Boys of Life Read online

  I knew it wasn’t like that.

  I’d slam the book shut and shove it back up on the shelf and I was out of there—I was wandering the alphabet avenues where it pretty much looked like a ghetto already and all they’d have to do was put up the barbed wire and there we’d be.

  THAT FIRST TRIP SAMMY AND I MADE TO THE PUBLIC library did a lot of things to me—and one of the things it did was release me from that apartment. I started going out more in the day to avoid having to listen to Sammy drone on, even though in little doses he was fine, and also to get away from Netta’s opera music, which could drive you crazy. But most of all, once I’d taken the subway uptown, and came back in one piece, I felt free to be totally out on the streets. And once I was there, I just kept going. I went all over the city. I loved just wandering around, walking everywhere, or jumping the stile like I saw other kids do to ride the subway if I was tired of walking and just wanted to get home. Or to see where I’d end up, which you may think is crazy but it never occurred to me back then. I guess I thought I was immune. I’d pop up everywhere, take a look around, then be back on that train rattling along underground till I popped up somewhere else. The only trouble was, I never knew how things connected up with each other that way, and what I finally ended up doing was giving up on the subway for a while, and walking everywhere—just to get the hang of things.

  At least by day that’s what I did. I never went out at night at all—I was always back at the apartment by the time it was dark. I was waiting for Carlos to show up, because I didn’t want to miss a minute of Carlos, but also the nighttime in New York made me nervous. It took on this air for me. I didn’t know what was going on out there. I could hear sirens, and people yelling down in the street—just yelling for no reason—and sometimes gunshots. At least that’s what I always thought they were: gunshots. And probably they were. I think I told you how the windows had plastic over them, so I never knew what was going on out there once it got dark. I could only try and imagine it. I’d picture Carlos making his way back from Brooklyn, slinking from cover to cover, hiding behind garbage cans, dashing across empty streets. All these narrow escapes—from what, I didn’t know. I’d lie in bed in that apartment and follow him like it was different frames in some comic book, and then I’d get to the end but he wouldn’t be home yet; so I’d have to start all over, slow it down some, add a few more scrapes. And then finally he was home. I’d hear him tramping up the stairs. He never knew how happy I was to see him come in that door. How I wanted to throw my arms around him just for making it back—because even if he didn’t know how close a call it’d been, I did. I knew he’d barely made it back.

  All that was just at night; the day never bothered me. The scary stuff went away, and I was free as a river. I could go anywhere.

  Partly it was what Carlos wanted me to do—be out on my own having adventures, learning about things. “You got the universe at your feet,” he’d tell me. “The stars, the sewer, the semen—it’s all yours, kid. Now go out and take it.” At night he always seemed really happy to listen to me tell him where I’d gone, what I’d done, so I started saving up stuff to tell him. When I’d get home I’d lie there and figure out ways to put it together so it’d be interesting to him. The more outrageous, the better he liked it.

  I remember—there was this one man with a golf club, this grizzled old fellow. I don’t know who he was or where he was from, but he walked around with a golf club all the time and would just start yelling for no reason, and banging with his golf club on garbage cans and stair railings or whatever he could find—making a racket, and not caring who heard. I’d see him all over the city, carrying that golf club over his shoulder and yelling—not at anybody, but just to hear himself yell, I guess.

  One time I came out of the apartment, and he was standing across the street like he was waiting there for me. There was this little tree somebody’d planted, or maybe it was just growing up from a crack in the sidewalk—it was the only green thing around. I’d watched it lose its leaves that fall, and now it was all spindly and naked. I liked that tree. The old man stood there beside it; then all of a sudden he hauled off with his golf club and started whacking it. “Only God can make a tree,” he was yelling. “Only fucking God can do that. Listen, all you queers and niggers, listen to this you Jew, only God can make a fucking tree. Just you try.” All the time he was yelling, he kept swinging the hell out of that club till he broke the little tree trunk right in half.

  I couldn’t move—I stood there watching him do that, and then when he was through, he shut up and moved on down the street. I went over to the tree, but it was a goner. And a second ago it was as alive as you or me.

  I don’t know why, but we were always showing up in the same place. It got to be so that old man would recognize me. He’d watch me—I could tell he was watching me. I saw him in Central Park, by the lake, and over on the piers by the Hudson River, and where the tram goes across to Roosevelt Island.

  One day I took the ferry to Staten Island. I was down at the tip of Manhattan where the boat was leaving from, and all these people were crowding into the building there. I wandered in, curious what was up, and since it only cost a quarter to go, which was all I had, I thought why the hell not? Staten Island was someplace I’d never been before.

  The boat was terrific—it kept thumping along in this high wind, and spray pumping up, all the time the city with its tall buildings back there behind us getting smaller and smaller and we’re staying exactly the same. Suddenly I heard this yelling in my ear. I turned around and there he was, standing practically behind me on the deck at the back of the boat to watch the view from.

  “All the fucking saints of this goddamned city go walking around on craw-asses and nails,” he was yelling, “every fucking one of them. And out of nowhere too. Did you ever see the stinking lightbulb that could crank out all the saints that’re walking on their craw-asses and nails in this fucking city, did you ever see that?” Then suddenly he started swinging that golf club of his. It nearly hit me, but I was about an inch too far away, and then it did hit this man who was standing next to me right in the shoulder, and it hit an old lady on the leg. People were yelling and screaming and pushing. About five guys jumped the old man and started punching him down and tugging at his golf club—but he wouldn’t give it up. He kept yelling, only now everybody was yelling. I didn’t do a thing—I stood there watching, looking over my shoulder at the city getting smaller and smaller behind us, and then back at the heap of people on the floor with that old man and his golf club at the bottom of it. Finally these two security guards came down with billy clubs and worked their way into the crowd and took the old man off. I think he never let go of that golf club.

  “He’ll show up again,” Carlos said that night, in bed, when I told him about it. “He’s bound to—when you least expect it. But I guarantee, you’ll see him again.”

  It’d sort of freaked me, there on that boat—it was such a close call. Every once in a while the city’d give me some close call like that, and then part of me wouldn’t want to go out for a few days. But I made myself. Back in Owen, at the city pool, if I had a bad turn off the high diving board I’d always climb right back up there and jump again. Otherwise I knew I’d get spooked. It was something Ted and I’d call each other on—we’d make sure the one of us who flubbed scrambled right back up there and did the dive again.

  There was an even closer call than that day on the ferry. It’d been lousy out all morning—rain and sleet and stuff—so I stayed put there in the apartment. Sammy talked to me for a while, and I was doing shots of Canadian Club and cups of tea to keep me from getting too bored. Somehow what Sammy was telling me got me all impatient—talking to him could make me want to walk till my legs ached. I’d shoot out of that apartment and do this quick clip for maybe ten blocks till I was breathing hard and the air cleared my head. Which is what I did now.

  I was pretty drunk so I sailed right along. It was days like this when I longed for my
bike back in Owen, to cover the whole town in no time. I’d see bike messengers zooming in and out of traffic like maniacs, and I’d wish that was me. I guess I could probably have picked up some bike somewhere, if I really wanted it—but I just never did. Though I did pick up a few bike messengers, I guess to make up for it, when I started doing that sort of thing a few years down the line.

  I should tell you one thing before I go any further. In those days it wasn’t bike messengers I was into, or any of the guys I saw when I was out walking. I didn’t look at other guys. But I did look at girls a lot—I guess because if you’d asked me, Was I a queer? I’d have said of course not, no way. I mean, looking back on it, I don’t know what I thought I was doing with Carlos—I guess I didn’t put any kind of name to it as long as I could get away with that. One thing’s for sure—I never said to myself I was queer or gay or anything like that, and like I say, when I was out on the street I kept seeing these women I thought were so gorgeous, they made my heart ache. Maybe it was knowing somewhere inside me I really was a queer that made me look at those women the way I did; maybe I was saying goodbye to something, even though I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. All I know is, every once in a while I’d find myself following some girl I thought was really great-looking, and feeling this kind of homesickness. That might sound strange, but it’s the only thing I know to call it. I’d follow her for blocks, till she went into some building or store and I lost her. I’d follow her down into the subway, and ride the same car with her, which is the way I got around to a lot of those neighborhoods I’d never have thought of going to otherwise. I didn’t want anything from those women I followed, I never made any move to walk up and try to start a conversation or anything. I just wanted to be near them for a while before I lost them.

  Sometimes one of them would notice me, and I’m sure she thought I was this total goon hanging around like I was—and I’d have thought the same thing if I was her. But I wasn’t doing it to be creepy. I was doing it out of some kind of sadness that was inside me.

  But back to my other close call. I’d gone to the public library, to find that picture from the ghetto I had to touch base with every once in a while. I’d been sitting in the big reading room, where there’re these long tables with lamps, and probably a hundred people in there all being quiet and reading to themselves. I’d take that picture book and spread it open and study it for maybe half an hour, always feeling like somebody was going to come tell me I shouldn’t be there, though nobody ever did. And I guess I came to feel at home there, in some weird way, because I kept coming back. Which is hard to believe—me, Tony, in a library—but there I was.

  I put the book back on the shelf, feeling sad but also happy from studying that picture. When I went outside the sun had come out—it was one of those blustery winter days when you think maybe spring’s going to come sometime. There on the front steps of the library, standing by one of those stone lions, was this girl talking to two black guys. She was just leaving them, they were saying “Catch you later” to her, and she held up her red sequined pocketbook and pointed to it. She was about my age, blonde hair so white-blonde she must’ve dyed it, and black boots and a black skirt and a black leather jacket. At first I thought she was some kind of boy in drag—but then I made up my mind, no, it had to be a girl. Actually, I have to say I knew right off she was a hooker, just by the way she was walking and sort of keeping her eye out for stuff. I followed her down Forty-second toward the Square, being careful the whole time to keep her from noticing me. I didn’t want her to talk to me or anything—I wouldn’t’ve known what to say. I was just interested in her, I just wanted to see where she went.

  I haven’t thought about that girl in ages. She’s probably dead now, which is a weird thing to say, but I’d be fooling myself about everything if I didn’t think it was true. Just like that boy and his sister in the ghetto. What I remember is how interested I was in her—about everything in her life, and also how far away she felt, like I was never going to know anything about her. She had these slim hips to die for, and a way of walking down the street that totally melted me.

  She wandered all over Times Square, stopping to look in the windows of camera stores, and talking to people here and there—mostly other hookers, I could tell. Then around Thirty-ninth Street she went into a movie theater, one of those XXX places showing Barbed Wire Dolls or some other movie like that. Actually, I think it was something called Chained Heat. I waited for a minute on the other side of the street, thinking, Okay, that’s it. I’ve lost her. These things always ended somewhere, just like that. But then for some reason, instead of walking on like I usually did, I crossed over the street and went inside the movie theater after her.

  I’d never been in a place like that before—Carlos hadn’t yet started taking me out to the Adonis on what was his idea of a date—so I didn’t know what to expect. There was this dull red lobby with nobody around except a guy in a greasy silver jacket.

  “Looking for something, kid?’’ he asked me.

  I sort of felt like bolting right there, but that was back in my totally fearless days, and I thought, What the hell? I’d wade on in. If the water got too high, I knew how to swim.

  I told him about the girl with the white-blonde hair, how I thought I knew her—I’d seen her from across the street, and if she was who I thought she was, she was somebody I needed to talk to about something important.

  I have no idea what he thought about that. All he said, in this Spanishy accent, was, “You not here to see no movie, I take.”

  “I’m just here,” I told him.

  “Well, then you follow me,” he said. He took me downstairs and we went along this hallway with dim red lightbulbs hanging every ten feet or so. It smelled like vomit. There were some doors, but they were all closed. At the end of the hall was another door, and then we went down another flight of stairs into another room, which I guess was supposed to be a bar. There were some chairs and tables, and a couple of fat men sitting at them drinking, and in the back of the room was a stage.

  On the stage this short little white man was fucking a black woman in her behind. She was bent over on her hands and knees, and she had these great big breasts like cow’s tits flopping back and forth while he fucked her.

  I’d never seen two people fucking before, only dogs and such like, and it made me feel queasy. Every time he pushed in, she made this grunting sound, and they were both covered in sweat that was all shiny under the red lights. He had this black curly hair, bushy like an Afro, and a sort of hook nose. He was really ugly. I just stood there and watched, and in about a minute he groaned and screwed up his face and you could tell he was coming.

  She let out this howl, and he held himself inside her for a second; then he went and pulled out. He had this enormous dick, especially for such a little guy. He was almost a midget, he was so short, but his dick looked about as thick around as a wrist. Somebody handed the woman a towel and a drink, and she sat there crosslegged on the floor, toweling herself off and drinking that drink, like nothing ever happened. The man climbed down off the stage and went over to one of the tables where two men were sitting. His big dick was still half hard and flopping around while he walked. He stood there talking to the guys at the table, these two fat men in suits, and smoking a cigarette. The whiteblonde girl was nowhere down there—the only woman in that room was the black woman sitting on the stage.

  She started gesturing in my direction.

  “Hey, white boy,” she said. I looked around, but there wasn’t any other white boy. “Come here, white boy. You like what you see here?” She took one of her breasts and sort of shook it at me—it had to be at me, because there wasn’t anybody else in the part of the room where I was. Everybody was looking at me, though—the two fat guys, and the guy with the big dick, and these three other men in dark suits who, I suddenly noticed, were standing by the bar. They were all looking like they were really interested in me—in what I was going to do.

  I
felt like I had to get out of there. I shook my head at the woman, who was calling to me, “Hey kid, whyn’t you come up here and get some of that pussy you been needin’? I know you been needin’ it bad. I can see it in your face. You got a pimple on your cheek there, I can see—it’s from not gettin’ enough pussy juice. I know. Come on up here, let Mama give you some. Whip out that white boy dick and come on up here. Let Sugar Mama give it to you.”

  The two fat men were turned around in their chairs, craning their necks to see me. I remember the little man with the big dick standing there with his hands on his hips.

  When she saw I was making to leave, she started saying, “Buy Mama a drink, won’t you, honey? Won’t you at least do that? One drink for Mama?”

  I started to go up the stairs, but the three men in the dark suits were standing in my way.

  “Don’t you hear the lady?” one of them told me. He reached out and held my arm. The other two sort of clustered around me, so there was nowhere to go. “She wants you to buy her a drink.”

  “I got to go,” I told them, trying to shake free my arm. “It’s important. I got to be somewhere.”

  “Let’s see your ticket stub,” said the guy who was holding my arm.

  “What ticket stub?”

  “You got to have a ticket. You got to pay admission,” he said. “You think this is a free show? Yolanda here’s an artist. Joseph’s an artist. You got to pay to see artists. You can’t just wander in and take a peek and then go trot along your merry way. You got to pay for this.”

  “I don’t have any money,” I said, which was pretty true. “I didn’t mean to come here. I was looking for somebody.”