $4.99. It kept off most of the wet, but nothing could fend off the thickness of the humidity.

My old boss shook his head and I asked the diamond dealer if he had any work.

"Sorry, but there isn't anything happening here, but the rent." Manny lifted both hands in apology. "Why you come back from Thailand? I thought you had it made there."

"It was a bullshit job." Sam Royalle's and my S&M website failed to take off. Both of us were too vanilla to make it real.

"New York's not what it was." Manny read my soul like a ten cent comic book.

"I know." Wall Street Bankers and brokers played the roulette wheel of hedge funds and derivatives. These Ivy League nouveau-riche scorned the dedication of artists and writers. "If I could click my heels like Dorothy Gale in her ruby slippers, I would."

"And end up in Kansas." Manny loved THE WIZARD OF OZ. "I don't think you'd like that."

"No, you're right about that." I had never been to that straight-line state.

"At least it wouldn't be raining." Manny liked the sun. He went to Florida after New Years. That tan lasted the rest of the year.

"This is a drizzle. It's monsoon season in Thailand."

"Drizzle, mizzle." Manny slipped a C-note into my hand. "Wait a few weeks and I'll have work for you."

"Thanks, comrade." Manny hailed from Brownsville and I came from Boston's South Shore. AS much as I could have used more money, a single hundred dollar bill was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

The rain was lightening up, but I could tell it would last the rest of the day. It was Monday. The Oyster Bar was only a few blocks away. A September day like this was a good day for a bowl of chowder. The weatherman predicted a pleasant day for tomorrow.

It would be 9/11/2001 and I liked that results of that equation better than the result for (9/10) /2001 = 0.000449775112.

Carpe cras or none of the Latins said, "Seize tomorrow."

Blizzard Conditions

In 2015 no snow fell on Christmas Day in New York.

None fell on New Year's Day north in Duchess County either, although snow clung under the rocky shadows in the woods.

The North Atlantic states were experiencing an extraordinarily warm winter, despite my prayers to pagan snow gods.

Two days ago the weathermen predicted a change. It had nothing to do with my prayers.

A spectacular Nor'easter was scheduled to up the Eastern Seaboard spraying epic snowfalls on the coast

They were not wrong.

Washington DC recorded 24' of the white stuff, while Fort Greene in Brooklyn was covered by 30", which was the second deepest snowfall ever to hit New York. Mayor DeBlasio declared an emergency and the city shut down for the duration of the blizzard.

As the snow tapped off in the evening, I emerged from the Fort Greene Observatory to see the accumulation of snow on the street as well as find someplace open.

Motorists were obeying the mayor's edict and not a single car was on Lafayette Avenue.

Now out of the house I thought about getting a drink.

A beer.

Fort Greene was known for its bars.

One had to be open.

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Day Five of Forty Days of Rain

In Genesis 7:4 Yahweh said four thousand years ago, "For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.”

In early September the Eastern Seaboard had been torched by a heat wave. Day after day of 90 plus temperatures. I wanted to go to beach, but it was too hot for a stroll across the hot sands. A week ago the weather broke and the temperature dropped into the 70s then the 60s. A tropical storm struck New York dumping rain for three days. As much as 2 inches in a twelve hur period. Today we topped that with a torrential five inches of rain. I had been trapped in a car for any hour waiting for a break. This storm flooded the streets of New York, although not Clinton Hill, althugh on my bock long walk back to 387 I noted that several gutters were overflowing with water and the storm drains were overwhelmed by the deluge.

Still I had to admire that this drainage system was built over a century ago by hard labor from emigrants wanting an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. Like the aquaducts of Eternal Rome their work stand the test of time and climate change ie speicies extinction.

I'm heading down to the street.

I would take a trip to the Rockaways, but the Mayor has warned for the city's citizens to stay home and as much as I want to be free, sometimes it's best not to do anything.

Tomorrow is meant to be sunny.

So this Flood was short by thirty-five days. Maybe Next time.

October 7, 2023

I stand corrected.

Clinton Hill being on a hill was saved from the intense flooding in the lowlying neighborhoods. The sewers magnificiant as they are were not constructed for Global Extinction rains. Instagram featured a VDO of a New Yorker waddling waist-deep to catch a train. What the fuck are you thinking?

Orange Man's Arraignment

While several presidents have been executed by the shadow powers; Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Harding, and JFK, none of been arrested for criminal behavior until today when Donald Trump will be arraigned in New York City for having his Michael Cohen pay $130,000 to Stormy Damiels, an adult-entertainment actress, to quash her outing their 2006 one-night stand in Lake Tahoe right before the 2016 Presidential Election. Mr. Trump has always denied that he had ever had sex with the XXX actress, believing the old adage 'whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas' applied to Lake Tahoe.

Stormy probably kept her mouth shut, but someone had leaked and several exploitative news media actively sought a paid interview with Mrs. Daniels. She was on the verge of acccepting Touch Magaizne's offer in 2011, but backed off after an unknown man threatened violence to her, her fmaily, and daughter. The two parties finally came to an agreement during the 2016 campaign and Ms. Daniels wasa stiffed thrice by Donald Trump. Finally Michael Cohen paid out his own pocket, expecting to be re-imbursed by his friend. He got butkus from the butkiss and In August 2018, Mr Cohen pleaded guilty to tax-evasion and breaking campaign finance rules, in part related to his payment to Ms Daniels and another alleged Trump lover according to the BBC News.

His lawyer thought he might get a presidential pardon.

Wrong.

In 2018 he pled guilty In Manhattan Federal Court to Criminal Tax Evasion And Campaign Finance Violations and six other charges. He was fucked, because Trump had been too cheap to pay the woman what she deserved from a one-night stand.

We reprobates and sinners have a saying in the Lastd Babylon."

"You don't pay a working woman for sex. You pay them to go away."

Today Trump showed up at court and pleaded not guilty to thrirty-four criminal charges.

This for the man who once boasted that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.

Maybe, but not stiffing with a working class woman. As the Thais say, "Sum num nah."

Serve you right, although there was no perp walk and no bail, becasue the charges don't require bail unlike the thousands of suspects awaiting trial in the New York City prison system.

Personally I would hae loved him to be held in Rikers Island, howwever the ex-president will be flying back to Florida wot meet with his supporters at his Mar-e-Lago resort. There were less than ten in New York. Chicken shits, but at lesaddt the crazy GOP congresswoman showed. She has sand.

AUGUST 11, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE II

This morning I woke twenty-one cents in my pocket and my heads hurting from too much alcohol. I thought I had a couple of dollars more. There was nothing. We only have eggs, bread, and butter in the refrigerator. Alice cries about our poverty.

"I don't know what I am doing here."

You're working and going to acting classes. I don't work enough and have no ambition." "You have your poetry." Alice pointed to my journal. She never reads it. She is weak some times and I am dedicated to holding her up. She is a thousand times more talented than me and only a bud of a flower.

"Yes, there is always that." My poetry sucks and no one makes money from poetry, unless they teach it to college kids seeking truth in words. I want magic.

Now that Alice and I are living together I have decided to be monogamous. I tell her, "I love you."

It's true, but sounds so bland, because faithfulness is a challenge doomed to failure. A month ago I had rooftop sex with soft skinned Nan, a photographer from Boston. She was into drag queens. I was still straight that way and had also given up sex with men. I couldn't find anyone without a lisp in New York.

Like in my poem most of the people around me are faggots, chronic maniacs, sexually political women, strippers, junkies, college girls, drug dealers, musicians, and rich slummers. We are all broke. No one has an income, except for the rich. A phone call home will rescue us. I don't have enough change to make the call, so I will stay to endure poverty. It is freedom, a freedom I share with Alice. She is a great fuck. I never have to fake it.

THE NEWS

The Red Sox are in 1st place and the Yankee catcher Thurman Munson has died in a Cessna crash nine days ago. Pope Pius XII is sanctified for burial. Before his death he predicted the date of Armaggedon as that declared at Fatima. Newspaper strike in New York City.

Last night I drank till CBGBs' closing.Alice had stayed home and women came up offering sex in the bathroom, blowjobs in the alley, standing fucks between cars, cocaine, and qualludes. I accepted all, but the sex, thinking I have to save my energy to apply for a real job with a bank or government and saying fuck the punk life.

Foto by David Godlis

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA - Chapter 2 By Peter Nolan Smith

Two weeks after Labor Day the Continental opened its door without a liquor license. Limos lined West 25th Street well past dawn, as models, actresses, and strippers danced with abandon to the city's best DJs. Movie stars snorted coke with two-bit dealers and national politicians seduced Amazonian TVs on pop-art sofas.

Few revelers cared about the illegality of an after-hours club. The precinct police were on the take. Sanitation inspectors glommed drinks with big-hair wives, plainclothes cops strong-armed bribes, and Jimmie Fats siphoned the cash cow for the firemen. Greed blinded the bagmen to Arthur's wearing a wire for Internal Affairs and the FBI investigating our Russian investor for counterfeit twenties. I was counting the days until it all went bad and hoped to not be there then, but $100 tips pushed my day of departure back weekend by weekend.

By Halloween I had $5000. By mid November that amount reached $6000.

A week before Thanksgiving Arthur sold half his share in the Continental to three men in black suits.

"You been talking about leaving. It's a good time for you to leave."

Arthur paid me $500 for the week.

"I don't know where to go." My pockets were crammed with cash. It was getting cold, but I still hadn't spoken to Lisa."

"Anyplace, but here." Arthur nodded at his new partners.

Their shoes were FBI issue.

"I'll leave after Christmas." Another month was worth $3000.

"Don't wait too long." He was trying to tell me something only I wasn't listening as long as Lisa's Nordic profile, blonde hair and sculptured shoulders dogged my peripheral vision.

She was a siren and to other men as well.

Vadim’s bodyguards exercised Slavic etiquette to these suitors in the alley. My obsession rejected fear and I cornered Lisa once, when Vadim was out of town.

"All I want is explanation." It was almost Thanksgiving. The anniversary of her leaving.

"Of what?" She had embraced the comfort of amnesia.

"Why you left and never came back." I had thousands of answers. None of them added up to one plus one equaling two.

"If I explained that, then I would have to tell you everything." She looked through me as if I were glass and wearily walked away, saying "Sometimes you don't get answers."

Refused an answer, I slipped my hand into my pocket for a quarter.

Flipping a coin was another way to see the future.

Heads meant yes. Tails no.

"Does she love me?"

It came up tails.

A spike jabbed my heart like a junkie's hotshot.

"Will she come back to me?"

Tails.

I was plunged into darkness.

"Will we have sex again?"

Heads.

My limitless obsession accepted these 50/50 replies as the truth, especially since Lisa's neglect was a game and she chose to exploit a pawn in December.

The winter dawn broke on the club's fire escape. Danny was playing the Members' SOUNDS OF THE SUBURBS. I stood on the rusting steel, watching the stars fade from the night. High heels clicked onto the steel grating. Lisa wore a black sable fur coat. It was open and her silk shirt was unbuttoned to her waist.

"I needed some air."

Her flawless skin was the color of the first snow.

"It's cold this time of year." I started for the door.

"I'm from Buffalo and it's not that cold in this coat." She leaned against the door. "Don't worry. Vadim is too high to care what I do."

"What about his bodyguards?"

"They're drunk too. Russians like their drink." She reached out for me. "Hold me."

I melted into her like a nuclear core going China Syndrome through the Earth.

After a breathless kiss the ashen blonde claimed, "I haven't stopped loving you."

"Me neither." I wished our bodies were wrapped in silk sheets instead of buffeted by an alley wind.

"I can't give you any answers." Her hands spoke with desire and she looked over her shoulder as if her eyes could see through the steel door.

"I don't want words." It was a well-rehearsed line.

"Good." She pulled me closer and we embraced like lovers in a silent movie for a half-minute. Her heart was bare to my hand and her heart beat like a clock ready to sound its alarm.

"I have to go."

"I understand."

"I wish I didn't have to go."

"Then leave with me. I have $6000. We can go anywhere. Europe, LA, Florida. Anywhere."

"$6000 goes fast." The narrowing of her eyes revealed that she was adding up the pros and cons of my proposition.

"We can rent a house in Key West. I'll work at a bar. We'll watch the sunsets from the pier." I loved the sea. It was only one of a million possibilities, if she said 'yes'.

"Vadim says poets go nowhere." She was weighing my worth.

"Only because I've been waiting for you."

Applause from NYU co-eds had rewarded my poems about two days stranded in Garrison Junction, Montana, yet a drifter's code wasn't tattooed on my skin. "I could get a real job. Move into a nice apartment."

A nine-to-five held little glamour to someone who has travelled first-class through Europe and her icy stare announced her final appraisal. Her hand withdrew from mine.

"Sean, it's a nice dream, but life's too short to live a dream."

My one minute of overtime ran to zero.

"Why you never call?" Asking questions was not part of my daydreams.

"Your phone got shut off." An unpaid bill was only partially the truth.

"You could have sent a postcard." This plea cut the scene short.

"The last thing I need in life is someone who lives for breaking the score of CBGB's pinball machine." Pity was not her forte.

"I'm good at pinball." I owned the record for the SLASH machine at CBGBs.

"But your name isn't Tommy." Lisa fled inside the club and joined Vadim and his partner, Viktor Malenski, in the VIP lounge.

Before I broached the velvet ropes, his two Ukrainian bodyguards created an immovable barrier. I possessed other means of touching Lisa and went to the DJ booth with two beers.

"Nice entrance." Danny sported a broken nose and two black eyes. His hailing from Old New York money more than compensated for a crooked beak with the girls at the Continental. They loved him all the more.

"I wasn't trying to be discreet." "I can see you're treading on razors." Danny touched his nose. "I'm not worried about Vadim's thugs." "Really? The big one punched me for speaking with Lisa. I learned my lesson One punch had taught Danny to keep his distance from Lisa. I think you'd get hit a little harder than me." "I've been hit before." I pushed him away from the turntables and picked out an LP. Danny grimaced at my choice of the Romantics' WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU. "That song only has an audience of one." "Two. You're forgetting me." Two years ago the Romantics had played Hurrah. Hundreds of young women packed the uptown rock club to see the Detroit band. I took a break from the door to check out the show. A blonde stood before the speakers. Her beauty belonged in a fashion magazine and I leaned forward to smell hair fragrant as peaches dipped in burnt tar. Mere mortals didn't stand a chance with her, but she backed into me, as the group played their hit song. Her intent was more than flirtation and I should have retreated to the club's entrance.

My hillbilly girlfriend waited at our East Village apartment. She said she loved me. I ignore her declaration of devotion and grabbed the blonde's hand. The encore of their hit accompanied our sex in the stairwell.

Now Lisa laughed, as if the song was for someone else. The dance floor emptied quickly. Arthur frowned at the DJ booth and slashed his hand in the air to cut the song short.

"Sorry, but I get paid to make people dance." Danny didn't need another broken nose.

"Put something else on." I accepted its failure.

Danny segued to Chic's LE FREAK and ransacked the EPs for a floor-filler to his next tracks.

"There are other women out there."

"And I've been with more than a few." Vixens lounged on the club's over-stuffed sofas in a languid mockery of foreplay and braless teenagers danced like they had graduated from stripper training school. I had slept with several. None of the one-nighters succeeded in erasing the ruins in my head. There had to be a magic word. A gesture. Something to change the present into another now.

"You ever hold something in your hands and know it belongs nowhere else?"

"My Little League baseball bat." Danny grasped an imaginary slugger. "Women are mist on the water and no man can hold onto a ghost."

"Lisa's flesh and blood."

"A zombie is the one ghost you can never raise from the dead."

"She told me she loved me." I watched, as she led Vadim onto the dance floor.

"No phone calls, no letters, and a Russian boyfriend don't spell love in any language."

"Not if you're only reading the subtitles." Lisa swayed to the music without looking my way and Vadim moped like a trained bear. I danced better than him and I had read her TS Eliot in the bed of a Niagara Falls Hotel. Poetry under the sheets had to count for something, but cutting in was not an option. The bodyguards glared at me.

"She never said she was going away forever."

"Never can change to forever in a heartbeat. You were a poet a year ago. Your shit was funny. Why you stop?"

"I walked into a bookstore. Thousands of books were on the shelves. At least five hundred said what I felt."

Self-pity delivered a coup de grace to my muse.

"So now you're a thug."

"And Vadim is a gangster." Vadim and Lisa stopped dancing and went to the coat check. They were leaving for the night. My quitting time was dawn.

"If a woman has to choose between the lesser of two evils then she'll always go for the money."

"Love's not about money." Not at the moment of orgasm.

"That coat is worth more than you earned last year." Danny focused a light on Vadim covering her shoulders with a sable fur.

"So?" My memories of Lisa rotted like a Playboy pictorial left in the rain.

"So no matter how much a woman loves you, she'll always seek the safest harbor."

"And my life's too messy to offer a woman shelter." My apartment was in a ghetto, my bank account languished in double figures, and my plans for the future extended no further than breakfast.

"You're a storm at sea." Danny spun TAINTED LOVE and revelers thronged onto the dance floor.

Arthur waved for me to return to the door, as a flat-chested brunette in a slick black leather dominatrix outfit slinked into the DJ booth. Several men on the dance floor recognized Sherri. My cousin had starred in scores of XXX movies. Her most famous role was as a teenage runaway. I had seen the film twice. We had met in a Times Square bar after she tilted my pinball machine. Our mutual affinity for self-destruction determined that we were better off friends than lovers.

"Hi, cous." Sherri greeted me with a kiss on the cheek.

Sherri was more than a hellbound succubus. The porn star was smart and very funny. We had good times together. Claiming a family tie avoided any explanation of our relationship.

"You've really have to give her up. No woman will cross a bridge she’s burned." Sherri followed my eyes to the couple exiting the club.

"What if I walked across water?"

"We're sinners and sinners can only perform sin, not miracles." Sherri's failures in love rivaled my debacles.

"I can change my ways like St. Paul."

"St. Paul was chasing redemption, not another man's woman."

"Your cousin thinks Lisa's and his bodies were created for one another." Danny almost played James Brown's IT'S A MAN'S WORLD and then switched to Sly Stone's TAKE ME HIGHER. "Like Adam and Eve."

"I don't care what is written in the Bible, God created the first woman for himself. Adam had to make do with the animals until God got tired with Eve." Sherri's opinion of men hovered below the ground.

"I'm not saying Lisa was created for me."

"No woman is created for any man." Sherri preferred girls. Her fans felt the same way.

"And worst you think there are only two kinds of women other than your mother."

"Only two." I had thought there were at least five.

"Marlon Brando has his way Blanche in STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and two minutes later is calling out, "Stella." Your ex-girlfriend looks like a virgin, except she’s sleeping with another man. Men can't choose between the virgin and the whore. You have one. You want the other. No woman can be both. Not the Virgin Mary. Not even me."

"Okay, most men are suckers, but all I want is someone to love." I was hoping that she possessed a secret potion, instead Sherri said, "Your first night with Lisa you supposedly 'made love' five times. At least that's what you told me." Danny's eyes widened in admiration.

"My heart was on fire."

"Yes, and that 'five times' has been a yardstick for involvement with a woman. Lust is not love. Lust is lust. See the girl in the boa feathers."

A scantily-clad redhead teased a circle of leering worshippers. Che Chasta was the leading lady in Sherri's films.

"I told her you were good in bed."

"How would you know?" Danny turned up the volume.

"If I'm great, then my cousin has to be at least good." Sherri tapped my cheek.

"Are you two really cousins?" Danny had a thing for Sherri. "You don't look alike." "That's, because I was adopted, but our blood is still thicker than thieves." She dragged me from the DJ booth. The hopes of the redhead's admirers were dashed by Che's kissing my cousin like a boa swallowing its prey.

"Che, I think you should go home with my cousin." The two women were more than on-screen lovers, but Sherri wanted to keep her distance. "He needs some TFC."

"And I'm an expert at 'tender fucking care'." Che's feathery caress scintillated my marrow. "Anything stopping you?"

Lisa had left with another man. The sexual revolution was burning the moral tenets of America. Everything was 'go' and not 'no'.

"Just a second." I went up to Arthur. "I need to go home."

"I can see why." The wily owner glanced over my shoulder at the waiting redhead. "Good luck."

Envy accompanied my departure. The bouncers flicked thumbs up, as we got in the taxi. Che gave the driver a show on the way to a Tribeca loft. In the elevator she stripped naked, singing Rick James' SUPER FREAK, "I'm a Super Freak, Super Freak."

"You're really sexy." Her lingerie smelled of cigarette and Estee Lauder perfume.

"I hear that all the time."

"You have anything else you want to tell me?"

I spoke dirty. She cooed with a little girl voice and caressed herself with a shiver. The elevator door opened and she danced into the loft. Cameras and lights were arranged around a large bed.

"Tomorrow Sherri and I are shooting two sex scenes." She unzipped her boots. "Tonight I need to rehearse."

Che lay on the sheets. Her breasts flattened on her chest. I peeled off my clothes. I knelt between her thighs. Her tongue licked at her lips and hands guided me inside. I shut my eyes. Men across America would have killed for this moment of heaven, except my erection withered under a phantom's stranglehold and I faked a premature ejaculation. "Don't feel so bad, softies happen to a lot of men with me," Che consoled me with an expertise forged by cinematic sex. "Let me fluff you for seconds." Che expertly tried to arouse me, but something was broken. After three minutes she stopped and asked, "You're not gay, are you?" "No, I'm sorry." I didn't want to discuss about my futile fixation and deserted the sex icon, for my East Village apartment, where I scissored women from glossy stroke books to construct a Frankenstein collage of Lisa. Our reunion was the one lie I believed, as December collapsed towards Christmas.

I lived off cocaine bribes from customers and sold the excess to customers. My $6000 rose to $8000, but I wasn't leaving, despite things going downhill fast.

Sherri was arrested by the precinct police for possession. My threat of snitching to Internal Affairs prevented her being the station house’s party favor. Vadim ODed on heroin. My reviving him earned scant thanks from Lisa, although the Russian stopped cease to consider me his enemy. Danny's parents threw him out of the apartment after he stole a family heirloom. He crashed on my couch. We were our own worst enemies. Inexplicably outsiders viewed our lifestyle as glamorous.

A French magazine front-paged my photo and their journalist wrote that I was a legend at 29. Bernard based this title on my urban exploits without any knowledge of my stalking Lisa from her apartment on East 73rd Street to Vadim' Central Park penthouse or tailing the couple's ricochets around Manhattan.

Vadim never spotted my gaze, as he met with Odessa diamond traffickers and his thugs visited gulag violence on complete strangers. Lisa endured the beatings with heartless sighs, but I wasn't the pair's only shadow.

Right before Christmas Vadim's partner was arrested by the FBI. Viktor refused to talk. The precinct police were hauled before Internal Affairs. They maintained a silent wall of blue. These harbingers of the approaching end failed to pierce my narco-ambulation. My wake-up call came on New Year's Eve, when Viktor Malenski was shot dead in front of the club.

This execution bared the Continental to a public frenzy fed by the city's newspapers. I had only heard the shots, yet my name skirted the periphery of the widening scandal of drugs, fame, and beauty with NYPD's Internal Affairs drawing lines between the dots.

Lisa came to my apartment. We stayed in bed for an entire day. She swore that she hadn't pulled the trigger. I believed her every word and pleaded ignorance nothing during a police interrogation.

"Don't leave town." The Internal Affairs sergeant wasn't buying my version.

Nineteen cops were suspended from the force. I knew half their names. Arthur knew them all. A phone call from Paris averted my appointment as state's witness.

Bernard told me that the magazine Actuel wanted for an American to work a nightclub in Paris. Bad French was a prerequisite for the position of physionomiste. A round-trip ticket was waiting at Air France. My passport was up-to-date and I asked Lisa what I should do.

"You have to go. We won't be safe here. Not from the police. Not from Vadim's gang." She lay in my arms naked. Her skin smelled of tar. "I'll meet you in Paris five days from now."

"Notre-Dame." It had to be easy to find.

"At noon." She sealed the pact with a long kiss.

The morning of the flight I felt like Ingrid Bergman's leaving Rick in CASABLANCA.

Lisa walked away from East 10th Street, saying. "Twelve noon."

"In five days." I tried to trap her scent in my lungs, but exhaled as her taxi merged with the traffic on 1st Avenue.

Sherri drove me to the airport. Che was in the front seat. They were heading cross-country to set up a life in LA. I sat on the rear seat with Sherri's parrot, Boo.

"Best thing about this trip is your leaving that blonde bitch." Sherri dodged a truck. She was colorblind and couldn't see brake lights.

"She's meeting me in Paris."

Both women groaned and Boo cackled, "Ha-ha."

"You really think she's going to meet you?" Sherri glanced in the rear-view mirror.

"She says she loves me." That shifted the odds to 50/50.

"You buy her a ticket?" Che swung her head to the back.

"No, she said she would get it from her agency."

"Make that 9 to 1."

"Which are better odds than I had before." Slush on the Grand Central Parkway slowed traffic. I leaned back in the seat. Paris would be our refuge. I would write a book. Lisa would grace the cover of ELLE. We'd practice French in bed, drink espresso in small cafes, and wander along the Seine in the rain.

"Everything will be fine." Sherri turned on the wipers.

"Whenever I'm in her, I feel like she is a glove." Lisa's scent simmered on my skin as burnt fruit. "She has to feel the same way too."

"I’ve been hundreds of men and I've never found one who fits me. On the other hand women are another story." Sherri reached over to Che. Boo screeched her support.

"This will work out."

"Cous, don't bet your heart on a long shot," Sherri was glad to say it about someone else other than herself.

"I promise I won't."

Sherri braked before the Air France terminal. We hugged good-bye. I said she should visit Paris. She told me the same thing about LA and then drove away into a flurry of snow.

I half-expected the police to stop my boarding the Air France flight, but I got on the plane and within in an hour the 747 was banking north over the northern tip on Long Island.

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA - Chapter 1 By Peter Nolan Smith

New York in the summer of 1981 was everything it wasn’t in the winter of 1979.

The sun boiled the asphalt. Punk had been replaced by New Wave and somehow the city had escaped bankruptcy. Money flowed on the streets and even the East Village exhibited signs of regeneration, since abandoned tenements can only be burned so many times before ashes won’t catch fire.

People had work.

Mine was menial construction on an after-hours club along the Hudson River.

After paying rent, I had enough money for either Chinese take-out or beers at CBGBs. I lost weight and thought about robbing a bank. Whenever I entered one, guards placed their hands on the guns like they were mindreaders. I was no Jesse James.

Daytime employment seemed the solution to my desperate situation. I had a college degree. My record was clean. I’d worked nine-to-fives before and knew they didn’t kill you, however Arthur, the nightclub owner had promised the work crew various jobs once the International opened its doors.

At his previous after-hour club I had coined $500-700 a night. We hoped to open before Labor Day. On August 13th the club was $20,000 short of our goal. Construction lurched to a halt. I started reading the New York Times’ Help Ads.

The International was saved by the arrival of a criminal refugee from Odessa. His money was rumored to come from smuggling Tsarist icons. The source was unimportant. The club was a dead issue without his help.

Arthur said Vadim had a beautiful blonde girlfriend. "Almost cover girl pretty, but too short to succeed on the runways."

"Sounds like your old girlfriend." Danny Gordon, the DJ, had heard that she came from Buffalo.

"No, couldn’t be."

A year ago Lisa had left for a modeling job in Milan. I hadn’t heard from her since. No calls. No letters, although when I spotted her in a French lingerie magazine, I almost flew to Paris, except she could have been in London, Milan, or Munich, so I remained in New York to be haunted by her distant footsteps on cobble-stoned European streets.

“She’s gone for good.”

“No one leaves New York forever.”

Native New Yorkers like Danny considered anywhere else purgatory. “She’ll be back.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

Up to now I had been forgetting Lisa piece by piece. The smell of her skin after sex. She laughed, as if I told a bad joke, but I recalled her stilted dancing to the Psychedelic Furs in London, our buying leather jackets together in Camden market. Hers had been white, mine was black. I remembered everything, because some memories had lives of their own. No matter how many drinks and no matter how many years.

“Still it would be funny if it was her.” Danny wasn’t letting go either. He had a thing for her. Any man would if she looked his way.

“Funny, but not ha-ha funny.”

I hoped it wasn’t Lisa, but despair told me it was and I chucked a hammer at his head. The missile missed by a foot and put a dent in an op-art sculpture from the 60s. Arthur noticed the damage a week later. Danny and I denied any knowledge of how it got there.

The Russian’s cash accelerated the final stages of the construction. The walls were painted lilac purple and the sound system was wired through the club. A Labor Day opening appeared realistic and on the hottest day of summer the Russian came to inspect his investment.

We were tearing down a last section of the ceiling. It was a dirty job. Rat dust caked my sweating flesh. Danny and I couldn’t have been lower of the feeding chain of Manhattan.

“Guys, I want you to meet Vadim.” Arthur shouted from the entrance.

The gang on the scaffolding stopped working and sucked on bottles of water before glancing through salt-stung eyes at a muscular man in his late-20s. Vadim wore a pastel linen suit. He was clean. The crew muttered hellos. Mine was silenced by the sight of a slender blonde in snug Versace. Lisa’s b-grade beauty was as haughty as a dethroned princess checking into a Holiday Inn.

“So much for the lack of coincidences.” Danny nudged my ribs.

“It’s a small world.” My throat tightened under a garrote of lost memories. “And a long life.” “Think she recognizes you?” Danny wiped a layer of grime from his face.

“Not unless she looks my way.” My body was black with soot.

Her head turned to our perch. A dice roll of jade green eyes indicated my lack of social progress had not disappointed her low expectations for a punk poet.

“No, she hasn’t forgotten.” Danny laughed at my pained expression, as Vadim, Lisa and Arthur disappeared into the office.

Right before our lunch break, Lisa and Vadim exited from the office. She covered her mouth with a scarf. Vadim did the same with his hand. They left the site without a glance in our direction. After lunch we resumed work at a faster pace. By 4pm the ceiling had been replaced and Arthur called it a day. He was easier to work for than his other partner, a model who was on the cover of Time Magazine as a herpes sufferer.

As the rest of the crew filed from the club, Arthur pulled me aside. “This isn’t going to be a problem?”

“What?” I played dumb.

“You and Vadim’s girlfriend.” He was serious.

“Lisa?” Over the past year her name had floated in my mind a million times. This was the first time I had said it.

“Is it a problem, kid?” Arthur was risking his health by taking on Vadim as an investor. Russian from Odessa were no punks.

“No, she’s nothing to me.”

“Good, then stay away from her.”

“That what I intend to do.”

“Good.” He lifted a finger. “Vadim is a piece of work.”

Obeying his advice wasn’t hard. Lisa ignored me and I couldn’t blame her. I was a failure and not even 28. The Continental might change that status. Three months as the doorman would earn $5000 in tips and salary. That amount could finance a winter in Maine to write my first novel about a free love community in the 1840s.

WATCHIC POND was destined to garner the best-sellers lists. The world would worship my words and Lisa would run back to my arms. Self-delusion rarely offered any options approaching the truth, especially since there is no lies more believable than those you tell yourself.

Social Distancing a la Covid

Phase 2 of the Covid re-opening was announced by Mayor DeBlasio on Monday June 22, 2020

Outdoor dining was to be allowed, although it didn't happen till July with Governor Cuomo assessing that wth less than 1% infection test levels, New York State had exited from the death grip of April and May. New Yorkers wore masks. The hospitals offered free testing. People respected distance, except for Trumpards, who regarded Covid as a hoax. I lost three friends in the Spring. They have not risen from the graave. They died alone. Covid is not a hoax, but we have entered Phase 4 and allowed to gather in groups of ten and restaurants are permitted open at 25% of their table capacity.

In April and May ambulances raced across Brooklyn. Sirens were never-ending and I stayed home to avoid getting sick, but I succumbed to Covid in April.

A mild case thanks to I don't know what. I have the antiboies and test every two weeks, but I play it relatively safe. I wear a mask and keep to myself, but meet with more people as long as they have recently taken a Covid test.

The other day I celebrated a young friend's birthday in Fort Greene. We numbered ten. I posted a photo on Facebook and my family members criticized for our gathering in a clump. I explained NYC was in Phase 4. They haven't been with anyone else in months and I don't blame them for the isolation.

One day we will all dance again.

I can't say when, but one day we will dance and I practice my steps, because fuck Chris Rock.

There's nothing wrong with beng the oldest man in the club.

Together or alone.

The Ghost Town Of Anarchy

During the last debate Donald Trump called New York City a ghost town.

Having lived here in the 1970s I refuted the pseudo-POTUS.

The Big Orange doesn't know shit from Shinola.

I admit the city blacked out in 1977.

I had a good time that night, drinking with my gay friends and trying to smash Fiorucci's window to snatch a gold lame Elvis Suit.

Only twenty-five I easily outran the security.

The city was burning in the Bronx, Harlem, and the Lower East Side.

Sin was worshipped in Times Square.

This was our city, but it was never a ghost town and neither is New York now.

I am an anarchist. I only put only dog on a leash.

Pom Pom.

We lived two blocks from Mare-De-Lardo and nowhere is more a ghost town than Palm Beach after dark.

Duane Hanson statue guarding art.

The beach.

My godson wasn't scared of the ghosts of Palm Beach nor those anywhere else in the world.

Trump doesn't love anarchists and threatened New York and Portland with a cut-off of federal funds.

As a life-long anarchist I say, "FUCK YOU. No more years." and I like living in a ghost town.

I might drink in the 169 bar alone, but one day we will dance again.

The ghosts of anarchy are voting all day-long.

Today I exercised my right and cried seeing the old Sistahs of the Hat struggling to cast their votes, dressed as if they were were going to church.

They know the battle is on.

For our children.

VOTE all you Ghost Town Anarchists.

Peace Love and Happiness. ps my old dog Champoo was also an anarchist.

And a ghost along with Pom Pom.

But I love both ghosts and anarchists.

We are the future of the greatestd city in the Solar System.

And Now A Heat Wave

The sun rose today and burned off the morning overcast. The temperature swiftly climbed from 80 F to 93 F by midday. I thought about traveling to Rockaway Beach, but I'm still nursing the aches and pains from of a bicycle crash. Tomorrow I need to go to the Diamond District and the weather services are warning that the mercury with a thermometer will hit 98 by the afternoon.

2020 has been tough on the world.

The Covid Virus spread across the world.

The police have killed numerous innocent African Americans without any justice for the victims.

Donald Trump has instigated a race war to bolster his KKK/Nazi/Christian support and threatened to ignore his losing the November presidential election.

Thankfully the AC is defending this tenement from the sweltering heat and I am drinking a glass of ice-chilled Peach Wine.

I thought it was Rose wine.

Opps.

On a scale from 0-10 this tragedy is a .585 and if I'm lucky, then that's as bad as it will get today.

Tomorrow?

Tomorrow is a story yet to be lived as are the final six hours of today.

Sun set.

Sun rise.

Dump Bill Bratton

In 2012 police in the USA arrested over 750,000 people for marijuana with the vast majority of those detained being charged with possession. Violent crime arrests were 200,000 less than that number, revealing that law enforcement throughout the War on Crime was more interested in filling out quotas than address real crime such as murder, rape, or white-collar bank theft.

Up to 50,000 of those arrests were in New York City under the direction of then-Mayor Bloomberg, who instructed watch officers to grind out reefer arrests to supplement budget shortfalls and show the media that they weren't soft on drugs, however the Drug War has been lost for years and like Wehrmacht officers in Nazi Germany or generals in Viet-Nam certain top brass refuse to admit defeat.

NYC's top cop William Bratton is one of those fools and upon hearing of Mayor DeBlasio's retreat from prosecuting drug sales, argued that stop-and-frisk and detention for marijuana were valuable tools in the police arsenal, except the majority of arrests reflected the racist attitudes of the NYPD.

86% of the arrests were Black or Hispanic in a city where 40% of the population is white.

DeBlasio has not stopped the madness entirely, since the NYPD can still issue tickets and summons for marijuana possession for the purpose of revenue piracy of the lower class.

According to the NY Times Mayor de Blasio's police commissioner, William J. Bratton, who vowed to continue making low-level marijuana arrests.

This statement proves Bratton's incapability of being New York City's commissioner.

It is time for him to submit his resignation.

No fines, no tickets, no crime.

Make every day 4:20 until the cops wave the white flag.

They lost the War.

Fuck Bratton.

Michele Savoia MIA

According to WNBC Manhattan fashion designer Michele Savoia has been missing since early Friday after last being seen inside a nightclub, police said.

NYPD reported that Michele Savoia, 55, was last seen inside the club Marquee on 10th Avenue in Chelsea at around 2:30 a.m. Friday.

Michele Savoia, who is 6 feet tall and has tattoos covering much of his body, was reported missing by his driver.

I know Michele from Arthur Weinstian, the late nightclub impresario. He was good people.

Friends have said that he had not shown up for appointments on Thursday and Friday. One went over the Hudson to check on Michele's boat. The tarp, which usually covered the entrance, was not in place.

Police divers checked the river without discovering Michele's body.

I hope for a miracle.

Anyone with information about Savoia's whereabouts is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).

5 Days In Semi-Hell

Last month New Yorkers were happy to not be involved in the Great Midwestern Heat Wave, however this week the Eastern Seaboard had been subjected to fury of 90+ temperatures. Every morning the thermometers start at 75 and then rise toward 100. So far we have been spared the triple-digit torrid torment, yet each day the baked streets, buildings, and sidewalks radiate merciless heat and the hot spell is predicted to last through the weekend. This afternoon I rode my bike past the McCarron Pool. The watery vastness was packed with humanity and I sought relief through drinking two ice green teas, several liters of water, two beers, one cider, and I fully intend on hydrating myself throughout the evening. And I'm dead set on eating a good hunk of watermelon. Tomorrow is day six. I'll be working at the metal shop. There is no air conditioning. Only sweat. And beer thereafter.

Tonight's Light Show - April 13, 2013

In the Spring of 1963 my father called us out of our split-level ranch house in the Blue Hills south of Boston. He excitedly pointed to the sky. My brothers, sisters, mother, and I scanned the night for UFOs and I was the first to spot the reason for us standing on the lawn in our pajamas.

Candy colored light curved to the North. The majesty of its beauty silenced us. Other families stood outside in awe of this phenomena and my father said with a humbled voice, "That's the northern lights."

"The Aurora Borealis." My mother hadn't been to college, but the nuns had instructed her in the glory of the heavens. "Plasma hit the magnetic poles at the speed of light."

"Is that fast?" We hadn't gotten to the speed of light at Our Lady of the Foothills.

"Almost four million miles an hour." My father was an electrical engineer. He had a good head for calculations.

"Faster than a speeding bullet," my older brother said with his eyes wide open.

"A lot faster than that." I imagined that I could hear the forces of the cosmos sizzling in the sky. Being near-sighted I had better-than-average hearing.

The solar flares disappeared from the night and we returned to our beds. I could hear my mother and father in the next room.

They were very much in love.

1963 was fifty years ago and I've only seen the Northern Lights once since then.

Tonight might be the third time I've witnessed the celestial phenomena, for the astronomers are predicting a high atmosphere light show for tonight.

Accuweather's Hunter Outten has been updating this latest aurora borealis watch on the company's Facebook page. At 3:35 p.m., he wrote: "Still have not seen any key signs yet of the CME close to hitting the planet. Looks like the time is shaping up right on schedule for anywhere from 5-9PM EDT."

The Sun is 93 million miles from the Earth.

The CME or Coronal Mass Ejection can cover that distance in twenty-three hours.

The clock is ticking.

I will be ready with my beer goggles.

Turned Away Eyes

"For years I have been walking the streets of New York and wondering why women avert their eyes from men. It took me a long time to realize that men have been terrorizing women to such an extent that they fear even visual contact, almost as if a glance is a harbinger of assault or worse." James Steele. End Rape.