The morning light brushed past the shaky defense of my blackout curtains and stained my eyes with brilliant energy that singed the retina into watery submission. Another beautiful day full of all the little things we love holding hands with hate while indifference plays the role of a sorry third wheel. Looking out at the legendary skyline, sure to be told of in tales similar to Atlantis, the universe seems to celebrate itself through the life below, running and yelling and eating and working and loving and cheating and fucking and dying. A hot dog vendor leans back on his cart and plays drums across it with the tongs to get the attention of unsuspecting tourists and no-bullshit locals. His shitty Arab snake-charmer genie music is so loud you would think this was a goddamned block party. He even has red, white and blue Christmas lights thrown around the cart, clearly a master of marketing.
New York is home to so many cultures and lives and possibilities, it’s easy to get lost in all of it, a dedicated being misplaced in the universe’s sandbox. There exists in this place of supreme wonder a level deeper than the abandoned train tunnels forgotten under the city streets, darker than the sewage veins and colder than the hearts ironed onto your stupid fucking “I Heart NY” t-shirts. This place is everywhere and nowhere, nothing and all, nothing at all. Filled with the exiled souls of sanity and deported yogi’s, children stolen from God by society and adults given back by broken education and relationships. The whole of the world rests here peaceful, untouched by the hands of men. An infinite source of funding for police and politicians and states and your fake charity and self-satisfaction, its citizens balance between the astral and physical plane on a fine wire of hope threaded through despair.
One joint and three shots later and my mind is tripping over itself on thoughts strewn around reckless and driven, seduced by the perfumes of food carts and deep gaze of sunlit reflections in skyscraper dreams. The ground level of the city exists as a world of its own with an ecosystem and social structure that spills over into my lobby before it’s snuffed out by the guillotine elevator doors. The doorman might as well be a cardboard cutout; on his phone completely oblivious to anything outside of the magic slab of glass that overflows with information and entertainment in rainbow streams of artificial light. Twelve steps and the front door is behind me with a world of opportunities and lives to choose from lay in front.
The hot dog man’s energy is infinite, fat wads of cash climbing out of every pocket and tourists swarming the sidewalk for a chance at the genuine New York experience they fell in love with on silver screens and Wall Street schemes. Never once have I bothered to tell them that no local pays the four dollars for those very same dogs. Never once have I brought up the fact that no local would actually pay for those dogs at all, and I’ve especially never brought up the fact that those very same dogs are kept stored in the very same water the vendor washes his hands in. At least they can get the genuine New York experience of the daily get-by, the constant grind to stay three steps ahead of the next guy, sheep in a den of starving jackals.
I spot a sole hyena off to the side. He laughs and waits for the rest before snuffing out the flame of life. It sleeps under the awning and sits back on steel gates pulled down and rusted over and eaten through by rats. His feet are covered with newspapers held together with rubber bands, swollen with blisters bursting and death feasting on open toe wounds where the nail was ripped clean three months ago. Mushrooms should sprout from it any day now.
“How’s it goin’ Roy?”
“Ah, you know me, baby. Just another day. What’s goin’ on in that palace you in? Any rich old ladies you think I might have a chance at?”
“Only Life, my friend.”
“That bitch a straight slut. You know I can’t fuck with no dirty hoes, now. I’m about ready to divorce her today. Been too long she been holdin’ me down here, man.”
“The stars look best from below, Roy. Here’s a twenty. Go treat your girl nice today. I don’t wanna come back tomorrow and find out you two couldn’t work it out.”
“Man, you should write poetry, Marley.”
“We just did.”
“See? That’s why I like you, man. You’re all right.”
I handed him the twenty and walked off with a nod to the hot dog vendor that made his entire weeks stock on three sales. He shot me a disgusted look in return before he beamed energy at the old lady shoving twenty dollars in his hand for two hot dogs with sauerkraut and a 12oz. Pepsi. Roy shuffled over to the liquor store on the corner for his usual brandy and vodka mix, the world around him a foreign desert with sand of sinners and rains of hope shot to the gut in a warm bullet of love. How does he do it? He’s no Buddhist. The way of the Tao abandoned him long ago to leave him stranded in a sleepy awakening, too tired to get up and too awake to cut off the lights. The amount of pain his life contains floods out of him and grabs hold of my psyche to twist my heart every time our souls greet in passing, and today it piles in like a broken dam.
What if common society is right? Am I better than him because I commit my time to some imaginary pin upon my shirt? Do I hold my head higher from some lack of concern for the condition of my feet and clothes? because I can change them if it rains? because I don’t need to worry about my very life every time I go to sleep? Most of the time anyway. Half the time, if I can sleep at all, I manage to stay alive through triple reuptake inhibitors and liquid lies of better tomorrows. Dreams float to me on bellies full of swill and gas, a constant reminder of the never ending path to infinity bliss. What the hell I was doing out here again, still hanging on, still attached, still just weak enough to believe in life?
The Bowery Mission has been open for over one hundred thirty five years and still stands as one of the final destinations on the path to the nothingness that consumes all over time. The forbidden secret your teachers won’t tell you and your parent’s make you learn on your own. With experience they said. Wasted nights pile up and dress over the good we all bury under guilt and regret and depression and sleep and work and food and Facebook. Fucking Facebook.
I walked in the door to a bear of a man; about six foot seven inches and seventeen hundred pounds. His chest was so hairy it flowed over the top of his loose black tank top and spilled from the holes scattered around it. Stains filled his beard and gin soaked his breath as he muffled a greeting rehearsed millions of times over. The man could have worked in Marshall’s or JC Penny’s or any of these fine American establishments that place quality customer care and employee training at the center of their business. I made my case of being a lost soul tossed to the gutters of this heartless city to fend for myself and damned my respect. I was redirected, another journey across the city to Bellevue for general intake, convinced he was mocking me.
Any ego left over got stripped at the door through a psychic wanding, the heavenly conveyor belt. My wallet went through and the only thing I could think was that I hoped they wouldn’t have a reason or excuse to open it and discover the ID tucked inside to reveal the false reality I’d painted them. No problems. The metal detecting wand was pleased and quiet, the x ray machine empty of terrorist threats and activities. I stepped through before another man was tackled to the ground for a number two pencil, apparently too sharp to be considered a tool for anything but murder. He was slammed down with a bracelet of steel, jaw broken, ego shredded and thrown around the room like confetti soaked in phlegm and drool. His screams still echo in my dreams, always a step behind the cliff, never truly ready to jump and embrace the total experience.
Sometimes, you just have to enjoy the view. I’m too old to jump off every time I come to the edge; but tonight I may have to make an exception. A plastic pint bottle tucked in my waist was more than enough to keep my shoes safe and information loose. My roommates were all older than me, except a group in the corner of teen drifters with ragged outfits and ashy skin. Word around the dorm was that we would be shipped off in a bus as soon as we fell asleep and dropped at a random shelter to do what we will. Some have room and some don’t. Others play games with families. Apparently there’s some sort of fat pay bonus for every time a family signs up at the main family shelter by Bellevue, and families were constantly shifted and lost and kept waiting with full knowledge some would eventually walk out, fed up, only to come back next week and do it all again.
The devil breathes deep in my ear and fills my own with lust, a distant witness to this realm from the safety of my sanity. My heart quivers in pain looking around and hearing stories about how everyone got there. It reminds me of nothing but jail cell intake. The floor was a grey sheet of filth with stains and crusty mold where men walked barefoot with flesh scraped and shredded. The guards were dressed as standard New York City police officers, guns and all. The only difference was the patch on the arm to label them homeless officers. I remembered the cold stare from the woman behind the desk as she took my information and pride with a voice etched from steel; a samurai loose in a field of helpless targets. I took in the sunken gut and the hot face, the others just going through it with you, every single time.
After I gathered myself and managed to talk my way into a guide in Brooklyn, I realized I already made my biggest mistake before I even took the job. I promised Harrinadaus an incredible piece for some mind-blowing exposé and I went and slipped it in the wrong hole. Did I already shoot my load? Coming in this way was sure to lead nowhere, but I was already here. Would it even be funny to think I could work my way in and move into the employee side? Probably not. Saviors of the weak, humanity’s last line of defense in the strongest of our society, bitten by demons and infected eternal. The pieces were all upside down and I was too damn high to flip them over. To hell with it; Mainframe would get their piece and the truth its own canvas. Tattered souls scattered around pockets of the boroughs, too many to even conceive. I would have to take one borough, even smaller, a neighborhood.
The grips of poverty hold tight every corner and every doorway in every nook and cranny of Manhattan, and I couldn’t think of a better place to make my home for the next month or so. Who knows if my dedication would wear out by then, but I was sure to be dedicated enough to at least estimate what I couldn’t remember. I walked out the front door of Bellevue the next morning and walked. I had not destination, no plans, and no worries. Just free to the will of the universe, gods daily dose of Occulus Rift. After five minutes of this nonsense I smelled the most incredible smell a human could ever smell by the river in a city of toxic trash piled up and carried miles on fierce winds. The sweet onion and cheeseburger smell of White Castle. I looked for three blocks in every direction and couldn’t find one, just the smell haunting me by the pier, crying my name. I realized I hadn’t eaten in over 14 hours.
I gave up and walked off towards life, and found a pizza truck that was selling slices for a dollar. Its sides were tagged up, probably on purpose from the looks of the fedora wearing prick cutting the pies. To the right I spotted a Salvation Army with a long line. Lunch time. I strolled over, almost smashed by three cars at the intersection and take my place in line to await my gourmet meal of watery mashed potatoes, peas and carrots from a lean cuisine package and some kind of raw rice with baked beans cheese catastrophe. I was given at least ten pounds of pineapple juice to wash it down with and watched everyone else respond with delight. If there was no one complaining, that meant this was unusually good for this establishment. I’ll have to admit, it’s better than prison food, but you’re better off using vitamins like sprinkle cheese if you want any nutrition.
I walk outside with a new accomplice who wears a black leather biker jacket and white sweatpants with no shirt and goes by the name “Snake”. He says they call him that “because I isn’t afraid of um”. Fine enough answer for my curiosity. We head off towards the very same piers I came from and I got to wondering even harder than ever about the White Castle smell. Nothing could make me crave those little pillows of beef more than a shitty meal. We walked right past the block and I smelled it again, stronger than ever. We got to the pier where there were at least seven more of this same guy all sitting around. It was like the cheap enemy recoloring in old video games to make it appear as a different opponent. As far as I could tell, not a single one didn’t have wide eyes for mine and hushed mouths are never good in circles of gossip queens. One had a bright blonde wig with red nail polish; another didn’t even bother to shave but had on a dress with the jean coat thrown on top and a black wig. This was a bad place for me.
Just as I saw my chance to leave they pulled out the most incredible thing I have ever seen at that point in my life. Any hope I had of escape was gone, throat slit into the ether by a fine slice of white powder sprayed across the steel park table. No way they were gonna tie me up and butt-fuck me behind the bathroom on this. No chance of blackout rape or tough guy talk. This is my home, my zone. Anything was possible and the article would write itself. My only chance of survival really. I would be insane to pull out now, they’ve dealt their hand and I’ll be dead if I walk away from the table now. They’ll probably say I was a cop to kill their guilt when they take me the whole five feet away and toss me into the Hudson. I had no choice really, but I like to be Buddha about it and say it was just the will of the universe.
One blast and the familiar feeling rushes back through every cell in my body. Every microorganism and virus and bacteria and hair danced in euphoric unison. There was a heavy drip down the back of my throat that left a bitter taste and numbed the entire mouth but stemmed from the giant rubber clown nose I was left with. This was no Times Square tourist blow, these guys were someone serious. They didn’t get ripped off, so what were they doing out here, getting ripped by the piers at midnight in dresses and wigs with random homeless men? I had to know, so I stuck around for another hour before realizing this was it. I just saw the entire existence of all of them all in one hour. It coincidentally also took the same amount of time to realize there was no more coke.
They told me before I left that they enjoyed it. That life was too short to worry about bills and rules. Sucking dick and getting high together was the only thing they wanted out of life and damned if they didn’t get exactly that. I wished them all a nice night and took off towards the mirage of a White Castle one last time, safer than when I got there with a new set of savvy allies on the streets of the meat district. The smell was still there and I sniffed it down for my last time before finally giving up and walking away from a dead end. It seemed to come from the wall. The time was 3am or somewhere, and I needed sleep. The train was two blocks away and would let me off the next morning at home, article done. I would probably fabricate the rest in hopes of selling copies. Just as I went to turn the corner I heard a bang come from the wall I was just standing by.
I walked back over and tripped on nothing. Closer inspection showed me a rain light coming from the thinnest crack in the sidewalk; no roach could slip through it. I put my nose up close and took a deep sniff of what I’ve been craving for so long. My stomach thundered and grabbed control of my mind before I was cracked in the jaw with a heavy steel lid that came from the sliced out sidewalk. I fell back on my heels and lay there on the cool concrete for a second before my brain regained control of the situation and gave me control of my mind again. The son of a bitch crawled back into his hole and tried to vanish but I kicked the lid open and jumped down like a starved lion on a pigeon.
He had the upper hand in the tiny space I landed, from the looks of it his place of occupancy. I landed on a rickety inflatable mattress that exploded as I came down on it and shot bits of tape and crusty glue all over the walls and a shelf stacked to the rims on White Castle candles. The simple minded fool. How could he be so careless? So goddamned cruel? I should choke the life out of him like he just snuffed my hopes and dreams of a Whiter Castle. The rage exploded and I drove a commercial airliner straight into his nose to send him plastered onto the metal wall of the roughly five foot wide space. He was out cold. What the fuck was I doing?
To the left I noticed my luck was finally looking up with the jackpot of a lifetime of three brown baggies of powder and two wet black lay out on the table. The doorman was checked out and security cameras were down as I slid the little packets in my hoodie pocket to leave before my friend regained consciousness. I grabbed the ladder and even got my foot on the first rung before I noticed a needle out of the corner of my eye. I snatched it up and held it to the sweet onion white castle candle until it turned a bright orange and smoked black death from the tip slivery. There was a bit of juice left in it so I dug it into my new friend’s ankle with the enormous vein pulsing loose. He wouldn’t be waking up anytime soon now.
I reheated the needle to sterilize it and stuck the tip in my vein, right where the flesh is weak from a year of donating plasma. It set on easy and my body drifted away into nothingness, dust in the breeze of white castle flickers. This was the first time I’ve ever done this, and I followed what I had seen in movies mostly, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t do a hell of a job. Suddenly the opiate junkies all made perfect sense to me. A whole universe shifted into reality and layered my own in a twisted plot line in a murder mystery play of sanity. The curtains were lifted and the back play exposed, I couldn’t watch it any longer. It was all so bland since the magic of it was exposed.
I woke up with the little guy who lived there kicking my foot and asking if I was ok. He grabbed hold of my shoulders and shook me before he shoved a glass of stale Natty Light in my face in a plastic White Castle cup from ages ago that glows in the dark. 32 ounces. A proper beer for a waking man, flat or not. I gulped it down in two giant chugs and wiped the residue from my lips with my sleeve before I realized where the hell I was. He looked at me with a cocked head like a curious dog and his fat bottom lip stuck out to almost kiss me. I asked him what the hell he wanted and he reminded me very politely that I was the one in his house and how lucky I was that he didn’t just kill me in my sleep. So I had made a friend. A lonely soul that chose to attach himself to me for another journey through time, another life, another chapter, another experience in this whole crazy thing we call life. He held out a half-eaten cheeseburger still in the wrapper from Checkers. I ate it like a fucking pig, starved from days of Salvation Army and Midnight Run food.
After four days of staying with Rock and dining on fine meals of chef boyardee and stale peanut butter sandwiches on whole wheat that was closer to styrofoam, we decided to migrate to the Empire City Casino and take a chance at life in the world above. The walls here drip from the leaky lid we use as a roof and black nicotine streaks stain the stone borders that wall us in. He goes to the surface everyday at noon to eat at the salvation army and midnight to beg for change so he can buy his drugs. Heroin, angel dust and liquor were his preferences but he would take anything he could get his hands on, a hell of a guy.
He lost his leg in a war no one even remembers, including myself, and i’m the goddamned journalist. Disability money gets him by most of the time, but the spare change is nice padding to retire on, and life couldn’t be simpler. He says he understands his place on this plane now, and it hasn’t bothered him in fifteen years. He doesn’t crave the things he can never have again, too late to get out, too early to give in. His life dangles above the white castle flames of his light source, on top of the tiny iphone 5 he uses for reading and television and music and he even has his own website set up. Fuck if i can remember what it was about though, besides being a goddamn mess of coding and drag and drop nightmares. His two sons haven’t spoken to him since they left the home he lost over thirty years ago and his wife killed herself before they could recover, pushing him over the edge to have a further climb back than they could have ever imagined possible for a mortal man.
The train to the casino took longer than i could have ever complained about in any way words would allow to whimsically turn your mind over and win the hearts of novice readers and seasoned critics alike. This was where our time together had to end, I still had an article to write, and hanging out with this guy for the rest of my life wouldn’t get me any further than it already has. I’ve learned a lot from Rock, but time carries swift and life ever calls. I walked to the front doors with him and handed over $300 before i disappeared back to the train when he turned to run his luck through the ground and try to claw his way out one last time. Looking back now, even if he made millions tonight, i would probably still know exactly where to find him if i ever needed a friendly ear and a warm bed.
Back in midtown, I moved into the ranks of the Central Park citizens. They exist as an entire society all their own, and some haven’t been outside of the park in over twenty years. You can see them snoozing peaceful in little tucked away alcoves and caves and shrubbery known only to the most diligent locals. In The Ramble, off to the right at the first spot where the path breaks, the little house-like arrangement of bushes there. Rob and Danny sleep there from 9pm to 4am every single night. They haven’t been found by the Central Park Police force yet, as many have. Doesn’t really matter, just another space to occupy, another life to be. Over by Sheeps Meadow theres a building called Tavern on the Green thats been open maybe one year collectively in the entire twenty five years of my life i’ve lived here. I made my way over to the bathrooms that were locked at 5o’clock every night and jimmied the back window open to slide in and duck into a stall for a peaceful nights sleep. I would need to set an internal clock to wake up before they unlocked the door in the morning and discovered me, blowing my spot.
Works every time, for some reason. I set the time to wake as 4:30 am and right on the money my body gently brought me back from the astral plane by 4:28. My eyes were soaked in oil and burned through the skull and my skin felt like it was covered in a thin layer of dried grease. My hair was matted together and brittle with a beard full of dead skin that i hadn’t washed off my face in days. I used the sink to finally scrub a layer of dirt off myself and brushed my teeth with soap before rinsing out my crusty socks and drying them in the hand dryers. The park wasn’t officially open until 6 am and i would be arrested if my presence was discovered, especially in a breaking and entering situation, so how the hell did i expect to get out of here? I was crushed by exhaustion and didn’t think this all the way through, and now I had to make my move.
I chose the window and stepped up on the ledge with my body pressed up to the wall next to the window. It opened from the top so I had to bring it down and tip toe to peek out before I just shoved it open an popped out. A squad car was humming away directly across the path from the window with the officers watching some kind of movie. I had no choice but the front door. This eliminated the spot once they came in and found the security had been compromised. I would need another place, but for now I needed to get the hell out of there without being seen. I walked out the door and hit the track jogging with the naïveté of a tourist. I jogged right past the squad car and down the block past the Starbucks.
It would be a few days before I finally found a new place to sleep safely, with park benches and libraries filling in the meantimes. I could feel my body eating away at itself out of desperation to stay alive, a twisted existence. My mind was shot and I could barely manage to function on the fumes of empty liquor bottles and soggy roaches. I smoked any combination I could make, handfuls of dust and weed with soda cans covered in brown powder and lines on the bathroom urinals. Coffee was cheap enough to fuel the rest of this flesh armored vehicle I use to navigate through space and time.
The heels of my boots were starting to wear thin from the constant walking and I could pass out anywhere at any time with no notice. Too many times I was awoken by a security guard either kicking me out or telling me for the last time. Everywhere I went people began to avoid eye contact after they had the nerve to openly take it all in. I let my beard grow ragged and hair hang tight. I could pass for a hippy if I went to the John Lennon memorial, maybe get some tourist money through some kind of psychic Beatles nostalgia voodoo. My ideas were getting ridiculous even as I thought them into existence. It took everything I had to not birth them into the atmosphere and create the goddamned things.
Three days later I found myself in the lotus position on the grass right behind the John Lennon memorial with random couples making out behind me and strangers meditating to the side. If I kept it up, soon I could have a cult. I would truly become a god, teach the lost the path to enlightenment, the divine truth revealed to all. It was brilliant and all I needed was two hundred dollars to get me started. But wait….what the fuck amI talking about? I was writing an article. Have I become lost, another drifter forever stuck in the cogs of society? just molded and rusty, gumming up the treads? Wherever I was now, it needed to change.
I worked my way through the city for a few more days before I settled on the Trump SoHo as my place of sleep along with a small group of younger kids. There were three of them, a Spanish woman of maybe four foot seven inches and four hundred pounds, ten of it due to pregnancy, a skinny black kid that weighed a solid hundred pounds and stood at four foot two the most. Lastly there was the healthy looking Asian kid that was five foot right and always had a new jacket on when I saw him, even if it was in the same day. He never told me where the hell he kept getting all the jackets and no one ever brought it up.
The fat one was on the streets because her mother wanted her out of the house if she didn’t have an abortion. Funny part is, she left the money for it up to her. Two weeks later she’s arrested for possession and when she gets home the locks are changed and the door doesn’t respond. She cried herself to sleep on the train that night and woke up to a homeless outreach worker go put her in contact with a shelter that have them somewhere to be during the day, but the nights belonged to them alone. No curfew or force could stop them from celebrating life every single night in the only way they knew how, the quickest way, jack and weed with cocaine and pills.
I spent over two weeks under the stars of the public area next to trump soho, with the Starbucks across the street as my place of cleanup and late night diarrhea from too much gins and whiskeys. In the entire time I spent with these people, never once did they step out of line with me or take more than I was willing to give. It hit me after I finally decided I collected enough information and went home. I sat for three days thinking of how to write this last few words, to cap off this piece of brief madness and insight. After the fourth day I decided there was really nothing left to write. The story will continue to be written and told and retold every day each one of them or us breathes. But I can’t help but think, is it really them or us after all?
Everything we do every second of every day is just taking us away from the present, the moment , the Now. Your fucking tv and your goddamn Jordan shoes and the time it took to get them and the effort into showing them off or discussing them with no progress in your actual life. Triple deluxe lattes with shaved chocolates and whipped cream and extra sugar, raw, only the organically best of the best. Arguing over pointless nonsense knowing it’s pointless just because your life is such a fucking joke. No less a junkie . A small army in society brought up to value owning things other people created, whether you can afford them or not. They laugh at us and value a deeper ownership than anything a man made product can bring. I don’t know if there’s anyone out there who really isn’t just on that same path, on one side of the road or other, taking a nap under a giant sycamore tree, taking side routes, before they finally get there. Some people never do, they get caught upon the scenery on the way and want nothing else. The most beautiful thing life could ever bring into reality, and the trip is worth it every time.