When Forty-Second Street was still “The Deuce” me and my little man Sha were at the Karate flicks. Inside the theater there was a concession booth that was closed, so my boy went out to the one in the lobby and asked for a cup of water. We then used the empty cup to fill with soda from the soda fountain at the closed booth, to drink orange soda to our heart’s content. Two young hookers saw what we were up to- we were sixteen. They were maybe fourteen, and bad as hell in their tight leopard skin slacks, frizzy hair shaved on the sides and dyed blonde, red skin and pretty almond eyes- Trinny or something- Anyhow, they came over and asked my boy for some soda. I knew they just wanted to hang out, and I was down, but he was a real hard-rock… He shut them down, “get your own cup!”
My first time painting trains in the subway tunnel, I had met these writers in summer camp and convinced them I was very experienced. They were from the projects and down for anything, so when we got back to the city they called me and invited me. I went through the motions but when we got to the edge of the platform at the back of the station, and they just jumped down the tracks and disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel, I choked. Not only was I afraid of this new undertaking for a million reasons, but I was like eleven years old, and still afraid of the damn dark. I thought they forgot about me, and was ready to hop away when they came back out of the gloom, calling my name. “Oh, what the heck?” I thought, as I took that fateful plunge into my new life.
We were all selling fireworks on Canal street and one day the strip was hot with police activity so we all took to the back streets. At that time the Chinese gangs had beef with all the non- Chinese getting money on their territory, and when two guys turned around and eyes me and my boy suspiciously, like we were following them, we cut through a parking lot so as not to cross their path and agitate them unnecessarily- when we come out on the flip side of the block, we happen to be right behind them again. They lost it. They hustled into a store, and before I could swallow my spit they were getting pushed out by the tough-ass Italian lady- “get out of my store with that GUN”. Obviously they removed themselves just so they could prepare their drop on us. Now the spotlight was on them, and element of surprise upset, they confronted us with words, “Yo, why you guys forrowing us?” I smiled and said, “relax, man, we weren’t following you. Its just a coincidence.”
We were walking as a group, when these two pretty boys in brand new leather bombers we sort of knew started waking along with us, smoking a joint. They pssed it to one of us and it got passed around without ever making it back to them. We never thought of it as unfair, as we all shared everything. But dude took issue and started posturing tough. “I’ve been robbed!” One of our witty friends punched the kid in his eye and stipped off his leather coat in one lightening movement, tucking it away under his arm, “No THAT’S robbed!”
Some guys needed back-up for a fight so came and rounded up a bunch of us from the park. As we walk over to the spot, I find out its only one guy they are looking to jump. I fell back to the rear immediately as I only approved of one-on-one fights. Anyhow, who the hell was this guy, Ghengis Khan?- they had assembled a small army. When we get to the pizzeria, its this cool ass black punk-rocker dude I knew from around, so I already had in mind to stop it… but I had no need. When he stepped out of the joint with this cute Japanese punk chick on his arm, and saw the cowardly mob ready to stomp on him, he made a poetic gesture, flinging his slice and rootbeer all over the front lines. When everyone moved out of the flying food’s trajectory, he jumped through the sagging defenses and took off down the block- to fight another day.
Summer nights we would all sneak into the pool. This one daredevil kid dared me to jump off the wall into the pool with him. Wall wasn’t so high so I climbed up with him. Once we were up there I understood that to jump off the wall (which was the back of the handball court), one had to spring off the little fence ON TOP of the wall, dangling for a moment in space with a steep drop onto concrete on both sides, moreover, there was a good ten feet of pavement between the wall and the pool, which in turn was surrounded by a steel railing one could always tangle up on landing. I wanted to have some fun, but this guy was a fuckin’ psychopath! I swallowed my pride, and before I climbed back down to safety I watched him make his dangerous, insane, but beautiful splash.
My boy was driving me to some party when he got a page from his mom and said we had to shoot back to Brooklyn real quick to take care of something. His mom sat in front of their building, distressed- his sister was a beautiful woman confined to a wheelchair by some debilitating muscular condition, and the elevator was broken. Without a word my man took his sister over his shoulder- and she was not little- carrying her up six flights, across the roof, and down the other stairs until he deposited her back in bed, me struggling to keep up with the relatively light wheelchair. Then we were free to go to the party… me looking at my boy all night like he is some kind of superhero.
One night I was fighting with my girlfriend and I split to walk the streets and felt at last for sure that our good thing was over. Then I saw the crazy guy that I always knew was some kind of genius- he was playing Mahalia Jackson on some beat up radio and repeatedly zinging a Kool Whip container top into the sky like a little frisbee (well, more like a boomerang, since it came right back to him, every time). We were on friendly terms so I tried to open up to him with my troubles hoping for some advice, or at least to be heard. But he silenced me andhanded me one of these little discs. Now I was throwing, or trying to throw like him, but soon I realized that it was nearly impossible to do what he made look so easy. And that he had found the answer. His answer, at least…
I met these two Puerto Rican girls on the subway one night. They were cute but rowdy. We hung out together for the night and they told a lot of stories. One scam they said they pulled all the time- even if they pulled once, was pretty clever. They would hunt for single boys in nice cars and let the boys pick them up, drive them around. Then the girl would make the boy go inside a store to buy her a soda. The girl hopped into the drivers seat and took off with the car to her uncle’s chop shop. Tough luck for the guy, would have to chalk it up to “women’s liberation.”
One Night I was fucked up waiting for the train late night, train taking forever, so I started talking to these homeless dudes who were playing house in the train station, when I noticed that one of their people was steady running up and down the platform like it was some kind of marathon- with no shoelaces. So I get smart and ask, “what is your boy running from? -where is he running to? -why is he running??” The old dude looked at me, shaking his head, “young-blood, I just came home from eleven years in the penitentiary- up there there’s guys that will stab someone to death, and if you ask them why they did it, they couldn’t tell you. So believe me, if you knew why he was running- you would get up there and join him!”
So I bring this extra-gorgeous high society girl on a date to Gil Scott Heron’s show at Summer Stage, and because I can’t say no, my boy tags along- a gangbanger just home from reform school. He’s really some type of South Bronx killer, reads too many comic books and regularly says the foulest things to girls. Gil Scott is just talking, not really singing, so my girl and this bad ass kid get bored and go off to the side to hang around and talk under this big tree. I see him writing something in her book, so I walk over and actually snatch the book from him, certain he has written death threats and profanities- it was a poem that I can’t recall verbatim, but it ran something like, “even a demon, feeding on human blood in the depths of hell, stands in awe of the sunlight on a flower.” I handed him back the book, blushing and returned to hear out Gil Scott, secretly hoping the two of them would fall in love behind my back, and save each other’s lives.
A respected writer, mostly tagged train insides with black, shiny ultra-drippy markers, from Queensbridge got sent away to spend the rest of his life in prison. Another writer we knew from Queensbridge, a good kid, got sent to jail on a petty beef and was relieved to run into the older dude on Rikers. The older guy skipped the formalities and greeted the homeboy with a slice clean across the face with a razor blade- saying he could go back to the hood with that scar so they could all remember him.
My boy’s mom sent him to the store and with the thirty-five cents change, he went to the bodega to buy a loosie. At this time, the mayor had placed an iron grip on the sale of loose cigarettes, so they would not sell it at the usual spot, nor next door, or up the block either. Finally we found an out-of-the-way Korean grocery the sold him this sought after Newport. Back at his house he was made to do a few more chores and finally we repaired to the fire escape so he could smoke the damn thing already. On lighting it, he fumbled the cigarette and it fell down through the slats of the fire escape to the sidewalk below. “Senora,” he called a lady standing nearby. She did her best to toss it up to him, but it only got a foot or two of lift from each attempt. Finally a passing neighbor got into the action and rolled the cigarette up in an envelope. This package made it into our hands after a few tries and the man walked away triumphant. My boy unwrapped it, lit it, and took a long, thoughtful and relieved draw, blew out the smoke through his nose and said, shaking his head, “Man, the things you gotta go through…”
There was this crazy homeless guy who must have seen too many Karate movies in his day and walked around pretending to be a Kung-Fu master. One day I was coming down off a week long drinking binge and it felt like my liver was stuck to my spine like hot bubblegum- I was dragging myself up the block. When he saw me coming, he gave me the crazy fake Kung-Fu salute, then proceeded to grab me into some kind of bear hug, gripping my lower back sharply with three fingers. I don’t know if it was his intention- though it must have been- but he moved my internal organs around and in some unimaginable way, kick started my metabolism and I felt fine. I thanked him as he walked away, back to playing the humble hobo, secret master of God-knows-what that he was.
My boy lived next to this giant cocaine dealing complex uptown. We were standing on the curb, listening to the Reggae show on his radio, perched on the curb of a parked car when gun shots started popping off. A group tumbled out of the coke spot all shooting at each other right in front of us and moving our way. Besides Robert Duvall in “Apocalypse Now” I’d never seen anything like this: my boy tuned the radio as if nothing was happening (granted it was for him a daily occurrence). Facing his calm resolve, I resisted the natural urge to cower behind the car for cover. I asked, “shouldn’t we run?” He looked at me kool as heck, eyes even lidded a bit as if he was sleepy- “Would I get shot standing here? -or would I get shot running?” The group made it up the block without hitting us, or each other.
A kid we grew up with just came home from a stint in prison looking all muscular and military and in that defining moment I imagined he might have chosen to steer a straight path from there on in. We talked a bit on the night time sidewalks and it seemed he had grown up a lot. Then a rented car screeches up the wrong way on a one-way street, pretty girl driving- she pops the door open for him and slides over into the passenger seat. He jumps behind the steering wheel, slams the door, waves at me, and screeches off. Before the week was up he was back in the joint.
My friend from Harlem gets into it with a friend of a friend from Little Italy. The kid is twice my friend’s size and things aren’t looking so good. I had conflicting interests but my heart told me to step in for my boy. I had a new set of brass knuckles that I was eager to test out so I sucker punched the guy wen they were clinching hoping to even the odds and do so undetected. I don’t know who saw what or informed whom, but in no time flat- the entire neighborhood mobilized against us two. If not for the appearance of two beat cops we would probably have been left as stains on the sidewalk. Some months later I was still nervous around Little Italy and my friend drags me of all places to the San Genarro feast. Emerging from the gambling den is the big boss over all the Italian kids and he looks right at me in an understanding way- “come in and don’t worry- that guy you beat up isn’t one of us- that guy is a drug addict…” etc. I thought he may have been trying to rock me to sleep, but it turned out fine- three angels swooped down from the stained glass window and said I owed them ten Hail Marys!
Taking a taxi uptown late night and the cabbie is doing like 100 MPH up Park Ave listening to Bangara. Around 42 Street, coming out of that little underpass, we hit the incline at a good clip and we seemed to float over the city skyline before the wheels came back down to asphalt with a thud. Driver turns around with wide-eyed excitement, exclaiming, “we flew in the air, like television!” I told him to stop the cab right where we were to let me out.
I got into a great conversation with this old guy who was begging for change in front of the book store, as we are walking along talking philosophy I wasn’t sure if we were both wandering or if he was gently leading us somewhere but suddenly we ended up at the crack spot. The dealer recognized him as a regular and asked him “how many?” but my man was so into our debate that he acted like he didn’t even hear the guy and just kept on about the meaning of life. The crack dealer was a tall dark skinned Jamaican in a yellow track suit and- not one to be ignored- demanded the customers’ attention. My man interrupted the dialogue to tell the dealer, “I mean no disrespect, but what me and my friend are building on right now takes precedent over all that,” and waved him away. I don’t believe the crack dealer had ever heard such talk from a custy and stood there visibly flabbergasted by his behavior. Soon enough we wrapped up our talk. I went on my way, and my new friend went off to smoke his crack.
First time I went to go scope out the train yards, we were afraid to go in and tag up- even though there was hardly any fence to stop us, but we checked out all the paintings- and there was one car painted by ERNI New Wave (who now paints sets for David La Chapelle), with characters, and the characters had NO faces. I remember thinking, like, you can’t do that, but then of course you can- where was it written that you couldn’t make a cartoon character without a face? It was then I caught the spirit, the “faith of graffiti”…
Photography by J ROBERTS, Words from an anonymous NYobserver!
Martin Wong was commissioned by the city to design a street sign for the School For The Deaf. He always used to spell out words in his paintings through sign language (if you haven’t seen his collaborations with Miguel Pinero, in particular, we suggest you seek them out) so naturally he featured his spelling hands for this sign (on 23rd street). He used to joke that the city was stupid for letting him do the sign in that way, because “deaf people can read”. We think the city was smart, in any case, for having Martin Wong design the signs to begin with…
See them on the big screen or at least buy the DVD!
Monday, March 24, 2008 at 12:38 AM
Saturday, March 22, 2008 at 9:20 PM
QUAMP TUES /
DA GHETTO COMMUNICATOR CAN BE REACHED AS
KEIOPS2014@YAHOO.COM
FOR SPIRITUAL REASONENCE OR FISCAL DONATIONS ,
MEANWHILE,
“THE REAL JAZZ MUSIC BE,….”
WHAT DO THE REAL JAZZ MUSIC BE?
WHATEVER IT IS ,CONSIDERING THE HARD WORK THAT IT TOOK
TO CREATE IT , MAY THE BROKE BACK CAMEL SOCIETY APPROVE
, WITHOUT A BROKE BACK AND MAY THE NIGGANAMIC
CRONICALS CONTINUES ,
WITHOUT SLACK,…………….
THE REAL JAZZ MUSIC BE ,…………..
GRADUATIONS OF EMOTIONAL REVELATIONS , GROWTH ,
PROGRESSION , AND THE RUDAMENTS OF AGE , CONSIDERING
THE REVELATIONS OF TIME AND SPACE , IN PROMOTION OF
RHYTHMICAL EQUATIONS .
THE REAL JAZZ BE,………
THE BUM SITTIN’ IN THE BACK OR THE BAR , AS A MODERN
BEATNICK, THAT PROBALLY JUS’ ‘MOKED A BLUNT , DRANK
SWANK , AND SCREENWORTH OF KRACK ,TOO, WHILE SWEATIN’
, UNDERARMS STANK, WEARING THE CLOTH FROM THE UNKNOWN
MIRACLE , LIKE A TROPHY , (AND TO THAT LUCKY LADY
,THAT DON’T NOBODY KNOW, UNLESS SHE WANTS THEM TO
KNOW HER ,THAT DIRTY SHIRT REALLY MAY BE A
TROPHY,…..) MEANWHILE , THE BUM , (SUPPOSEALEED),
HUNGRY ,AND DETERMINED , TO COMPLETE A FORMALLY
UNKNOWN CONSTALLATION , THAT CHARTS THE EMOTIONAL
QUALITY OF THE CURRENT TEXT CONCERTO , ON CANVAS , AND
CERTIFIES THE SUCH AS A MOVEMENT OF GIANTS ,
CONSIDERING THE MASTERFUL NOD OF A OLD JUNKIE , FROM
LONG AGO , THAT CREATED AND CURATED SUCH A MOVEMENT ,
(THAT JAZZ MUSIC BE) , BEFORE THE NERDS ENVELOPED IT
..AND MOVES BEYOND THE NOD OF THE OLD JUNKIE , WITH A
DIFFERENT DRUG , EVEN , AN SWEATS THE SEAL OF APPROVAL
, OF ALL TIME AND SPACE , FOR THE SAKES OF EXISTENCE
TO EXIST, WITH SUCH GOODNESS , AS IT’S
MEMOIRS,…………..
THIS IS THE REAL JAZZ BECAUSE ,
…………….
THE BUM IN THE BACK OF THE BAR MAKES A “QUAMTON LEAP”
, THROUGH ART , AS WITNESSED ON CANVAS , AS DONE LIVE
, WHILE THE MUSICIANS ARE PORFORMING ,THE BUM MAKES A
QUAMTON LEAP, OVER THE ATTITUDE OF THE NERD THAT
PORTRAYS COVERS OF JAZZ , AND SIMULTANEOUSLY
DENOUNCES THE BLUES OF JAZZ ,IN ATTEMPTS TO BE
IMPERIAL AGAINST JAZZ ,LIKE JAZZ IS NOT JAZZ , BUT THE
NERD DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT JAZZ IS , EVEN THOUGH THE
NERD IS PROBALLY PLAYING IT , ON STAGE . HOWEVER , THE
CONFRONTATION AND ACCEPTANCE OF SELF BLUES OF BLUES
ARE THE ONLY WAY TO ACCEPT GROWTH BEYOND BLUES , AND
THE ULTIMATE COFRONTATION IS THE ATTEMPT TO CONQUER
STEREOTYPES IN MONOTONE. THE QUAMTON LEAP IS EVIDENT IN
THE POSTURE OF THE RELATION OF THE CURRENT TEXT IMAGE
OF VISUAL ART , FROM THE PAST TEXT EMOTIONAL CONTENT OF
THE FOUNDATION OF THE TEXTURE OF THE SOUND , THROUGH ,
TWORDS THE FUTURE TEXT ARCHITECTURE OF THE BEAUTY OF
DREAMS , .
HOW DO YOU DREAM JAZZMUSIC ?
at 2:49 PM
Weekend Relaxing, just messing around on coloringbookland.com, getting all psychedellic.
MAN, we had no idea there was so much f*%#ing talent out there! With guys like Ricky Powell, Jamil GS and Craig Weatherby always passing by the office, we sometimes forget that there are other photographers in the world, so when we sent out the call for submissions,it was rally just an experiment and we didn’t know what to expect. Above are just a few from our people across the world- we felt that they made sense as a group. There is more to come, we just have to sort through all the great stuff we have been sent- a reminder: please send photos as jpegs 500 pixels wide, and keep it coming!
When we posted this the other day we did so with a typo in the e-mail address. Those of you who were clever enough to compensate for our misspelling and sent us your work despite the obstacle will be hearing back asap- everyone else, take note of the correct e-mail address below. Also, feel free to think loosely of the term “photographer” while we honor the craft and respect professionalism, amateur snapshots are welcome, too-
It was Wednesday at exactly five in the evening and I felt good for a change. Goddamnit. Yes I did. Debra was finally starting to ware off. We had been broken up for a year and I no longer had an urge to call her. And no longer was I thinking about her in that way. I did think about her though. And at the moment she was on my mind and I was doing nothing other than lying to myself about not thinking about her. It worked sometimes though. But it was still a lie. Debra dominated my thoughts on a regular basis. But the bitch was wearing off though! And I meant that shit! at least I thought I did.
I began laughing at myself. Right there on the barstool of a joint I had for some odd reason went into just for the fuck of it. Another lie. I went in there for a beer. And some whiskey. Because I wanted one. And the other. And I knew I would see Debra again… because we still worked at the same goddamn jobsites! Painters we were at the moment. Just the two of us. Pretending we didn’t know eachother. After having been in a relationship for a year flat.
Initially I didn’t notice the barkeep. Then on my second round I took a good look at her. She was tall on the other side of the bar. I didn’t think she was standing on anything. She appeared to be my height. A big ole white chick with some big ole titties too. Reminded me of a broad in a porno video. Her hair was a little longer than normal. And a bright blonde. She had on deep red lipstick and a tight red tee-shirt her big ole nipples were poking through. She smiled when I tipped her for my Johnny walker Black and beer to chase it.
Now I was ready to do it to her. Um… hm… that’s right. I wanted to do it. To her… the barkeep. With the big titties and the deep red lipstick. And quantum physics said she might just so happen to want me to do it too her. Debra wasn’t talking to me. Nor was I talking to her. She probably had already met some L-7, anyway.
“What’s your name Ms. Lady?”
“Stoli”.
“You ain’t from New York huh?”
“What?” She was being cute. I assumed she wanted to do it too. She batted her long eyelashes at me. I glanced at her titties, then held a, ‘I want to fuck you’, stare in her eyes. They were big, round with a little distance between them. I knew off the bat she was of Russian descent.
The after work crowd started mulling into the bar. I counted five lawyers. I knew they were lawyers because the bar was located in downtown Brooklyn and it was shortly after the courts closed. Plus two of the cats had the bags lawyers carry. The tall dark haired lawyer with the grey suit on was speaking the loudest. He was the ringleader. I already knew he was going to try and impress his friends by flirting and nearly making a scene with Stoli. I quickly got in a mood to pop him in the back of his head with an open hand and tell him to go and sit down somewhere. And be quiet.
Stoli smiled and went on and took several orders. She poured the drinks. Then she came back over to where I was sitting. “Why don’t you hang out for a while?”
“Yeah… I’ll do just that”. I said.
I wasn’t sure if she asked so I would buy drinks and tip her or if I was game to get to know me a whole lot better. I was ready from the minute I paid her rabbit ass a piece of mind. But I also wasn’t nobody’s asshole neither. My drinks were done and it was early in the evening on a Sunday and I wasn’t out to get drunk. I got up off the stool. A few suits were flirting with Stoli. I knew she was juxing these cats with smiles for bread. The name of the game. That’s the way it is. I liked her style. Something about her read hustler in my mind. Debra was a straight square and that was cool, for a while. She had thought she was a bad girl, (in a good way), for having relations with me in the bathroom of a restaurant. Once.
I wanted to deal with a new woman whom was wild at this point in time. It was late April. Right around mating season. Days had been rolling over like cell phone minutes. I wanted some action to go along with them. The course of the last year was pretty smooth sailing. Counting all of the shit I had experienced prior to it.
I went outside with the intention of getting the fuck away from the after work crowd. I lighted a cigarette. The reason I had been in that area in the first place was because I liked books. There’s a mid sized Barnes & Noble bookstore there. I didn’t see anything I liked so I went for a drink at the nearest bar. Which was the one I was standing out in front of. Smoking a cigarette. ‘Stoli!’ I remembered her name. And had a vision of her bare titties. I chucked the smoke and went back in. ‘I’m definitely going to fuck this chick’, I thought.
“I thought you were going to hang out for a minute”, Stoli said, with a sort of expectance.
“I went out for a smoke”. I lied and glanced over at the door in the back. “Let me have another round please”. She smiled and went for it. I looked at her big ass. She had on light blue spandex pants. When she turned around to pour the beer from the tap I set my eyes on the back door, again. There was a lounge out there. Plastic white tables with dirty umbrellas over them. And chairs with tin buckets for ashtrays beside them. No-one was out there and it was getting warm. I took cash out of my wallet. Stoli raised her hand, “I got this round”.
“Cool,” I said, “thanks”. I went out back. I had left a five dollar bill on the bar for her. A stink from the backyard filled outdoor lounge. ‘No wonder no-one is out here’. Shit. I swallowed my shot and went back into the bar. The grey suit was talking something or other to his friends. He put his eyes on me. I pretended not to see him. I headed toward the front door while guzzling the beer. I glanced at Stoli. There was another barkeep setting up. He was a short hipster guy. He looked like he was coked up and ready to work well into the we-hours of the morning without a problem. Not one whatsoever. I looked at my watch. It was a quarter after seven. I finished the beer and went out front again. Stoli followed. “What’s your name again? I’m bad with names”.
“My name is Harlem”.
“That’s cute. Do you have another cigarette Harlem?”
“Sure”, I handed her the smoke and lighted it for her. I stalled and let her open up the can of words. At this point I knew the envelope was sealed. We were going to fuck. Tonight.
Stoli stood there like she was waiting for someone or something.
“Are you waiting for someone?” She asked.
“How ironic”, I said.
“What?” Stoli held her purse tight by her side, as if she expected me to guide her somewhere.
“Nothing forget it”.
“Come oooon”, she chimed, showing interest.
“Are there any other joints around here to get a drink? I know you just got off work and all. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” Stoli smiled, “I know what you mean. There’s a place I usually make a pit stop at when I get off, just up the street here”. She took the lead.
We went two blocks up Atlantic Avenue and made a left onto Court Street to a bar. It was approaching eight O’ clock, yet the place was packed. The walls were blue with white spots all over with black lights making them look like outer space. The music was extremely loud. House music. I immediately assumed there was something gay about the place or there were people in the’re forties, trying to hold onto something long gone. The younger cats were bossing on the scene with southern hip-hop in the back room.
I didn’t give a shit about being the only soul Brother in the joint. I had been through that many times over. At thirty-two I had grown out of the awkward feelings. Plus whatever it took I was going to get me some goddamn pussy.
Stoli and I had a couple of drinks then went out down the block to a decent joint. She had given me the rundown of her entire life, family, etc. She was from Boston and had moved to New York eleven years ago with hopes of becoming an actress. Instead she got caught up the bar business. Same story all over town. People moving to the Big Apple with dreams they eventually let go of. I told her a little about myself. Very little and kept changing the subject. It was hard but I avoided talking about Debra.
There was one thing Stoli didn’t tell me about her self. I found out when she had invited me, in our drunkenness, to her flat.
We took a cab to Down Town Brooklyn. A couple blocks off of Flatbush and Fulton Streets. Stoli took her keys from her purse and stumbled ahead of me. I glanced at my watch. It was five to eleven. Early. Good. We could fuck and I could split and get to bed. I had work in the morning.
There was a high rise that just went up and people were moving in. One could see the empty apartments from the street. Stoli walked toward the entrance. ‘How the hell does this chick have a flat here on a bartender’s salary?’
We went in the building and got the elevator. She pressed the twenty two button. I laughed, slightly.
“What?” Stoli put her hands around my waist and mashed her lips against mine. I shoved my tongue in her mouth. We kissed until the doors opened.
“What were you laughing about on the elevator Harlem?” Stoli opened the door to her flat. It had a warm feeling to it. The walls were warm yellow and orange. The furniture was plush tan leather on top of a deep red carpet. It smelled of money. Abundance. Something was up. There was no way in hell this woman afforded this on a barkeep salary.
I gazed out the window at the view of Manhattan. Where the World Trade Center towers once stood and was grateful at the moment some of the people survived when they went down.
I shifted my attention back to Stoli. She went into the kitchen. I followed her, “Huh?”
“I said… what were you laughing about on the elevator?”
“Oh, um… my birthday is on the twenty second that’s all”.
“The twenty second of what?” She took a bottle of vodka from the fridge and poured two half glasses. I recalled a scene where I went home with a woman by the name with Cynthia. Cynthia had poured two half glasses of vodka and immediately got out of her clothes. I had realized that I had made the wrong decision and split.
“January” I replied.
“January what?”
“What?” Stoli lost me with the question. Her mind was obviously elsewhere.
“Oh… I just had a brain fart. He, he he! Anyways. Lets toast to meeting cool people!”
“Cool,” I agreed.
“Na Zdorovje!”
“Yeah”, again I agreed, trying not to be turned off by the bullshit.
“That’s how we say cheers in Russian!”
Stoli didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about. I could tell. She got right to the point, “Harlem do you want to fuck me?”
“Sure why not?” I burst out laughing.
“What?”
“Nothing. Lets fuck then”.
“Okay”.
She took the lead into her bedroom. There was a king size bed in there. The room looked as if she had a personal maid cleaning everyday. The entire apartment looked that way.
Stoli peeled off the tee-shirt. Her nipples were poking through her bra. She took that off too. They bounced around as she took off her shoes and lied back on the bed. Her nipples were big and punk. I slid the spandex off as fast as humanly possible. Then got out of my clothes. I couldn’t take my eyes off the sheer blue thong she had on. The goods were clearly visible. I can assume that every man watched a few porno’s in his day, wishing the broad would jump out of the t.v or computer screen. And here I was. With a chick looked just like that.
I was in the moment. Then out of it. Something about the situation was just dead wrong. I got the irritating gut feeling of shame that comes after masturbation.
“Stoli… I know you got a condom!”
“What? I thought you would have one. You’re the man”.
“Shit!” I rolled over beside her. I put on my boxers because I felt vulnerable lying there in the nude without a condom. And there was no way in hell I was going to go down on her-or let her go down on me. I had just met her. Who knows how many mother fuckers she picked up out that friggin bar. I was actually glad we didn’t have a condom. I was never one for some hedonistic shit like that in the first place.
“Shit!” I shouted, pretending to be disappointed. I got up and put on my clothes. Stoli went into her closet and took out a bathrobe and put it on.
“I could give you a hand job!”
I gave her a hard look.
“I was just kidding Harlem”.
I laughed, “awkward moment huh Stoli?”
“Yeah”, she replied.
“Let me ask you something…” I wanted to know why the situation got to where it was. Why I had put myself in a situation that I would end up having internal doubt and shame about. Some cats have no morals, values, self esteem or self respect. They go out and do all kinds of shit like nothing is wrong with it. Maybe what they do is not wrong. Everyone’s reality is they’re own. And they are right, to them selves. Worlds. There are many worlds around us. And when we enter into worlds we had no knowledge existed we can be taken for a ride and enter into a battle field, fighting to return to what we perceive as normal in our own minds. Then there is the aspect of learning from mistakes and forgiving ourselves. Who knows? I suppose I had got an answer to what I was looking for.
Stoli was sitting upright on the bed with a serious expression on her face. As if she knew what my question was. Her look was not one of annoyance. It was more like contemplative. She didn’t give me a go ahead to speak. She waited for me to translate my thoughts into words. “Do you do shit like this all the time?”
“I knew you were going to ask me that”. She got up off the bed, went into the closet and came out with a pair of sweat pants. She put them on and put her hands on her hips.
I didn’t know what to say. I put my hands in my pockets, thinking whether or not I should light a cigarette. If she allowed people to smoke in there, or not.
“I knew I was going to meet you. Or someone like you”.
“huh?”
“I’ll tell you some other time”. Stoli wanted me to leave. But she did say another time, which meant she wanted to see me again. And that she wanted to tell me something. I had a feeling this woman had some information that could possibly change my life. In the future I would find out that I was right. I took her hint. We exchanged numbers and a few more words and I got in the wind.
