Angry White People - 2011

When I moved in the East Village with my hillbilly girlfriend in 1977, I never walked down East 10th Street between 1st Avenue and Second Avenue. I told my girlfriend to not do the same. She obeyed my edict, because it was the right thing to do and she was from West Virginia. No one from the hollows had seen the evils of New York and even less the horror of the Lower East Side.

Two whorehouses and numerous drug dealers controlled the offending block. These motherfuckers tolerated no protests against their rule. Alice left me in 1979. My life was going in a different direction from an ingenue actr=ress smart enough to recognize that I was trouble.

I met new people. Uncle Carmine lived further East on Avenue C. He believed in carrying a gun and thought that I should too.

"This is for you." He handed me a heavy paper bag in his plumbing office. I was friends with his wife. Aunt Jane came from Washington County, Maine, which she considered the lat place of Earth created by God. I was from Falmouth Foresides. She thought we had easy winters. She was right.

I hefted the bag. The weight belonged to a gun. My hand grabbed the weapon. A 5-shot .38 revolver made in Germany. Uncle Carmine had been in the Merchant Marines.

"I got it in Bremen. Never fired it once. Maybe you'll be just as lucky."

"I doubt it." I stuffed the revolver in my jacket and walked back to my apartment counting the number of people whom I would have shot for trespasses against the community. I would have run out of bullets on the first block. The East Village needed a death squad to combat the criminals. Thankfully they executed themselves in a series of wars aimed at controlling the heroin trade of the Far East. I never had to shoot my gun.

Not once, because the next day I returned the weapon to Uncle Carmine.

As for the gunmen in the East Village, they did all the shooting themselves, but the East Village in 1986 is not America 2011 and certainly not Arizona where a young man decided to shoot up a political gathering at a Tucson food mart.

A congresswoman gravely wounded by a right-wing assassin. A judge dead from a disgruntled GOP supporter. An 8 year-old girl killed by an errant bullet and they weren't alone. A very sad moment too often repeated in the USA, but even worse was the climate of hatred wound up by the media. Fingers pointed in all directions. Blame spilling over the the TV and they smiled at the cameras.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Neither left nor right.

Only fucked up.

Because that's what America does best these days.

Fuck up with guns.

Now that I think about it, "Where the fuck is that old .38?"

The Longevity of Women

My late Uncle Carmine theorized that the longevity of women was due to the fact that men wait for women and every minute and hour stolen from a man was stored within a genetic code of a woman's body. In America that advantage of life over death amounted to more than five years and I swore that I have felt the tug of their vampiric vacuum on more than one occasion, but never more than when I made a date with a young model to see a movie in Lincoln Center.

The year was 1981. The girl's name was Julie. Neither of her eyes looked in the same direction. I had a thing for wall-eyed girls.

We had met at the filming of DOWNTOWN 81. The set had been at Danceteria on West 45th Street with Jean-Michel Basquiat as the star of the movie.

I was an extra as was Julie. She should have been more, because the lithe brunette could have passed as a double of Francoise Hardy, the 70s French pop singer and I had a thing for the Yeh-Yeh Girl too.

Between takes Julie said that she was a painter.

I found out that her good friend was Manny's daughter. Manny had a diamond store on Canal Street. I ate lunch there on occasion. His son, Richie Boy, was also an extra. He had a thing for most beautiful women and swooped on Julie like a vulture striking a baby lamb.

Julie wasn't impressed with his Crassanova tactics and sought refuge with me.

Jean-Michel came over to say hello. He had once painted my refrigerator. I told Julie that I forced my hillbilly girlfriend wipe it off. She laughed at my stupidty. Laughter was always a good sign with a woman and even better she agreed to see Werner Herzog's AGUIRRE WRATH OF GOD with me.

"It's a German movie about a conquistador seeking the cities of gold in the Amazon."

"I've heard about it." She was studying art at Parsons.

"There's a Five o'clock show at Lincoln Center."

"I'll meet you at 4:45 after my class." She scribbled a phone number on a napkin and left with Richie Boy's sister. They lived together underneath the Williamsburg Bridge.

"You going out with her?" Richie Boy ordered us beers. The bar was offering drinks at half-price.

"5 O'clock Show for AGUIRRE." I was pleased by her saying 'yes'. "Tomorrow."

"Good luck." We clinked glasses and I went home early. Julie didn't seem like the kind of girl who went for men with a hang-over.

The next afternoon I arrived at the theater 30 minutes early and bought two tickets.

Fifteen minutes passed without any sign of Julie. I searched the faces on the sidewalk. No Julie. She had stood me up and I sold my tickets to a couple holding hands.

The two were very grateful, since the show was a sellout.

A friend tended bar farther up Broadway. I had two drinks and told him about my non-date.

"Typical of women in this city. Always saying yes to a back-up plan."

Julie could have had 13 plan Bs. She was that beautiful.

I paid for my drinks and wandered back downtown, thinking I might watch a XXX film at ShowWorld on the Minnesota Strip. The girls on screen weren't real, but they were always punctual.

As I neared the theater in Lincoln Center, I spotted Julie running to the ticket booth.

"Am I late?" Her question swirl as a life-sucking fog around my body.

"Late?"

Her breathing was off pace and her out-of-synch eyes wavered in their gaze between mine, as if she were hypnotizing a cobra.

"Well, am I?"

I didn't know what to say.

Men waited hours for beauty like hers.

If I answered 'yes', those lost two hours would be banked in her longevity account. The first seconds of 5 O'Clock were fleeing my soul and I fought for my life by saying, "No, I just got here too."

"Really?" Her mesmeric stare was transformed by doubt. Disappointment broke her mirror of confidence and the stolen time of the past two hours snapped back into my eternity.

"Sorry, I'm late. You still want to see the movie?"

"Sure." I bought two tickets and we entered the theater. She kissed me during the closing credits. I thought that it was an apology, but later in my life I realized that it was a kiss of surrender and the start of a brief affair.

That summer she left for France to be a model. I drove her to the airport.

Several months later I fled New York for Paris. We saw each other there, though she could only love someone who would give her his time and I wanted to live forever. I guess that she thought me selfish.

As far as I know Julie is alive in Paris. I hope that she lives long. Most women do and it ain't no secret why.

Least not to me.

ps Men outlive women in Afghanistan.

Big surprise.