7th Street

1992 and cracks in the sidewalk were a shimmering rainbow of vial tops and broken auto glass. 4am chocolate cake at Kiev with drag queens eating pierogi, cigarette butts in their sour cream. Only one ATM on 2nd Ave so Friday night 30 minute wait with fifteen skells holding the door begging that one quarter — elephantine ankles on 7th street with scabs to give you nightmares. Dude broke into my truck ten times and sold my dirty underwear on St. Marks. Gas leaks in the hallway and the red-faced Ukrainian ladies would gather in their polyester nite gowns crying real tears as they shared the sad bathroom on the fifth floor….

Dank blunts and a shared lighter in the shadows of Sweet Jane as that first lick of the Ghetto Red Hot remix dropped and people roared. Giant Step dropping flute on everything as the room became liquid in the dawning terror of that sneaky PCP…Should have known…Blunt tasted of banana.

Hate comics in the bathroom. 8ball in the living room – Needle Dick The Bug Fucker and I’m convulsing with laughter.  Sonic the Hedgehog with the dread from WE-Deliver telling me how the indica will make my lady mellow. 6 jobs – Monet and chicken over rice in the mornings, Israeli Rock stars in Tenefly in the evenings. Al Dimeola smelling the funk in my shoes in the afternoon — Something Smells like shit! He screams. Maxell Golds with Chaka and Plyers’  Rough This Year. Zig It Up, Big It Up…Pum Pum Shorts and Big Bills. Flatbush Gods hard at work…

Brooklyn and Fulton is bumping. Upstairs records with the cutouts, beat street with the remix and that Jamaican spot for sterling fronts with piles of the new 7″s. Earth Ruler cassettes and every jeep with the rolling lick of Oh Carolina and Bedwork Sensation and shit…that chicken patty is stale. Zone Man crying flash the blondeness as cab after cab passes us by in the gas light memories of Gage and Tollner.

Warm red stripes and easy weed and giggling Jamaican girls trying to teach me how to bogle in the musty heat of July. Corey Robbins yelling that no one can eat or drink in his all white penthouse so go to the roof where a UFO alights the skyline in the after-glow of fireworks.

Sticky Mikes, The Freezer, Nell’s, Soul Kitchen. Here come’s the Puba so you know I won’t fake it. Stud Doogie are ya with me…

Shit….did I taste banana?

Dizzy Izzy bagels singing the song of burnt onion and grim cops with stale coffee while the freaks are most definitely out. Half naked she-men leaping out of truck cabs using Babe Ruth wrappers as toilet paper and small dogs and perverts…If I site myself at the center of this slice of pizza I will make my way home and fuck you for that coconut ice on every poster that you can never order. Red punch in a waxy cup never tasted so good.

Green Girboux jeans and NFC T Shirts and diamond encrusted Fauxlexs from Canal Street.  GFS – Gerb. Futura. Stash. Over the bridge to Ave J.  Kross Studios with Nkansa and Spinna on the cut.  Fox yelling at the box food to pack that curry chicken tight and not skimp on the gravy. Nike with the zig zag stitch custom linen, Private P hoisting the calico with a voice like thunder; Screechilous with the laughter, the Guiness flowing.

Biltmore Ballroom. Stone love with the Junior Tucker – You Batty boy selector with your bag of shit — Waynie Wonder over Billie Jean, Sanchez on Far East. Terror, Bounty, Buju, Panhead, Dirtsman…Respect to all the gunmen dem. Yow Star!!! Bwoy…bad man never beg friend so stay far from that corner with the silk suits.  No open palms there just pure deadeye business. Q Club Wednesdays, Dead People…First car? Honda.  According to Super…Gunshots ringing and the ceiling never felt so low.  Only Big Man Jay sticks around to see if his people safe.

Rauel’s is packed so through the kitchen and into the back room. 2 weeks of saved pay. Briny Malpeques, Sancerre, scraping the flesh from artichokes in vinaigrette, rack of lamb crusty with herbs and garlic…the satisfaction of cracking open that creme brule with the back of a spoon.  La Bonebierre for endless cups of coffee, marlboros burning low, scrambled eggs soft and buttery — NY Times apartment listing staining the hands black with ink and fantasies never fulfilled. Ratner’s, Cold borscht pink with sour cream and cherry blinztzs and kasha. Marian’s and Martinis. El Charro with the green sauce.

Every bodega in a four block radius light in everything but some dusty Scott’s toilet paper, Spaldeens, jolly ranchers, Newport long looseys and baking soda….shady window in the back slipping $20 bags of coke through the bullet proof glass. Religious candles to carry out with your dime bag.

Six jobs and no time to think.  Shtarker Russians with their press gang flyers and 2 am pickups.  The old and the crazy packed into the MOMA movie theater, as warm as anywhere on this February as Old Man Feinberg sprints away through the Pollacks —  a dusty scarecrow, coat-tails akimbo on the run from young men with polyester blue jackets and Art History degrees from Ivy Leagues.  You need to practice good hygiene Mr. Feinberg.  No. You can’t sue me. I’ll buy you some Right Guard if you promise to use it.  Shadowy skells with stolen checks imported by the scalpers nodding out with syrupy saliva dripping to the granite floors . Car locks left open, no radio signs in the window, glass pipes twinkling with illumination like christmas lights in every stairwell on this block. No sleep again.

He howls as he shits between cars. We are no longer human in these streets.