18. JUDY
Well, what can I say. I got stuff
to impart, and I'm going to do so.
More like some crazed philosopher-
king, because I'm not that at all.
Just more like someone who's
been there and chooses to tell
about it.
-
I had a bicycle with me - it had
been on the curb on my home street,
Inman Avenue, out for trash, but
usable. From the Zellner boys, in
fact, front of their house. I took it.
An old, black bike, it had once
been, apparently, a 16-speed racing
bike of some sort (4 different shifter
settings for a derailleur of 4 gear
rings, so I assume 16). None of
that worked, and I then got it going
as a basic 1-speed, in some very
usable mid-range. I took it on
the train with me one day, from
Avenel, and used it often, until it
was taken when the apartment was
raided by police. I was no longer
living there, but I lost all my stuff.
While I had the bicycle, however,
me and that girl named Judy
Tenenbaum (she of that 'provinces'
comment mentioned a few chapters
back), would ride around evenings
and nights, everywhere, just seeing
and looking at things. Judy had a
cool way of grabbing fruit or
vegetables from the streetside
stalls and booths that once were
ubiquitous along all the streets. I
guess she was fast, or not that
self-conscious about it. You see,
really good thieves just don't
deliberate about it, they simply
execute the theft - they go about
it with no hesitation and just proceed.
It's the hesitation or the deliberation
and second-guessing oneself that
draws the eye of others, Anyway,
by that means we'd often have a few
apples or peaches, or a pepper or
a cauliflower. Which I learned was
eatable raw. Like a large apple or
something. It was OK. She had like a
1950's style big, old, clunky girl's bike.
What we used to call them anyway. We'd
ride anywhere - favorite haunts were
uptown areas, over by the East River
at the UN - still pretty wild then, a
huge power-plant and incinerator,
a few slaughterhouses and tanneries
still in place, big trucks lumbering
around, and then all of a sudden
the boat-docks at Turtle Bay and
then all that dainty stuff of the UN
architecture, the limousines swooshing
by, the fine, uptown clubs and eateries,
Sutton Place, and the rest. We never
belonged there, but went anyway -
Tudor City had a nice park - it's still
there, still nice. The coolest part was
all the undercliff stuff along the FDR
Drive, back then anyway. Rock
outcroppings, dripping waters, echoey
traffic noises, weird lights of the night,
boat reflections on the East River, all
that sound and fury. Either that, or the
lower westside, the complete opposite
of all this - slow, low and moaning
noises of tugs and barges, people living
in abandoned tractor-trailers discarded
along the streets beneath the elevated
WestSide Highway (the Miller
Expressway or something was the
real name; sounded like a beer
highway). That's all gone now.
There were even whores plying
their business out of mattress-lined
trucks. No one ever cared nor did
a thing about it. Judy knew a few
of them here and there, to talk with
and say hi to. I never knew a darned
one of 'em, to talk or say hi to.
(Ain't I being coy here?)...
-
This lower westside was the real
turf of New York. Mob central - nasty
stevedores and dock foreman, pushing
things around, people too. Freight and
cargo was all still loose back than -
now everything coming in is all
containerized and sealed, lifted off
by crane and dropped right on to
truck beds. And it's not even DONE
here anymore, because all that
sort of work and traffic is long-ago
gone from New York, which pretty
much does nothing 'real' now, 'cept
build. Back then, the way you made
rank in your circles was by what you
could get - steal, or have 'fall off the
truck', as the saying went. Everybody
had connections, you wanted a TV guy
or a furniture guy, or whatever. People
had certain control over the junk they
handled. Money got exchanged, things
went onto the wrong trucks or into the
trunks of cars, whatever. I'd occasionally
get a few dollars, like hired for the day
or the afternoon, breaking up pallets,
changing oil on trucks, loading or
unloading something, stuff like that.
Gathering up the rope coils, etc. There
were little clutches of bums and others
who hung around, made barrel fires
of the cast-off wood, just gaped
like ghosts at the night or the light.
It was like the Bowery, except they
were all just a little less dead - same
gaunt faces, gaps of missing teeth,
sunken cheeks, splotchy skin, wispy
hair, bent backs, sorrowful gaits,
tobacco chums, boozers, guys who'd
hardly talk a sound - and others who'd
never shut up, or just start snapping back
in some imaginary conversation with
someone unseen. The walking crazies.
Everybody had a sad story, a sorrowful
tale, a big mistake. There was a guy, a
writer, named Alfred Kazin, back then;
he had written a book called 'A Walker
In the City'. I'd always see these guys
ranting around NYC talking or shouting
out to imagined issues or people as they
went along. I called them each 'A Talker
In the City.' You can't do that anymore,
because some nitwit now is always
parading around talking to an unseen
companion, but go to find out some
other fool on the other end of his
Bluetooth connection, or whatever
all that crap's called. These days it's
all a totally different day. All the
crazies are dead, and these jerks just
turn out to be stocks and securities
guys talking their bullshit deals, even
though they look just as crazy,
but better-dressed.
-
Anybody who wanted to make
connections could make them around
there. Deals. Contraband. Sex. All of
it was calmly controlled by these usually
big or near to overweight slob-guys who
never cared about anything; nothing
nice about them at all but for maybe a
gun barrel in your mouth or whatever
it took to convince you of the rightness
of something - a task, a job, or the error
of what you'd just said or done. It was all
hard-scrabble stuff, and you'd learn it
as you went along. There's a good book,
also, about all this stuff, called 'Westies',
by somebody I forget - it's about the
Hell's Kitchen areas docks and stuff,
maybe twenty blocks up or so, but all
the same death and shenanigans. Judy,
by the way, was never in with any of
this stuff, She never came around
during the worst of any of this. We
were always, as it were, together after
hours. Most of this crazy stuff was
broad daylight shakedowns. And, it
was funny too, once we ever got back to
the Studio School, it was like none of this
ever happened. We'd hardly acknowledge
each other, or she me anyway. It was
just a little bit of a caste system thing
going on, and she was mixing with
the low when out with me.
Better left unsaid.
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