Waterfront Journals (10 page)

The switchmen don't give ya any trouble … they only give the winos trouble. The winos and tramps who are hungry give ya the most trouble. Ya got all kinds of heads ridin these days … ya got pillheads, hopheads, jesus … they try to catch you asleep or drunk … then they hit ya over the head … that's when ya have trouble. I can't stand them winos. I know I look like a wino when I need a shave but I ain't one. Who needs to get wrapped up in wine all the money it takes to keep on gettin it. No not me … I just move around stop here or there at a mission to eat and clean up. The mission over in St. Paul is real nice … you fellas oughta come out with me … you'll get yourselves a good meal and a night's sleep. Well here's where I get off. Listen when I jump can ya throw my pack down right after me? it'll save me walkin all the way back to pick it up … and make sure ya jump before ya get to the switchyards … they got guys watchin from the towers …

Man on Second Avenue 2:00
A.M.

NEW YORK CITY

This guy I know was walking with a friend of his around West Street and they had gone into one of the bars and had a beer and after they were walking down the street when this car from Jersey cruised by … kids come around all the time throwin bottles and screamin
Queer
and then takin off … so this car cruised by real slow and some kid leans out the window sayin Suck my dick and my friend gave him the finger and said something. All of a sudden the car slams on the brakes and five kids come piling out and start kickin the shit out of my friend. For the next ten minutes about a hundred guys come out of the bars and from around the corner and surround these five kids beatin the shit outta my friend … his friend took off right away and later my friend found out that he had just run home didn't even bother calling the cops or nothing and all these guys crowding around watching five guys beatin up one guy and none of them said or did a thing … my friend said that they stomped on his head and chest and broke a lot of his ribs … at one point he got up and tried to break through the crowd but the kids got him by the hair and pulled him back in and he said it got to the point where he could hardly feel them hitting him they were jumping up and down on his head and arms and legs and finally he said he remembers jumping up and plowing through the crowd and running … his face was just a puddle of blood … the kids chased after him but he ran faster and faster through the streets and outta the neighborhood and he kept running till he collapsed somewhere on some street … later he woke up in the hospital and found out that he had been out for about five or six days. The doctors told him that he was found by the cops unconscious on West Street surrounded by a bunch of guys … apparently he had hallucinated the whole thing of getting up and running away … he had never gotten up … the kids from Jersey got away too …

Boy in Trailer Park

COLLINSVILLE, ILLINOIS

I was makin this trip once … hitching from Detroit to Saginaw … I was hitching all day hoping some guy who picked me up would want to get it on … I had these fantasies of meeting someone really nice to make the trip something great … I finally got picked up by this one guy who used to live in Minneapolis and as we were riding along we were talking about politics and street stuff like what was going on with prostitutes and hustlers and all that … I told him that I didn't think they should arrest hustlers cause they weren't really doing anything fucked up and that I knew some hustlers myself and they were sensitive people. He gave me this funny kind of look and we started talkin about sexual repression and gay politics and after a while he pulled over to a highway rest stop and we both went in to take a piss. He stood in the booth next to me and stared at my face, you know gave me the eye, so a few minutes later we got back into the car and rode a while more. He said he lived in a small town just below Saginaw and asked me if I'd like to spend a few hours over at his place … he'd cook me a nice meal and if I wanted I could spend the night and he'd drive me up to Saginaw the next morning. I said Yeah and we pulled down this dirt road past all these broken-down farms and wheat fields and it was getting into late afternoon and the sunlight was really beautiful on the roads. We pulled into the driveway of this tiny farmhouse two stories tall and went inside. He had this dog tied up in the back a huge dog with long black fur … so after we get inside I'm waiting for him to like seduce me … see I never seduced anyone in my life I always let them seduce me … and he was much older than I was so it was awkward for me to even consider it. But he didn't make a move so I started thinking maybe I had figured him all wrong and I wished I had kept hitching instead of going home with him … anyway he went in and took a shower and after he came out I took a shower and after I shaved I came out in my underwear and he said: Ya wanna see the upstairs? so I said Okay and he took me upstairs. He told me he didn't really use the upstairs but for guests, that the dog hung out up there all the time. He took me into this little room that had an old bed in it and the sunlight was coming across the fields and through the window and it was really incredible the way it was shining in there. He told me I could lie down on the bed … he was real nervous when he said that … I lay down in my underwear and he just stood around tying his hands in knots. I started getting a hard-on and he couldn't help but notice it … he got all red and started to leave the room and said: Well, I'll leave ya alone and you can do whatever you want. I said: Hey, don't go stick around and he stood there all red in the face and looked uncomfortable … and I surprised myself by saying: Why don't you lay down next to me? he took off his shoes and lay down next to me all stiff like a desert mummy and after a few seconds I started running my hand down his side. He did the same and I slowly took off his clothes and then my own and we made love … it was real silent and slow … the sun was coming in like the second coming of christ … he was really awkward like he didn't have much experience and when it was over we both lay there for about an hour not saying anything to each other. Then he got up and went downstairs and took another shower. When I came down the phone rang and he answered it and it turned out he was on the board of the town, he was a high school teacher and they needed him for some kind of emergency meeting. So he split in his car and said he'd be back as soon as the meeting was over. I sat downstairs on the couch and the sun was slowly moving behind the hills. The place was incredibly quiet, just this high whine of insects in the fields and an occasional car passing by the house. Total silence and I had nothing to do but sit there and after an hour I was totally faded out just waiting … didn't move for about three hours and there were these giant balls of dog hair that came from upstairs they were the size of softballs. They would get moved out of one of the upstairs rooms and slowly ride down the hallway and come silently down the long staircase and roll past me on the floor and disappear beneath the chair or couch. For three hours as the sun went down these fucking hair balls were coming down the stairs like one every ten or fifteen minutes … and I couldn't move … there was absolutely nothing that I could think of to do … just waiting for this guy to come back from the town board meeting. I was crazy by the time he showed up … I talked him into driving me to Saginaw that night and he did …

The Waterfront 2:00
A.M.

NEW YORK CITY

I was walking into the wind on the waterfront, past dark streets and the frames of rain-swept factories, listening to the sound of clipped heels on broken sidewalks. There had been a fire in the neighborhood recently … some old hotel burned down killing a tiny baby, some faceless name in the papers, and here it was, suddenly, a building with large stalactites hanging from its iron fire escape. The entire facade of the place was covered in a dull gleaming ice, bricks having long ago tumbled down to the sidewalk and a slight smoke still rolling from the ledges even now weeks after the fact. Far along the waterfront walkways were large ships with steel meshes of stacks and poles and lights burning effortlessly in the night. I could see stars through the upper stories of the hotel windows. A police car was idling nearby to ward off looters.

I saw a figure seated on a bench near the river. A young tough about twenty-three, wearing a thin jacket with the collar turned up against the cold winds. He had a ragged head of hair, coarse muscles pressing against the arms of his jacket, a pair of old work pants that looked smooth and warm. As I passed him sitting in a pool of light he lifted his head, a smile bruised his lips, throwing shadows. His nose looked like it had been damaged with a blow. He spit into his hands and rubbed them together for warmth. One hand slid down over his legs and nestled in the curve of his crotch. He smiled again and asked for a cigarette. I had a sealed pack on me and when I fished it out of my pocket, tore off the wrapper, and extended it towards him he said, Nah, man, you first. It's bad luck to take a man's first cigarette. I laughed and sat down next to him. He slid his hand down to his crotch again after lighting up with the end of my cigarette. He smiled and reached into his jacket pocket and slid out a small envelope of weed and some papers. I watched his hands as he attempted to roll: they were weathered, red and tough dark skin stretched over his fingers and squared knuckles. He had difficulty rolling, he'd been out in the cold too long.

You're a nice-lookin dude, y'know? he murmured. I'd love to get some of your skin. And he reached over pulling one of my hands onto his crotch. It stayed there after he took his hand away to continue rolling. I come all the way the fuck out here from Rockaway … been walking around for a long, long time. He smiled again, his eyes like slits. I felt a weakness in the pit of my stomach, my left leg started to jump. I could sense the distances this guy had traveled, not in terms of time and geography so much as an accumulation of experiences. When I become weary, these scenes, tense or sordid, become a soft mattress where I can lay my bodyless self down to drift. This guy was no angel. He kept spilling the weed into his lap so I took the papers from him and rolled one myself. It looked like a fat garden slug.

We got up and walked over to the railing separating us from the river, looked down upon it as we smoked, and I saw this tiny figure of a man in work clothes walking through the vast darkness of a five-acre asphalt dock towards a ship anchored on the rough currents. I watched him cover a large area of the walkway, moving along almost without step: it looked effortless like papers skidding on a current of air above pavements. I felt the weed hitting fast and waved away the joint as it was passed to me. Hey man … I come all the way from Rockaway to put some reefer to ya and you gonna say no? puff on it a while. I took it from his thick fingers and felt a warmth spread up from my belly. There was a slowness to his movements, he was beautiful. I could see the rough surface of his neck and the vein running down like a cord and disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt. He told me he had come out of the navy a few months back, dishonorable discharge because he was caught swiping some money from another man's footlocker. They beat the shit outta me first, ten guys on me but I cracked this sucker's teeth before they put me down. … The tiny man beside the ship began walking the illuminated gangplank in motions that took him up and towards us for a while and then another turn and away from us, going further into darkness. After a minute a thin line of light appeared on the side of the ship as he pulled open a door that had been buried in shadows. He disappeared through it, pulling it closed behind him. Listening carefully I could hear a tiny clink in the distance. I felt light-headed, blood moving fast within my chest, my temples throbbing like the bellies of small birds. His hand slid down and buried itself beneath my coat, around my waist and back. His neck was dirty, I could see lines on it as we passed under a lamppost. We descended into the shadows of a ramp leading down to an abandoned playground, trees catching headlights and casting skeletal lines like X rays against the brick wall of an outhouse that had long ago been chained shut. They had once found some guy down there naked and tied up with his own shirt and belt, his wallet and valuables gone. Time was easing out. I saw images of my arms in the faint light, the roughness of bricks making up the wall this guy was leaning on, the curve of his hard fingers around the nape of my neck. He was making a rough attempt to caress me. He leaned back in an arched position, his mouth opened and a faint sigh issued forth. I leaned over and kissed his neck and he laughed, like in a drunken confusion of contempt and embarrassment. I took it as embarrassment and felt myself growing hard. You ain't sick are you? I stopped for a moment, realized he meant VD and said no, slowly undoing his trousers. He squatted down motioning me towards him with a single wave of his hand. I rubbed my palms around the base of his neck over and over, feeling the bristle of his skin against the sensitive undersides of my wrists, smoothing down his jacket, over his hard shoulders and muscles. He buried his face under my shirt and rose upwards like an enormous fisted hand, his tongue easing out between slightly parted lips so I could feel the coolness of a breeze follow his motions. He stood up, his arms swinging, and awkwardly embraced me. I fell into him and he tugged at my pants till they came apart and he worked a cold hand down into the back of my shorts. Nice and smooth …

In the ledge of that playground, with thousands of cars blindly swinging past, with the sense of my years circling around my forehead, this guy turned me around pressing himself bodily against me, his arms around my shoulders and neck, his hands flat against my chest, nuzzling my earlobe and neck with his warm breath, he entered me and breathed hard and rubbed his hands down my sides and said he wished it were summer so he could stay out all night and I knew he probably hadn't slept indoors for at least a week. As we both came he fell back against the wall, his arms to the sides like he'd been crucified and was delirious in the last intoxicating moments of it like St. Sebastian pierced with the long reeds of arrows, silhouetted against a night full of clouds opening up, revealing stars and a moon. We felt like figures adrift, like falling comets in old comic-book adventure illustrations. I thought how science texts never reveal how far the body would go for a sense of unalterable chance and change, something outside the flow of regularity: streets, job routines, sleepless nights on solitary damp mattresses.