Showing posts with label semi-fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label semi-fiction. Show all posts

Thursday, March 5, 2026

A Little Brando Maybe

From 201O

Last week I was playing pool at the Abbey. Maz was in town from Alaska. The jewelry salesman was leaving for the Caribbean on Wednesday to work the cruise ships as he had up north. His time in the Far North had not effected his hand and eye coordination and the bald-headed genji ruled the table for several games. I lost to him on a double-scratch on a corner shot on the 8-ball.

While awaiting my next up with the champ, I watched the popular bar on Driggs Avenue filled with young people. I was already in the youth of old age at 58. I spoke to several sci-fi fans about RESIDENT EVIL and a BBC correspondent about the current BBC sex scandal. We agreed that Jimmy Seville the TV announcer was an unrepentent child molester, but he argued that Jimmy Savile was the only person involved during the decades of under-age sex at the media center in London.

"Not bloody likely." Birs of a feather flocked together.

He dropped his quarters in the slot and Maz offered him the break.

His pool cue was missing the tip from the ferule.

"Your stick's accent is 100% Cambridge." It was a good guess and he admitted to having graduated from that prestigious university. "Playing pool well is the sign of a misspent youth."

His blonde girlfriend thought that was funny. She was a literary agent.

"I handle mostly non-fiction." She was young and smart with long legs. She would have been beautiful in any bar in New York. Her unnaturally curly hair discounted her tale about working only with the truth. Her friend lost to Maz and after they left he asked me, "Would you sleep with her?"

"No." I am faithful to Fenway's mom.

"No." Maz is astounded by my self-imposed celibacy.

"She's not my type."

No one believed my restraint, since I had been living down my reputation as a worldwide libertine. I looked around the bar. The women in the Abbey laughed with the freedom of youth. None of them had eyes for a man my age. I had once looked like an Irish Brando. Probably still do look like an older, less heavy than his appearance in APOCALYPSE NOW plus thitty years. I'm overweight, but he was the Second Coming of Orson Welles in that film. I dropped four coins into the pool table slot.

"Not a single woman in here is my type".

"I don't worry about types." Maz was a free agent as I had been at his age.

I was forty years old twenty years ago.

I accepted the truth of my ruin and racked the fifteen balls tight. After Maz's break I ran the table with a series of combos and bank shots. The next player was a black girl in her 20s. She was wearing a short black skirt.

"Nice shooting."

"Thanks."

I lost on the last shot just like before, which was always better than the first adn why they call the game 'Eight Ball'.

ps Me and Amanda

Friday, February 6, 2026

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.

Friday, December 26, 2025

Naked Fight A Paris 1985

On a Friday morning in January 1985 an Air France flight from Los Angeles landed on time at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Sharon and Amber exited from the 747 and proceeded through the terminal to pick up their luggage. Four big bags packed with exotic dancing costumes.

Male and female travelers stared at the slim brunette in tight leather and the buxom blonde tomboy dressed in North Hollywood erotica, then again men stared at them everywhere. No surprise. They were world famous XXX starlets. The two had been invited to shoot several adult films by a Paris porno production company and also educate the French male porn stars how to speak English. Basically Fuck Language 101.

A young man from the production company greeted them outside of the customs and led them to a Renault limo. He placed their bags in the trunk and introd his name was Rene. Sharon and Amber laughed at how he said his name. So very French. They slipped into the back and he sat up front with a surly unshaven driver. Both women smelled that the driver had not bathed today and maybe not this week or month.

"You are so French." Sharon almost expected them to be wearing a berets. The slender brunette had never been to France , but she had been born in Italy where her mother gave her up to adoption to a Catholic Family in New Jersey.

She always said that explained why she have become a porno actress. Her blonde buxom companion had different reasons. Amber came from Orange County California. The closest Amber had ever been to France was at Disneyland's IT'S A SMALL WORLD in Anaheim. Out the window was country flat farmland plowed brown dirt as far as the eye could see and not a single American car was on the highway.

“Rene, I wish you were wearing a beret, so I thought you were French.”

"I am French, but not that French." Rene smiled from the front passenger seat.

"Are you an actor?" Amber hoped he was in the movies, because most of the men she had seen in French XXX films were hairy cavemen. Rene was young and cute.

"No, I work in production, but I'm your daytime guide to Paris."

"What do you do at night?" asked Sharon.

She was already fantasizing about a menage a trois between the three of them. She had learned that phrase for two women and men in bed from her cousin Sean, who lived in Paris and presently worked at a nightclub called La Balajo.

"No, I work in production, but I'm here to be your daytime guide to Paris."

"What do you do at night?" asked Sharon. She was already fantasizing about a menage a trois between the three of them. She had learned that phrase for two women and men in bed from her cousin Pete, who was living in Paris and presently worked at a nightclub called La Balajo.

"I go out sometimes."

"My cousin Pete works at the Balajo and a couple of other clubs."

"Monday night. I know the club.”

In 1982 Sean had fled New York to avoid an Internal Affairs and FBI investigation into the Continental Club, a notorious after-hours haunt in West Chelsea. He hadn't been back for three years, except for the holidays. They had been fuck-buddies since 1978. .

"You talk about him all the time. You don't sound like cousins." Amber smirked having heard about their sexual exploits in New York.

"Oh we're cousins all right." They weren't really cousins but saying that they were saved time from explaining how they met at The Nursery, a sordid after-hours Club on 3rd Avenue in the East Village. Lovers ever since.

"He lives on Ile St. Louis."

“That address is very chic. In the middle of Paris, an island in the Seine." Rene lifted his eyebrow, impressed by her cousin.

"Funny, Pete lived in a slum in New York. So did I. These Village was a great place for the young and restless."

"Still is," added Amber, who had a couple of rock and roll boyfriends on the Lower East Side. New York was an always a fun town for her whenever she was dancing at Show World in Times Square. It was not Los Angeles and as they entered the Paris suburbs, she was sure that Paris was in Los Angeles either or even California or anywhere in the United States. "I'm looking to have a good time here. Are you single?"

"No, I have a girlfriend, but she likes to how you say swing with girls."

"With girls like us?” asked Sharon.

"Oui, with girls like you."

"I knew I would love Paris." She had been dreaming of this trip since the phone call from Paris in December. She had called Pete. He had promised to be a good guide and they both knew what that meant as did Amber.

The limousine drop them at a small hotel in La Marais, the Jewish quarter by the Seine. Pete had suggested the hotel. He lived on an island in the Seine not faraway. Rene unloaded the bags. The proprietor was a sweet Jewish woman, who laughed to see them.

"Tu es la cousine de Peter."

Sharon roughly translated what she said to understand that she was a cousin of Peter. She knew that he had been a guest here many times and the old woman must have loved him. Everyone loved Pete, except for those who did not love him. He was only trouble he to himself, but he was able to survive that danger. He was the luckiest man Sharon knew.

Madame Gruntuch lead them up to the top floor, a duplex with a large king bed and its windows overlooking rooftops with Notre Dame in the near distance. There was no phone and Rene translated to the owner had said they could call him downstairs and she will take your messages. He pointed to a business card on the bed table. The old woman left wishing them good luck.

"This isn't far from where your cousin lives." Rene dropped their bags, looking completely exhausted. He gave them a stack of Francs and said, "This is for you to get comfortable. You must be exhausted after your long flight. I have work to do, but I know my boss, Jacques wants to meet you at 5:00 over in St. Germain. Le Deux Magots. It's a famous cafe. I'm sure your cousin will know where it is."

"Not at all. We're ready to rock. I'll call my cousin. He's waiting for us. He'll be our guide." Rene seemed to relieved by this news and wrote down his phone number.

“I have work to do, but I know my boss, Jacques wants to meet you at 5:00 over in St. Germain. Le Deux Magots. It's a famous cafe. I'm sure your cousin will know where it is."

Rene left and the two women were alone for the first time since they entered the LAX terminal. They had made love in the jet's water closet over the Atlantic, just to claim another flight for the mile-high club.

"I don't know about you, but I could use a shower." Sharon stripped off her clothing

"Together?" Amber unbuttoned her shirts, baring her small breasts.

"Of course." Sharon and Amber were free. They were on the frontline of the Sexual Revolution . Sex was their gift to the world.

Any plans to do a morning tour of Paris ended after the shower the two fell into bed cuddled and fell asleep, despite Sharon's snoring. It was good to be in Paris.

The two woke to the rain at 10:01. All the rooftops were grey and wet from the rain. There was no threat of sunlight. Sharon got out of bed and padded across the cold wooden floor to the window. Down below the Narrow Street was empty. The Twin Towers of Notre Dame for shrouded by the downpour she turned to Amber and asked, "Did you bring any rain gear?"

"We live in LA. Why would we have rain gear?"

"Because we're in Paris and I remember my cousin saying to bring wet weather gear."

"And did you?"

"I brought flip-flops, but it's not flip flop weather out there. We're going to need an umbrellas and raincoats and maybe even boots."

Amber slipped out of bed and joined Sharon at the window. Both of them were shivering in their nakedness. She had been brought up in New Jersey. This cold was not like that damp cold. She felt it in her bones.

"I was not born to be in weather like this." Amber had seen rain like this in California during monsoon season and she hated that time. Nothing was ever dry.

"Don't worry I'll keep you warm."

The two returned to bed and pulled up the duvet over their naked bodies. Sharon looked at her watch and realize it was still on LA time. The only time she knew it was was daytime.

"You stay in bed I'll go get umbrellas and raincoats. Maybe Madam Grinch will bring us up some breakfast when I come back."

"Some good news finally."

Sharon dressed quickly in a warm-up suit and a leather jacket. Her only boots were leather thigh high stiletto heels. All her other Footwear were sneakers and sandal. Kissing Amber she left the hotel room and walk down the stairs to the front desk. Madam Grand took was there and smiled to see her guest. The old woman glance at the clock. It was ten to 11. She handed Sharon an umbrella and a note. It was from her cousin. He had left his telephone number and address, plus where he worked, the Balajo on Rue de Lappe. Madam Grintuch informed her where to buy raincoat and shoes on the nearby boulevard.

"Merci." the only other words she knew in French were Bonjour and Bon nuit.

Sharon stepped out onto the sidewalk the rain wasn't as heavy. She unfurled the umbrella and walk down Rue des Ecouffes to a broad boulevard. A pretty young woman pased by and regarded her with a disapproving scowl and Sharon wondered if her color blindness had cursed her with a crazy quilt of red yellows and purples. Her reflection in a pane of glass revealed nothing and she hurried down the street. The store was where Madame Gruntuch said it was. After telling the keeper that she wanted to look like Paris, she stripped out of her clothing and tried on a simple yet short gray skirt and a tight black sweater. Her outfit was completed with leather gloves, black raincoats, and shoes as well as two berets. THe other red for Amber who like bright colors. The shop lady approved of the change-over and said in broken English, "Now you are a Parisian."

Back out in the boulevard Sharon started to hurry back to the hotel. She felt warmer and the boots She spotted a cute cafe with an awning. The middle-aged woman behind the bar waved for her to come inside. Sharon nodded, but sat outside under the awning. No one else was sitting outside. Sharon wanted to see Paris in the rain in order to a cafe and a cognac. They came fast and she admired her reflection in the window. She looked very European, as she should having been born in Napoli far to the South. Here's world in Her Eyes. This is my continent my country is to the South i'm back home. Where I belonged. Sharon picked up a a napkin buried her face in the white cloth. The older woman came out and asked if everything was okay. Sharon nodded and said, "It's a long time since I've been in Europe. I'm happy to be home."

An hour later Madame Gruntuch clucked her approacl at the newe look and handed over the telephone, dialing her cousin's number, then passed the receiver. He was happy to hear that she had gotten rain gear and said he was coming over to give them a tour of the Left Bank whatever that was. Sharon went upstairs, followed by Madame Gruntuch with the breakfast tray.

Amber look like a movie star dressed in a pink and black catsuit high black boots and a leather jacket. Madam Grand took a remark how she was 'si belle'. Of course she was beautiful she was only 20 years old. The two of them ate the long stick of bread with butter and jam and drank the strong coffee with hot milk and plenty of sugar. The two of them hadn't done any cocaine since leaving LA. They had partially agreed to this trip to get away from the drug scene in Hollywood in the Valley. Drugs were everywhere in the porno industry in in Sharon suspected it was the same here in Paris.

"Does your cousin speak any French?"

"Yes, he says he learned it from the English subtitles of movies and his girlfriends, who he calls them the sleeping dictionaries and sleeping with someone was the best way to learn a language."

"Maybe he can teach me some French, while we're here. You're not possessive, are you?

"He's he's my cousin. Not my boyfriend. Thank goodness."

"Nothing worse than boyfriends."

Amber was lucky with Jamie, a veteran XXX actor. He was crazy sexually. More a boyfiend than a boyfriend, but Paris wasn't LA and they were free to be with whomever they wanted to be.

A knock on the door announced her cousin's arrival. Pete was dressed in black leather gloves jacket boots with a Black Beret. No umbrella. He never liked them. Amber stood across the room to kiss him on the lips and pressing her body against his, as if she didn't want to see Paris. He kissed her back for more than a second. The attraction was Mutual.

"Normally I'd say go get a Hotel, but we're in a hotel." Sharon wanted them both. He looked at the brunette and understood her desire but said, "Let's go see Paris."

Her cousin led them out into the rain. Amber also got a raincoat and sensible shoes. Sensible but sexy. They crossed the Seine onto Ile St. Louis. He pointed out his apartment and said ancient wooden beams cross the ceiling. Quasimodo could have lived there.

Amber look puzzled and Sharon said "The hunchback of Notre Dame."

"Which which is first on the list."

Both Sharon and Amber happy to have umbrellas and dry feet. They swiftly toward the gothic Cathedral, Pete pointing out the various Saints in the multi-colored stained glass windows. Patrick's in New York was magnificent, but Notre Dame was Heaven on Earth for Catholics. Above the choir with a small black statue.

"Black Michael, the archangel. He defeated Satan. Across the river is another greater statue let's let's like candles for our sins and we'll go there next."

Once more across the Seine in a light drizzle. None of this look like la or the valley or Malibu. There was no sun. Just a million Shades of Gray. He led them into a bookstore ancient smelling of old paper. Shakespeare and Company. He nodded to the clerks pretty girls, and walk to a small bookshelf.

"This is where they hide all the old porno. Great books from the 50s and 60s some even older. We can look at them and even take them if we want. No one thinks anybody would steal these books. These books are the first ones to teach me about sex. Here. The Itch. A classic by Stephen Hammer covering all of the major sexual deviations. Especially love Page 83."

Peter read that page to them both Amber and Sharon rubbed against both sides of his hips. The brunette bit her pouting lower lip. The XXX director of Personal Touch 3 had tutored her on that look She had been nineteen. All men loved it, but Peter's cousin kept reading the stroke book, as if it were the Bible. She wanted a line. nothing about this moldy bookstore said drugs and she said, "Lets get a drink."

"I know just the place.

Saturday, December 20, 2025

Nacht Und Nebel 2011

In the summer of 1982 Count-No-Count phoned my East Village apartment. Kurt, a mysterious German playboy was offering a job as ‘tursteher’ at his nightclub BSIR in Hamburg. The pay for a doorman was $150 a night, free accommodations, and all I could drink. Being dead-broke and wanted for questioning by the NYPD Internal Affairs for payment to the 20th Precinct at our after-hours club on West 25th Street, I quickly answered, “Ja.”

My stay in Hamburg had been pleasant throughout the summer. I spoke bad German with a Boston accent thanks to an ancient Bavarian teacher Bruder Karl at my high school south of Boston, but the clientele of young students on holiday dancing to the DJ imported from Paris possessed good English skills. Certainly better than my German. The weather was delightful and this far north the sun stayed in the sky late into the night. I drove an orange VW and lived in a studio penthouse on chic Mittelweg. I was thirty and no one was after me in Europe.

Autumn brought the cold rain, gray fog, and darker days. The sun’s daily traverse across the sky passed over the southern horizon like a frisbee weakening in flight with the approach of the winter solstice. Even worse was how the increasing bad weather allowed arrogant Nazis in their fifties and sixties to creep out of their hiding places. Maybe it was my imagination playing tricks with the shadows during my strolls through Jungfernstieg, but I regularly spotted well-dressed ex-Waffen SS striding proudly down the streets and their eyes didn’t lie about what they had seen or done in Russia, Poland, France, or Germany. They were not extras in a Hollywood movie. These men had not only obeyed orders and they had carried them out to the letter with pride. I was not scared by these old men nor of the young neo-Nazis. I was under the protection of the toughest gang in Hamburg. The GMbH and their boss J, the Black Pimp.

Of course the young Germans were not obsessed by the ghosts of the past.

“We are the Porsche Reich, not the Fourth Reich,” Count-No-Count had told me on many occasions in Paris. The Telex millionaire’s best friend was a Reeperbahn pimp, Kalle, the son of a Harlem American sergeant and a local woman from Hafenstrasse on the harbor of Hamburg.

A black Zuhalter was an anomaly in a German gang. His blonde right-hand man was SS Tommy, a notorious killer. The two of them along with their gang, the GmBH, controlled the ErosCenter, the huge brothel on the Reeperbahn, and also thousands of Huren or whores there and elsewhere in Hamburg. Kalle was always good to me. In truth he was my boss and not Count-No-Count.

His associate SS Tommy believed in the Second Coming of the Third Reich. The original Thousand Year Reich had lasted twelve years, but the weightlifter was not a real Nazi. Not like those old men who had done things no one liked to speak about at parties or even behind their backs. Still I was surprised when SS Tommy presented me a large bill for having sex with Astrid, who frequented BSIR. The Rechtung for my time with the blonde dancer came to 20,000 DMs or $12,000. Every act of intimacy been itemized on his list. Everything. Every sex act in five words or less. He had even charged twenty DMs for holding hands. Nothing was left off the list.

That evening I handed the pimp the keys to my VW and left Hamburg without saying an ‘auf weidersehen’ to anyone. Especially not Astrid. SS Tommy was scary and I was defensively scared of him.

The midnight train pulled into Hamburg’s Hauptbahnhof a little on time. During the wait I scanned the platform like a refugee from Gestapo henchmen. I didn't free safe, until the train entered Belgium. I reached Paris at dawn and I knew I was as lucky to be in France. Everyone does after they escape someplace else in the middle of the night.

Count-no-Count came down to Paris. He said Kalle was alright with me. Count-no-Count had paid my debt and advised me to stay away from Hamburg. I had no intentions of going north or west to America. New York wasn’t an option as the IAU investigation into police corruption was still in well swing. I worked at various nightclubs in the City of Light. Life was good for me. Less so for Count no Count. He ODed in 1985 in his Pigalle apartment. He was 38. I was 33.

I moved back to New York in 1986. The precinct cops knew I was there. They also knew that I had held my sand. I was left alone. A friend gave me a job in the Diamond District and I traveled the world on my savings. I heard from friends that Kalle was still a big man in the GmBH and SS Tommy had fled the Bundes-Republik after a failed bank robbery. The years moved on.

In 2004 I was living in Pattaya, Thailand, running a website selling fake F1 sports gear. I had a Thai wife and child. A car and a house with a mango tree in the front yard. F1-shopping.net was # 1 on Google search for Ferrari shirts. With the baht 50 to $1 a little counterfeiting was worth the risk. It wasn't like I was dealing drugs.

A Belgium marine geologist, Fabo, and I hung out at the Welkom Inn on Soi 3. We called the freelancer bar the Belgium Embassy. We were more interested in drinking than sex. He Heinikens. Me Thai Leo beer. Usually in the afternoon after I had shipped the day's shirt, caps, and jackets. One day he seemed very shook up and told me over a few beers how his girlfriend's ex- had shown up from South Africa. A German. Name of Tommy. I added the SS to complete the picture. It was a guess, but a good hunch. It was a small world and a long life.

"He wants Poo to work for him in Germany."

"As a pute in Hamburg."

"Yes? Do you know him?

"Maybe."

"He wants to meet me at my house. Poo is frightened and so am I."

"I understand. Call me when he's coming and I'll bring Bruno."

"Bruno."

"He's ex-legionnaire. He can never return to France. Good people." I had never discussed Bruno's reasons for his exile. Pattaya had lots of secrets.

I finished my beer and returned home. I said nothing to my wife about Fabo's woes. She probably knew. The Thais gossip more than anyone else in the world and know what is what and why before the news has reached a farang. When Bruno pulled up on his motorcycle, I kissed her and my daguhter. Nu said, "Lawang."

"I'll be careful."

She watched us drive away. I had informed Bruno of the situation. He only had to be told once. We crossed Sukhumvit rode up Khao Talo to a short-time bar in a semi hiso Thai neighborhood. Both of us checked the soi. We had heard that the German was friends with a Thai motorcycle gang. Both of us and Fabo were on good terms with them. There was no sign of them or him. We enter inside the dimly-lit bar. It had never seen the light of day The girls didn't lift from their chairs to greet us. We were known. Neither of us had ever gone upstairs with one of them. Bruno and I were faithful to our girlfriends. We only cheated with our drinking.

Fabo was not sitting alone

He was with SS Tommy. Each held a Heineken beer

I hadn't seen him in over twenty years. He hadn't changed at all. Same stack of muscles. Same bleached blonde shag hair. Just more slash scars on his left forearm from countless knife fights. People had tried to kill him. They had all failed. He squinted and eyeballed us. SS Tommy didn’t recognized me.

I sat down.

He had accused me on being the police.

"I know you. You don't know me. Leave Fabo alone."

"Why?" He most certainly wasn't scared of me.

Bruno had heard enough. He attacked the killer with the fury of an ex-legionnaire. Fabo, the girls, and I watched a short effective beating that are never filmed in the movies. It was over in fifteen seconds. Bruno dragged out SS Tommy and threw his unconscious body into the street. The bikers rolled up to the bar. SS Tommy must have called them for back up. Bruno nodded and they drove away. They knew Bruno well. This was none of their business. SS Tommy fled Thailand. Legionnaires had even more scary than pimp, if you are on their wrong side. A fugitive German conman late said at the Welkom Inn that SS Tommy had been arrested for a solo bank robbery in Jo-Burg. Good riddance. I was 52.

In the autumn of 2011 I was appointed writer-in-residence at the British Embassy in Luxembourg. The old fortress city was centrally located in Europe and I visited to Paris, Brussels, and Charleroi in the first month. Triers on the Moselle River was very close and I planned a trip to the ancient Roman city of 70,000, only a forty-five minute ride way by train.

Telling the Ambassador my plans, I caught the morning express to the Moselle and ferried across the river to Konz for a short train ride to Trier. On my arrival I half-expected SS Tommy to be waiting on the train platform. Not a sign of him there on in the streets.

Germany had changed in the last thirty years. The old Nazis had died off and, while the young Nazis had become very active in the East, they weren’t in Triers, but I kept my eyes open. Walking through the old Roman ruins I studied the faces of the young and old. I didn’t spot a single Nazi. It was, as if their genes had been erased from the Germanic race.

In Triers the only broken glass was from broken bottles and not the windows of Jewish homes and synagogues as was on the morning after Kristelnacht. I ate a bratwurst from an Imbiss stand and drank a Kloster beer. I visited Karl Marx Haus. The creator of Communism had been born in the old city. The street was in the heart of the sex zone. Nothing was happening in the afternoon. As I stood outside the house and old man passed and muttered under his breath, “Juden.”

“And fuck you, you old Nazi.”

My comment turned his head. His skin was withered by age, but he still stood erect. He had never asked for forgiveness for his deeds under der Dritten Reiche.

“Ja, du alte arseloch.”

I rushed him and he prepared to take a blow. I so wanted to hit him, but he wasn’t SS Tommy.

“Gehst heim,” I said with a Boston accent and he stood his ground with Nazi arrogance.

He was about 91. I was 59. 1945 was well back in the 20th Century. I stepped closer to the old man. He did not back away. He still stood for his beliefs and so did I. One blow would have put him in the hospital and me to jail. He was still a Nazi and I was me. Some things never change. I shoved him and said, “Go home.”

Our eyes said everything else. I was a Goy like him, but I wasn't anything like him and neither are the millions and millions of Germans in this world. Some of my best friends are German. I love them. Ehrlich, but not Nazis. This old man and I will always be enemies and I would never have it any other way.

Sunday, November 30, 2025

JUST ANOTHER NIGHT 2014

From 2014

Last night was New Year's Eve.

My redheaded poetess friend Irene phoned to invite me to a 20-something party in Bushwick.

"You'll be the oldest man there." Irene was going solo.

"Almost three times older." We were just friends.

"I think of you as 16." She had witnessed my silliness on more than one occasion.

"I like to think of myself as 15." I was really immature when it came to watching sports in a New York City. I hated Jets fans and Ranger fans were no bargain.

"You're much older than that, plus most of the 'boys' at this party act like ten year-olds." Irene liked older men. She was 26, but still more than two times younger than me in actual years.

"I know." Even thirty year-old men were more like teenagers. Nothing had ever happened in their lives. It wasn't their fault, however the lack of life experience angered them upon hearing my monologues of 'back then'. "I'll think about coming."

"It's just another night and you've had plenty of those." Irene was wiser than her years. She was only foolish in love.

Same as me.

I hung up and returned to watching ZATAOCHI THE BLIND SWORDSMAN, episode 23 of the TV series. The blind masseur gambled with cheats. He scammed them one by one. They paid with their honor. The sun was setting over Brooklyn. Two bottles of wine were in my fridge. I could take one to the party. It didn't start until 9.

After the end of episode 26 TRAVELING ALONE I decided to go out. I hadn't left the house on South Oxford for over a day. The night wasn't as cold and I walked down to Mullanes. Will was behind the bar. The bearded bartender had gone out on a date with Irene. They had had a good time.

"What will you drink?" asked the Islander fan.

"A Six Point Lager." It was made in Red Hook. "And put on the Bruins-Fishmen hockey game."

"Sure thing."

Will left at 7. The face-off was at 7:05. The Bruins had a 1-0 lead by the end of the 1st period. I know no one in the bar. Most everyone was stuffing their faces. The two young men beside me spoke with Valley Girl accents. They drank Chablis. I texted Irene that I was staying home.

"Love."

She liked an economy of words.

I went home and cooked a pasta of bacon, mushrooms, and gruyere with a butter-garlic-olive oil sauce.

At 8 I called Thailand.

My daughter was having her 10th birthday. Her mother sounded happy. Angie never speaks with me on the phone.

"Tell her I love her."

"She knows that."

Next I phoned Fenway's mom. Our kids were having a good time with fireworks in Ban Nok. None of them wanted to speak with Pa-Pa. I was on the other side of the world.

"Love you," I told Mam.

"I love you too." We haven't seen each in a year.

2013 was a tough one.

I hung up and poured myself a glass of wine.

ZATOICHI drank sake. He killed yakuza by the hundreds. 9-8-3 made up the word 'yakuza'. It added up to a losing hand in hana-fuda. 2013 was 6. Six or Li? meant wealth in Chinese. Its Cantonese annunciation 'lok' signifies a drop.

2013 was certainly a drop in wealth in my life.

I had another glass of wine, then Wikipedia solicited a donation.

I use that website everyday. It saves me a trip to the Main Library on 5th Avenue. I wasn't hitting the bars tonight. Frank's Lounge was asking $20. I gave Wikipedia a little more.

At midnight I heard the fireworks from the East River.

I ate a chocolate and finished my wine.

It was the end of my second glass.

ZATOICHI killed some more yakuza. They were bad men.

I felt good about giving money.

2014 added up to 7.

7 was good luck in every language.

ZATOICHI knows that math.

ps Good night Irene.

I've always wanted to say that.

ops The Islanders beat the Bruins 5-3.

Go figure.

To see Zatoichi, Flashing Sword Cut, please got to the following URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0m09S48JSK4

Thursday, November 27, 2025

Happy Thanks Wampanoags

My family’s ancestors crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower in 1620. The Howland clan spent that first autumn on the Cape and then sailed to what became the Plymouth Colony. Their spring pkantings failed and autumn found their food supplies were dangerously low. Only the intervention by Wampanoags, the native tribe, spared the settlers from starvation. Americans have celebrated the largess of the Indians with an annual feast of turkey and all the fixings.

Little if any mention is made of the Wampanoag Indians, who were nearly wiped out by European diseases and the Puritans in the King Philip's War in order to steal their lands, then again talk of extermination has no place at the holiday dinner table in America.

Prayers of thanks are saved for family friends and God.

Turkey is the main meal.

I’ve had the bird most every Thanksgiving in my life.

Mothers around the USA spent hours preparing the feast.

My family was no different from the rest of America. The early part of the day was filled by the chore of peeling apples, potatoes, turnips, carrots for our eight family members and another 5-10 guests. My older brother called it ‘KP Day’. My mother would cool the bird in the garage. Why was never explained to us. She would just take the big bird out of the oven and say, “Put it in the garage to cool.”

One Thanksgiving I obeyed her command. The garage door was open. The air was cold. I had spent the morning at the football game between my hometown and their arch-rivals. My next-door neighbor came over to the driveway with a football. We went into the backyard to emulate the day’s heroes. After bobbling a long pass Chuckie pointed to the front lawn.

"What's with DJ?"

DJ was a neighborhood dog. I was in love with his owner, Kyla. The German Shepard had his entire head was stuck inside a turkey. My mother's stuffing was delicious. I had not shut the door to the garage. I ran from the backyard and heard my mother scream.

“The turkey.”

I picked up a stick from the ground and charged to save our holiday meal. The big black dog fled from our yard with a slobbering snarl, leaving behind a mauled meal. My mother cried, “Where are we going to find a turkey now?”

My father looked at me. This was my fault. I didn’t even bother to explain my side of the story. When you’re wrong as a child, proving you’re right is a waste of breath.

My older brother and younger siblings thanked me for ruining Thanksgiving, although it didn’t turn out so bad, since DJ’s owners paid for our meal at a nearby hotel. Kyla kissed me on the cheek. The food was good and my mother didn’t have to wash any dishes.

We didn’t have a home-cooked Thanksgiving meal for the next five years.

We still thanked family, friends, and God, but my older brother and I also thanked DJ. Even bad deeds can turn out good as long as no one brings up the extermination of the New England tribes on the Fourth Thursday of November. The People of the First Light survive to this day on the Cape and Martha's Vinyard and Nantucket and are free to say Âs Nutayuneân or we still live here. ps there is no word for thanksgiving in Algonquin, but I do thank them. Always.

Tuesday, November 11, 2025

Another Tale From Luxembourg 11-11-2011

.

On a gray autumn November 11, 2011 after the ceremony for the American War dead, the dignitaries drove to attend the Ruhe Tag or ‘Quiet Day’ ceremony for the fallen German soldiers at the close-by Sandweiler German War Cemetery, a separate and smaller cemetery. Shaded by the trees and dark as a forest. Most of the tombstones were unmarked, as the decomposed corpses had been recovered from mass graves well after the Battle of the Bulge.

The cobblestone path led to a large gray stone cross on a monument. Two lines of stones formed the image of rail tracks. The heavy gray tombstones were reminiscent of Wehrmacht uniforms.

Over ten thousand German soldiers were buried here. Many were SS and their bodies had been buried one top of the other. The German ambassador explained to my friend, the UK ambassador, that they had been inter was so they would be close to their comrades. I thought the two to a grave policy had been to save space.

I stood next to the American ambassador. Robert was Jewish. His unease was obvious. Neither of us were here to judge the dead and we showed his respect during the somber rites for the dead.

I had earlier cried seeing the rows upon rows of white crosses at the American cemetery. Flowers had been laid at the monument for the German dead and a band played a dirge. I suspected that Germans had many of them. I shed no tears here.

I slipped outside the ceremony and an old man in a good suit was smoking a cigarette by an iron fence. The Battle of the Bulge had been over sixty-six years ago. He had to be in his late eighties. In 1944 he had been very young. He still stood militarily erect. I asked him for one of his cigarettes in German. He gave me one and lit it for me.

“Du kennst hier jemanden?” Did he know anyone here. My high school German was still stuck in my head thanks to Bruder Karl.

“Viele Kamaraden, du?” He smiled and sucked on his cigarette.

“Ich war damals noch etwas jung.” I hadn’t even been born in 1944.

“Du bis rechtig.” The old man laughed with a tobacco cough. Maybe something worse. “Ich bin alt. Sehr alt.”

“Aber nicht tot.” We were both old at different ages, but neither of were dead.

“Das stimmt. Du bist Amerikaner?”

I nodded yes.

“Guten Soldaten.” He nodded in appreciation of the Yankees’ valour and stubbed out the cigarette. “Guten tag.”

I said the same and he walked away, as I finished the cigarette. I didn’t go back inside the cemetery. I knew no one inside. I was better off outside and happy to be so. Every day above the dirt is a good one for the living. The good, the bad, and the in-between.

Thursday, September 11, 2025

A DAY FAR REMOVED FROM NORMAL

That morning a jet roared above the East Village. I opened my eyes. Lots of planes and helicopters flew over Manhattan. None of them ever this low or fast or loud. Thirty seconds later my apartment windows shook with a muffled thud that sounded more a boom than a crash.
The children from the day-care center screamed in the alley. There was no quiet in them and I dressed for breakfast at the Veselka diner on 2nd Avenue.
The telephone rang in the living room.
It could only be my Thai ex-girlfriend wanting money. Pong didn’t deserve a single baht after leaving me for a young Italian tourist and I left the apartment without answering the phone.
Yesterday rains had deluged Manhattan, but today not a cloud marred the sky and the temperature was ideal for September. The trees on East 10th Street were tinged by hues of red and yellow. Autumn was less than two weeks away.
My bank account had been sapped by six months in Thailand, but I wasn’t too worried about being broke, since last week Manny, my boss, had offered my old job at the diamond exchange. Everything would work out for the best and I walked toward 1st Avenue. At the corner my downstairs neighbor, Jim, ran up to me and sputtered, “A plane crashed into the Trade Tower!”
“You’re kidding!”
“No, you can see the smoke from here!” Jim pointed to people staring downtown on the avenue.
“In World War II a bomber had slammed into the Empire State Building.”
“During a storm. Not on a day like today.”
The clear sky was so blue that New York might have been atop the highest peak of heaven.
My neighbor said, “I’m going to the roof.”
“I’ll meet you in a minute.”
We bounded up the stairs two at a time and I grabbed my binoculars from the apartment before climbing the remaining four flights in less than thirty seconds. The fire door was open and on the roof several neighbors gaped south with good reason. Flames gushed from the shattered northern World Trade Tower and an apocalyptic plume of smoke trailed east over Wall Street.
TV helicopters fluttered at a distance around the stricken building and sirens whined from all over Manhattan. All heading downtown.
Only last week I had attended to a concert at the base of the Trade Towers. The two steel sheaths defied gravity without any threat from man, beast, or an act of god. Now a two hundred foot wide gash scarred the north tower.
“I can’t believe this,” Jim said with his ear to the radio. “The announcer said it was an accident.”
A balding neighbor interjected without taking his eyes off the flames, “I live on the top floor and watched the jet plane fly right into the tower like it was on a suicide mission.”
“Someone trying to finish it off,” Jim referred to the 1993 World Trade bombing. “But it’s still standing tall.”
“Yes, it is.” I brought the binoculars to my eyes.
Millions of sheets of A4 paper floated in the wind and debris rained to the ground, then a strange object shot from a window shrouded with smoke.
It was a man in a suit.
More people plunged from other floors.
The last was on fire.
“There are people jumping!”
“Why don’t those helicopters rescue them?” A girl from the fourth floor cried into the sleeve of her pajamas.
“Because there’s too much smoke on the roof.”
Jim pointed to a growing dot in the southern sky.
“There’s another plane!”
“I can’t believe a pilot is actually flying closer to give the passengers a better look of this,” said our bald-headed neighbor.
“This isn’t a fly-by,” I replied and then an airliner struck the South Tower and an enormous fireball exploded from the other side like an erupting volcano. Jim dropped his radio and everyone on the roofs of the East Village groaned in horror.
“Oh, my God.”
The DJ confirmed a second hit.
Jim shook his head.
“This only happens in movies.
He was right, but no James Bond or Bruce Willis had stopped these planes.
I searched the sky for an F-16.
There was nothing in the air.
The city was defenseless.
“This isn’t a movie. This is the real thing.”
Over the last years we had been warned about New York’s vulnerability to terrorist attack. None of us had ever anticipated such an extreme act and my mind crunched numbers of the two towers.
50,000 people worked in the WTC. Anyone on the top floors was trapped by the fire. Friends worked in those buildings. I borrowed a cell phone and tried to contact Andrew, who lived across the street from the Twin Towers.
There was no dial tone.
The South Tower collapsed in a fury of dust and smoke. Someone screamed and I joined them and everyone else standing on the roofs of Lower Manhattan
Within an hour the North Tower also crumbled to the ground. The tragedy vanquished any worries about rent or my Thai girlfriend. This country was at war, but the victims of this first attack needed our help and I declared to Jim, “I’m going to Beth Israel to give blood.” “Wait for me. I’ll live a note for my wife.”

By the time we arrived at the hospital, the police had cordoned off the street. Doctors and nurses had assembled triage stations on the sidewalks and orderlies wheeled in-patients from the hospital to accommodate the injured from the attacks. Everyone froze fearfully, as a F-16 screeched over New York too late to prevent the attacks.
“Can we help?” I asked a guard.
“Not much you can do here.” The ambulance bays were empty and he was at a loss to do anything more than protect this location.
“We can give blood.”
“Blood bank’s over there on the third floor.” He pointed to a building on 17th Street.
Jim and I ran to the entrance and up the stairs to the blood bank. More than twenty people filled the third-floor office. None of our fellow donors had seen the second plane hit and they were appalled by Jim’s account of the buildings’ collapse, which he ended by saying, “No one on those floors lived through that inferno of Hell.”
“What kind of animals do this?” A Polish woman dabbed her tears with a Kleenex.
The list of suspects was short and everyone agreed that no American pilot could have been forced to commit such a heinous deed.
A harried nurse’s aide emerged from the hallway and handed out medical history questionnaires. I checked off being free of AIDS, Hepatitis B, drug abuse, anemia, but marked ‘Yes’ to having lived outside the USA. My last ten years had been spent in South East Asia.
Giving blood isn’t a fast procedure and the hospital staff asked for patience. Not everyone was listening and a white-haired man in his fifties fumed, “I don’t understand why they can’t give us the needles and bags, so we can take our own blood.”
With his clean clothes, shaven face, and polished shoes, he could have passed for a normal citizen, if you ignored the pint of vodka sticking out of his jacket pocket.
“When can I give some blood?” His eyes sparkled with dementia. “Give me a razor blade and I’ll drip it in a bowl.”
“That won’t be necessary.” A female doctor read his file. “Bob, you mind me taking your blood pressure?”
“Just as long as you don’t suck out all my blood.” Bob glared around the room. “The old president of Nicaragua forced everyone in the country to give blood and he sold it to the good old USA. Vampire, that’s what Somoza was!”
“Bob, that’s old history.” The doctor was used to humoring the mad of Manhattan.
“You think I’m crazy, but I saw it with my own eyes."
“You haven’t written a last name here.” The doctor brandished the form.
“They stole it away, when I was a POW in Afghanistan.”
A young Asian nurse measured his blood pressure.
“I lostmy family today. To people like you.”
“I’m sorry, Bob, but you have low blood pressure,” stated the doctor.
“Meaning what?” Bob wasn’t buying her divine pronouncement.
“Meaning you can’t give blood.”
“You don’t want my blood, because I’m an American, not like the rest of ‘them’.”
The faces in the waiting room were white, black, brown, and yellow. Most of the accents originated from overseas. Their need to help trumped their country of origin and I said, “Yo, this has been a bad day and you’re frightening people with your talk.”
“Who elected you group leader?”
Jim nudged my arm.
“Let it go, he’ll be gone soon enough.”
He was wrong.
“I’ll tell you who’s to blame for this? The mayor, fucking Ghouliani, because he made New York too safe for terrorists. You can’t tell me that they wouldn’t have come here, if people were getting shot by crackheads. Those terrorists would have taken out someplace easy like Disneyworld.”
“Bob, I need to see someone else.” A doctor motioned for him to leave the waiting room.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Bob defiantly folded his arms.
I had heard enough.
“Bob, there’s a lot of people wanting to give blood. Some of them can and some of them can’t. Right now you’re making a problem for everyone.”
Bob rose from his chair. He was three inches taller than me and poked at my chest.
I knocked away his hand.
“Don’t touch me, Frisky.” Bob glowered menacingly down a crooked nose.
I forgot where I was, why I was here, and what had happened, until the doctor separated us.
“Not here.”
“Sorry,” I apologized and Bob went to the door, saying. “You’re right. Not here, but I’ll be seeing you around, Frisky.”
The other donors sighed with relief and I did too, because I didn’t want to fight Bob. The doctor wasn’t so sure and she read my chart.
“What country were you living in?”
“Thailand.”
“Thailand is one of the countries from which we don’t accept blood.”
“I suspected as much.” AIDS ran rampant in Southeast Asia thanks to the DEA stopping the opium trade, so all the tribespeople switching to heroin and needles.
“What else can I do?”
She recommended volunteering at the Emergency Ward and motioned for another donor.
I got up to leave. Jim was being drained of blood. He hadn’t ever left the country.
“Where you going?”
“Someplace I can lend a hand.” I grabbed a donut from a table. They were for donors, however I had skipped breakfast.
Outside hundreds of expectant donors jostled in a long queue down the stairs to the ground floor and out onto the street. At the emergency entrance the doctors and nurses searched the avenue for the ambulances. Hearing none was not a good sign. Downtown needed help and I returned home to change into heavy work clothes and boots left over from a construction gig in the mid-90s. Before leaving I tried calling my friend, Andrew, again without anyone answering at his apartment a block from the World Trade Tower.
I prayed he had escaped injury and rode my bike through the Lower East Side.
The subways had been closed and tens of thousands of New Yorkers walked north on the car-less avenues. Very few of them spoke and those who were usually stopped upon turning their heads to the ghostly column of smoke masking the end of Manhattan.
Blockades had been erected on Canal Street to prevent pedestrians from proceeding any closer to the collapsed towers. Every few minutes they were opened for incoming fire trucks and ambulances. A stunned onlooker stated, “Nobody escaped alive. Supposedly they’re taking the bodies over to Jersey. More than two thousand already.”
“People got out,” a man in a business suit heavily covered with soot contradicted him. “I was on the eight-second floor in the south tower. As soon as the first plane hit, we ran down the stairs.”
“Where were you, when the second plane hit?” a young bicyclist with dreadlocks asked and people gathered around the survivor.
“Something like the twentieth floor. I heard this explosion and then the entire building shook. When I got outside stuff was hitting the ground. Glass and big pieces of concrete, then bodies. One of them almost got me. It was bad.”
He choked and the bicyclist comforted him. There would be a lot of that today. I asked the nearest policeman. “Where are they accepting volunteers?”
“Volunteers?” The young Latino officer had been dazed by the horrors of the morning. This was his precinct. He re-focused on the task at hand and said, “Go over to West Street. Supposedly they’re taking people there.”
I r=tried another futile call to Andrew. No answer. I pedaled my bike toward the Hudson, grateful that that ominous cloud from the wreckage wasn’t blowing north.
On West Street several hundred people had gathered to help. Mostly construction workers with heavy tools, but also a good number were men and women from ordinary walks of life desperate to aid the rescue effort.
“Write your names on your clothing,” a volunteer shouted from the sidewalk.
“What for?” I asked a young man in jeans.
“So they have someplace to send your body in case you die.” A bearded ironworker Magic-Markered a name and phone number on his jeans.
“Die?” The young man squinted like he hadn’t heard right.
“Over two hundred firefighters have supposedly died so far.” v=
“A lot of cops too,” a beer-bellied welder raised his eyes to the sky.
“And they’re professional rescue teams, so someone like yourself has gotta be real careful, because down there isn’t any place for someone not knowin’ what they’re doin’,” the ironworker commented for the benefit of the civilians.
Several blocks beneath Canal Street was a scene of unimaginable danger. Thousands of dead. Fire. Death and worse. No one walked away. We were New Yorkers. We had tolerated years of crime, bad subways, noise, dirt, rats, cockroaches, the disparity between the poor and the rich, and a thousand other petty annoyances, because the million other reasons to live in the city outweighed the bad. They would after today too, only an hour went by, then two.
Not a single ambulance headed uptown and the ironworker said sadly, “I’m not feelin’ good about this.”
“What?” a welder re-arranged the equipment at his feet.
“I think anyone who had a chance to be out is out.”
“That’s really negative.” The welder spat on the sidewalk.
“Not negative. If there were people livin’, then they would have us in there right now tearin’ the place apart, but____you saw the thing come down. Ain’t no way anyone lived through that. Maybe one or two, but not a couple of hundred.”
“So you saying you want to leave?”
“No, I wanna say a prayer.” The ironworker lowered his head.
Everyone joined him, because he was telling the truth.
I waited another hour, listening to heated accusations about who was to blame and how we as a nation should punish the perpetrators of this infamy. Some called for the immediate bombing of Iraq, while others condoned a-bombing Lebanon and Libya. I kept my suspicions to myself. No one wanted to hear any conspiracy theories.
I borrowed a phone and discovered that Andrew was at a friend’s apartment in Little Italy. Safe, but like many people in possession of a tale he would have preferred to have seen from someplace not so close to Ground Zero. The other volunteers were glad my friend was okay and the ironworker said, “Go, man, now’s the time to be with friends and family.”
“I don’t know.”
“Man, ain’t nothing good going to happen here. Good luck and stay safe.”
I felt like the deserter in THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, but the sight of Andrew, Alia, and my other friends at Billy O’s penthouse assuaged my dishonor. “It h-h-h-had been a near-thing,” Andrew stuttered on the balcony. “I mean my apartment is across the street. I heard an explosion and saw this paper floating in the air and I tho
ught there was a parade, then the second plane crashed and I r-r-ran for my life.”
“You’re lucky to be here.” Billy opened another bottle of wine and his eight-year old daughter sheepishly demanded of her mother, “Do I have to go to school tomorrow?”
“I don’t think so.”
Gee-Gee clapped her hands and danced out of the room.
Hers was the first laughter of the day and Andrew lit a cigarette.
“G-g-glad someone’s happy.”
We drank wine and told stories.
Billy had dined at Windows of the World with his parents, Andrew had drunk at the Greatest Bar in the World with his wife, and I had driven a motorcycle around the desolate landfill, which would become Battery Park City. The sunset on the fumes rising from the ruins and even Billy/s wife patting my hand couldn’t stop my tears.
I was drunk.
$40,000 of credit remained on my credit cards. Thailand was only a day’s flight away. Pong would be happy to see me. I didn’t inform my friends of these plans and left the penthouse for my apartment, bicycling slowly up the Bowery. People walked in the eerie silence created by the traffic ban. Some spoke and some were even laughing. I pedaled harder to get home, so I could inform my family in Boston that I was all right.
A block past CBGBs a white-haired man sat on the curb, holding an empty vodka bottle and singing GOD BLESS AMERICA off-key. It was Bob from the blood bank.
I should have ignored him, but I was mad at the cruel genius who had destroyed the future and even madder knowing that I would never personally wreak revenge, but Bob, well, Bob was right at hand and I rolled up to the curb.
“Remember me?”
“Yeah, long time no see, Frisky.” Bob jumped to his feet more skillfully than expected from a man who had drunk an entire bottle of vodka, though he slurred with a gummy tongue, “I was wondering when you would show up.”
He short-circuited any further conversation with a roundhouse right. I ducked the wild blow and Bob followed the flow of his punch to the pavement. His head clonked on the curb.
I hopped off my bike.
His eyelids fluttered like butterflies and he asked, “Where am I?”
“On the Bowery.” I reached down to upright Bob.
He pressed his hand to his forehead and blood seeped through his fingers to drip onto the asphalt.
“The Bowery, how the hell did I get here? Shit, I remember.”
He didn’t speak for a second and looked downtown. The deadly flume of smoke glowed in the night.
“Hey, I’m sorry about today. Sorry about everything. I’m a fuck-up, but I was someone once. Shit, a soldier. For this country. No bullshit, Frisky. I really was, then something went wrong in my head after I got shot in Afghanistan. I shouldn’t have been there with the Hazarah, but I was.” He lifted his hair to reveal a wicked scar.
“Damn.”
“See, I wasn’t lying, but now all I am is an ornery drunk. What’s the sense? Where’s the pay-off?”
These were questions Bob asked too often and I probably did too.
“It was a real bad day today.”
“Maybe it would be better, if there was no tomorrow. Like if I could let a car hit me.”
He struggled to gus feet and I stopped him.
“Bob, there aren’t any cars in the Village and you’re not in any condition to walk to 14th Street to get hit by one.”
“Then do the world a favor and kill me. Hell, no one would notice in all the confusion.”
“I’m not killing anyone.”
“Then I’ll go over to the bridge and jump into the river.” Bob wasn’t kidding about killing himself and I couldn’t leave him alone. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Well, what the sense? You tell me.” His index finger aimed at the funereal specter over Lower Manhattan. “What’s the sense?”
“I’ll tell a story about why you have to go on living.”
“I hope it isn’t a long story. My attention span is on short-rations.”
“Less than a minute.”
“Okay.” He raised the empty vodka bottle like he expected it to have been miraculously filled, and then released it into the gutter. “I’m all ears.”
“A long time ago I was traveling in Mexico. This shitty bus stops in a nowhere town. I ate a potato taco. Nothing happened until back in Texas, where I got sick. Almost like I was dying. I lay in bed hallucinating and had a dream about being chased by zombies. The filthy dead trapped me in this cottage and scratched at the screen door with dirty fingers. I was scared and even more so when one of them asked, “What’s the secret of human life?”
“And what did you tell them?” Bob checked his cut, which had stopped bleeding.
“I didn’t know what to tell them, until a voice said, “If you tell us the secret of human life, we’ll let you live for another minute.” At that moment I knew the secret, but woke before I told them.”
“Thank God, you saved mankind from the dream zombies!”
“I guess I did.”
“So can you tell me the secret of human life?”
“The secret was that no matter how bad things were or what awaited me at the end of that minute, I still wanted to live.”
“Maybe you do, but not me. I don’t have a place to stay. No one to take care of me. Nothing, so even if I had known the secret, I would have told the zombies to start eating.”
Despite being the world’s leading failurologist, I believed in my eventual triumph and asked the older man, “You really think it’s hopeless?”
“If you gave me enough money for a room, maybe I could forget the despair long enough to find me some hope.” Telling my story had excluded any refusal and I handed him a twenty. Jim made a face. “Where can I stay for twenty bucks in this city?”
“I think you know.” I steadied him on his feet and glanced at the Palace Hotel.
“I guess I do.” He touched my shoulder. “You’re not such a bad guy, Frisky.”
“And neither are you.”
“Yes, I am, but that’s another story. Be safe.”
He staggered off to an SRO hotel like a sailor on land after a long sea voyage and I rode my bike to East 10th Street. While I hadn’t saved any victims of the crash, having helped someone in need felt good.
Maybe not enough to forget the day’s horror, but I wasn’t going to run away from New York.
Not today.
Not any day.
The city was my home.
Maybe not forever, but I knew its streets, its bars, its people and tomorrow was another day and if those words worked for Scarlet O’Hara, then they certainly would for New York.
This city was tough and it was tough every day of the year.

Painting by Ro Lohin
Especially after a day far from normal.

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Cave Women Of The Ice Age

# 1 has to be Raquel Welch from 1,000,000 BC. Blonde. Great Hair. And no dirt.
This female humanoid is the darling of the anthropologists.
Call me old fashioned, but I prefer Lorna the Fair One.
Or Carole Landis from 1,000,000 BC (1940)
Then there is Darryl Hannah from CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR.

We smoked weed in Jamaica.

Finally Rae Dawn Chong in Paris.

In the winter of 1985 I met the star of QUEST FOR FIRE in Paris. I didn't go home with her, because I was faithful to a junkie blonde aristocrat and I was leaving for New York in the morning.

I was a fool.

At my flat off the Grand Boulevard Mirabelle and I huffed Persian Brown and crashed on my bed with the window open. I woke in the afternoon at 2pm, which was when my flight was taking off for the USA. I reached over to the skinny blonde. She was as cold as a corpse and I suddenly aroused by being in bed with a dead woman, then she drew a breath.

Alive and a fool.

But then what can Homo Sapiens expect from a Neanderthal?

Wednesday, January 1, 2025

Back From The Dead 2011

From 2011

My New Year's Eve for 2011 plans were simple and local. Watch the Celtics-New Orleans game at Mullane's followed up by an early beer at Frank's then home to my Fort Greene Penthouse to watch the final sunset of 2011 before getting attire in my evening suit. Nothing says New Year's Eve better than a tux. I polished off a bottle of Cote du Rhone and bid farewell to AP and his wife. They were expecting neighbors to see in 2011.

"Frank's?" AP asked knowing my answer.

"Until 11:30. I'll join you for the countdown. "Is Dick Clark still around?"

"They'll have to flash-defrost him to make it to Times Square." AP will be 50 this coming this month. Most of our new year's countdowns were with the eternal teenager, but not this year. "He's in retirement."

"Damn." Nothing stays the same. It was 10:15. "I'll see you in an hour."

Frank's is a five-minute walk from South Oxford. The bar is a Fort Greene fixture dating back to 1972. The owner was sitting at the first table. I greeted him with warmth.

"Thanks for having me this year." One of the regulars had recently named me 'the White Shaft' after I entered the bar in a long black-green leather coat. To misquote Frank Zappa, "I wasn't black, but sometimes at Frank's, I didn't feel white."

"Glad to have you."

I ordered a beer from Sandy, the bartender, and had a few more. My phone was silent. No one calling from Thailand, the Continent, or America. I was off the radar and commanded another beer. I tipped the bartender the change and drank the beer in the glow of another year of the new century sinking into the past. More than a half-century of last-minute preparation for the new year.

Larry and I toasted the Celtics and Lakers.

"Here's to another championship."

Both of us were predicting a rematch of 2009. My phone buzzed with a text message. Shannon was at his girlfriend's restaurant on DeKalb. I wrote that I'd see him after the countdown and bid good night to everyone at Franks'.

AP buzzed me into his house. We drank two bottles of champagne with his wife and two guests. My phone rang 10 minutes into 2011. My nephew was waiting at Oskars. Same rendezvous as Shannon. I tipped my hat to my landlord.

"See you in the afternoon."

"If not later." AP knew that I was hellbound for drink this evening.

Wine, whiskey, and song until 5am.

Yesterday was a blur in my bed. A burger at Mullane's for breakfast at 3pm and Chinese leftovers at home for dinner. No more booze. No drugs. Only water and it wasn't a cure for my ills. Sleep would help a little and I called Fenway's mother in Sriracha before crashing into my pillows.

"Mao?"

"Not mao." I had recovered from the staggering drunk. "Hang."

"Bad?"

"Bad enough. Love you and call you in the morning."

It was barely 9pm and I had had enough of 2010 to last a lifetime unless the clocks reverse their spin and I'll be ready to relive this New Year's Eve backwards. It's the only way to repair the holes in your soul.

Happy 2011

Tuesday, December 10, 2024

BET ON CRAZY / Naked Women

Published 2007

Rough diamonds are predominantly mined from volcanic vents in Africa, Australia, Russia, and Canada. After that process separated into parcels for the London sight-holders, who have the stones cut in Antwerp, Israel, or India. The finished products are divvied out to various diamond brokers and then brought over to various diamond markets across the world. Over 80% of the diamonds sold in the USA pass through Manhattan's West 47th Street, making the block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues a crossroads of the world for jewelry. kmv c Sapphires and rubies from the Orient are transported here from Hong Kong and Bangkok, while Israelis brave the dangers of Columbia for precious emeralds. Having handled jewelry for over ten years, I sometimes act as if I were dealing with chopped liver at a deli counter. We are, however, occasionally blessed with something to get excited about, an opportunity to deal with truly valuable gems.

Several years back my boss and good friend, Richie Boy, was introduced to a big player from the West Coast. A CEO of several companies, this man had expressed interest in purchasing a Christmas gift for his mistress, a blonde from Palm Beach who was married to another millionaire. Botox preserved her beauty, although her eyes told her age.

The call was for a very rare ruby. It had to be over five carats, a natural from Burma, internal perfect, and the color of the blood seeping from a pigeon's nose. The vein, not the artery. In his own way he was a bit of a poet.

Richie Boy phoned several dealers and within a day came up with a stone. It wasn't cheap. The dealer flatly told us, "875,000 dollars and I don't want to hear any bitching about the price."

The dealer bought the stone down. It was not big, but the color was a sublime blood red hue, and clean. Not a single flaw. Richie Boy asked me, "What do you think?"

"It doesn't look like a house in Montauk with a beach view, but what do I know?"

Richie Boy agreed and decided to get two diamond necklaces for back-up. He then called the client, who said he was interested, but wanted us to meet him at his tenth floor suite at the St. Regis Hotel.

Richie Boy's father was from Brownsville, very old school, and he immediately announced that we were being set up. Neither of us disagreed, since we would be carrying over a million dollars in jewelry into a hotel room to meet people we didn't really know.

His father wanted to kibbosh the entire deal. Richie Boy, however, loaded his 9mm. I told him to put it away. Richie hadn't shot the weapon in years.

"You pull a gun and you have to use it. You don't, then the robbers will." "You carry it." Richie offered me the 9mm.

"No weapons." I put the gun back in the safe.

"The goy is right. The merchandise is insured. If we get robbed it counts as a sale." Manny was right, then again he was 100% right about 7% of the time

I rolled a newspaper.

"You're bringing reading material." Manny shook his head.

"No, it's a weapon."

"Yes." Richie had seen me break someone's nose at the Underground disco with a magazine. "He knows how to use it."

"My heroes. Try and sell something."

Richie stuck the jewelry inside his suit coat. "How do I look?"

"Like one boobs is bigger than the other."

His father swore we were crazy. He was right, but said, "Sie gesund."

With his blessing we set off for the St. Regis Hotel. We arrived at the hotel without incident. Two guests tried to get on the elevator with us, but both Richie Boy and I glared a warning for them to take the next car up. He pressed the button for the seventeenth floor.

There Richie and I walked down the corridor like we were being set up. All senses on 10. reaching the customer's room, Richie rang the bell. A woman laughed inside and several seconds later the door opened. Both of us stared, because the blonde wasn't wearing any clothes. Her boyfriend was on the couch, in a bathrobe.

"Lady, could you move away from the door," I asked in a low voice, gesturing with the NY Times.

The tanned middle-aged man frowned, "Who are you?"

People like him weren't used to taking orders.

"No offense." Richie took the two diamond necklaces from his jacket. "He's the protection for these."

He draped the diamonds on the woman's bare neck and she went over to the man's side. Even though they weren't dressed I still didn't trust them, but by the end of an hour Richie had sold one of the necklaces. We took a cashier's check for more money than either of us could earn in several years, but Richie wasn't happy, because he hadn't sold the ruby.

"There was no way you were going to sell that stone," I said.

"And why not?"

"Because no man, and I don't care how rich he is, will buy a million-dollar gift for another man's wife," I said.

"Don't be so negative," he said. "You never know."

And that is the truth.  

Monday, December 9, 2024

LOVELY SLEEP by Peter Nolan Smith


Published 2013

The Thai people pride themselves in the purity of their language. Few English words have infiltrated the common lexicon. Dtam-ruaat is the word for police. The diphonic annunciation can confuse most farangs. I thought for years that Dtam-ruaat meant 'make blood', however make blood is spelled Dtam-leuuat with a falling accent on the last syllable.

Thai culture remains strong, however beer is beer in Thai as is pizza pizza, so foreigners don't starve to death in the hinterlands. 1150 is telephone number for Pizza. Pay the gas and the motorcycle delivery boy will drive to the most distant reaches of ban-nok ie the sticks.

Other commonly shared words are whiskey, taxi, sex, and WC for 'water closet', which along with pizza cover most human needs.

Two years ago I returned to New York from Bangkok via Narita Airport.

Twenty-seven hours from Soi 12 in Jomtien to Fort Greene in Brooklyn.

Most people would have taken several days to recover from such a trip. I needed money and showed up at work 10 hours after passing through customs at JFK.

I was exhausted from the trip, yet couldn't sleep and tried to explain to my son's mother why I couldn't sleep. My Thai was rudimentary and Mam was getting increasingly frustrated by my ignorance of her native language.

"You stay here many years. Why you not speak Thai good?"

"Because I'm a farang."

"I know that." She sounded like she was saying 'farang kee-nok'. I know we aren't as good as them, because I have lived in France and the Thais are the French of the Orient.

Their chauvinistic love for their country's traditions, food, and culture border on fanaticism and after residing in Thailand I have to admit that they aren't half-wrong. The only problem was that I had to move back to America.

New York to be exact.

It was where my job was.

The other side of the world and this week my body clock was off by twelve hours.

Day is night and night is day.

"I can't sleep," I explained to Mam over Skype.

"Go sleep."

"Khan Lak Ter. Last night I had a dream about staying in a house with no walls. It was in the middle of a rice paddy. Very beautiful. Made out of wood. You slept in bed and I held Fenway."

Fenway was our son. He was two years old. Every night his body spun on the bed like a clock. I slept like a stone with him.

"Good dream?" Mam was a firm believer in beauty sleep, however children steal sleep from their parents like a CIA rendition torturer. The theft gave them control. Fenway was no different from the rest of the young in their preparation to usurp the strength of their mothers and fathers.

"Not a good dream. I see men in the dark. They attack us. I wake up screaming." I live alone in the top floor apartment of a Fort Greene brownstone. The walls were thick. No one heard my terror. "A nightmare."

"Fan raai." A nightmare was scary in every language.

"Yes."

"Are you thuuk-phee-am?" Mam was horrified at the possibility that I had been possessed by an evil spirit or 'phee'.

"Not at all." I never scoffed the Thai belief in ghosts. I had been to the house of a 'maih moht'. Magic existed in the heart and soul of her country, however my dream was the harvest of several sleepless nights. My next attempt to clarify the reason for my insomnia pierce the language barrier.

"You mean 'jet lag'?"

"Yes, jet lag." The word was the same for Mam as it was for me.

"Can not sleep?"

"No."

"I understand now." She had never traveled outside of Thailand, so the effects of jet lag were a mystery.

"I can't sleep. Four nights now." The CIA used sleep deprivation to persuade secret prisoners to tell the truth. I had slept maybe ten hours since Tuesday.

"'Oht nawn' not good for old man." Mam was twenty-six. I was more than twice her age. Youth had a mission to take over the world. No one lived forever or not sleep forever.

"I'll fall asleep soon." I couldn't say when, but Mam cared about my health.

"Nom dee." She wanted me to reach a hundred years old. Thais hated being alone.

And at the tender age of close to sixty, so do I.

We have a couple of words for loneliness in English.

"Never want to say good-bye." Barry White sang those words.

And I feel the same way too.

Like a man without a soul.

Monday, November 25, 2024

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."