GANG BANGS

There was The Baldies,
who were Irish,
and The Avenue X Boys,
who were Italian.
One from Coney Island;
the other from Avenue X
in Brooklyn.
Then there was The Bishops,
a Black bunch from the Bronx.
The Baldies & The Avenue X Boys
hated Blacks & the Blacks
hated the Irish & Italians.
Each hated the faggy Jews
and would sometimes beat the shit out of them
because they were Jews, more privileged
then they were
in smarts
& money.
Sometimes The Bishops took a train to Coney Island,
forty, fifty of them, and brought thick bicycle chains,
switchblades, bats, sometimes a zip gun,
and fought one or both of The Brooklyn gangs,
who brought much the same to the party.
They even made appointments to do this.
Their girls were like women
in the Civil War:
they stayed home
waiting to stitch-up their men,
speaking in hushed tones,
carrying bail money.
The Jewish boys were usually in school,
becoming smarter
& safer &
guilt ridden.

Sometimes the cops got wind of this,
and marshaled their forces
on The Stillwell Avenue train station,
not letting The Bishops off the horse.
But more times then not
they missed
& the battle would begin.
Most would go home afterward,
some to the hospital,
and some into the arms
of de facto moms.
The Jewish boys would go home, too,
but very carefully, making sure
to maneuver around the skirmish,
taking as much time as necessary.
This was the mid 1950's
and early 60's,
when clearer lines
were force fed
to avoid
thinking
too much
about any
one thing.

The Irish became janitors, firemen, cops.
The Italians worked in sanitation, police, barbers.
The Blacks went to jail.
The Jews went on to own the buildings and the penitentiaries.
Drama & great art are gleamed from the poor & beleaguered.
They know
how to live,
if life would let them and
they know how to die
because they're closer
to the exhaust system.

I'm going to be 68
in a month, and my body hurts.
It took an hour for the bus
to show up in a light rain.
The bus driver sang an apology
to us as we boarded. There were four wheelchairs aboard
a packed bus. A fat woman got on on 34 Street, near
Madison Square Garden. She offered a useless transfer.
No goddamn crosstown buses, she screamed. I need a fuckin drink.
The driver laughed. Get on board, baby, I'll take you anywhere.
Fuck it, she said, I could use a hard ride. She boarded.
A stop later some passengers started to sing, Volare, in Italian.
They sounded pretty good.
The driver then sang, White Cliffs of Dover.
A pretty black chick sang Unforgettable.
New York ain't such a tough town--
only to those
who don't know
any better--
and the worst death
is the one without
any fun.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

ADOLESCENT HOT

PUPPIES IN HEAT

Junior was a cocksucker. He was handsome and wild, but still a cocksucker, and a mean one. He’d fuck a snake if somebody held its head down.
And Corinne Steinberg almost loved him.
And I loved Corinne.
Junior was Italian; olive skinned, thin, eyes almost black, he had tattoos; he knifed people; he ate goof balls and was a junky, but he was cool; I had to give him that. I was Jewish, tall, but avoided looking too long at my body, blue-eyed, and dark haired; I was smart, I read, I wrote, I pretended. Corinne was beautiful, had a cat’s green eyes, a twenty year old body on a teenagers frame, and she was smarter than me, she liked what I wrote, we talked; she was an atheist Jew, like me.
I had a crush on her in the 8th grade; by the 9th I was madly in love with her. She gave me my first real hardon. It was magic like a Drifter’s song.
Corinne almost loved me, too: we held hands, kissed, talked about us, about our fucked-up parents, school, good teachers, bad teachers, teachers with dandruff or bad breath, plans, God might be alive or was positively dead, friends, and who really liked whom, music, and we kissed some more; she was confused, she said, about us. I understood, I pretended, and tried to kiss her again. She let me. She held back. She let me.
Ugly Wendy, who had an ass like a Montana mule, invited me to her graduation party. She shrewdly figured out, that love, too, was a numbers game: let enough boys get a feel of her tits and one of their hands has got to stick. She had strung up colored lights and balloons on her patio with the words, “We Made It,” on them. I thought those things stupid; I’d started smoking and doing things middle class Jewish kids were not supposed to do, like think. I’d already found Wendy and her friends pedestrian and boring, but Corinne assuredly was not, and was going to be there.
I was lying on one of those plastic chaise lounges thinking of Corinne going to a local high school when I’d be going to an out of town school that my father had been to when, like dreams, she just appeared and sat beside me. I cupped my smoke and gave her a drag. I looked at her; my chest was about to burst. I started to open my mouth when from the corner of my eye I saw a 1959 white Chevy Impala convertible with red leather seats pulling up to the curb and then Junior bounded out of the passenger side. He stumbled over the hedge and up to the patio where we sat. Both our backs stiffened. He slurred, “C’mon,” and grabbed her arm.
“Wait,” I began, and then, in slow motion, I saw a shiny blade he held to the side make a long circular turn and move into my thigh and then, with a snap, he’d broken off the handle.
My brain froze, my stomach seized; I lurched at him, but he already was pulling her away. My dungarees were oozing liquid and felt sticky. I grabbed at the piece of metal with my thumb and forefinger and tried to pull it out. The tips of my fingers slipped in blood slime. Panicking, I looked up for help.
Junior had pressed Corinne against a toolshed not far from the patio. I saw Junior’s thigh in-between Corinne’s legs. His body pushed into her. A look of fear braced her face, but her body arched toward his. I was going down.
Corinne visited me in the hospital and later when I recuperated at home. I could see how concerned she was and how embarrassed that she was the cause of my trauma. I told her it was O.K. and, looking away from me, she just shook her head then salty wet touched my lips.
We wrote and called each other through the fall foliage and first frost of winter. My body, finely tuned to our rhythms, felt the approach of each call, each letter. Christmas, we breathed, our skins would finally be fused. I had barely dropped off my duffle and said hello to my mother, when I rushed to her house a few blocks from mine. Her mother answered my ring and told me that Corinne would be down in a minute. I waited. The same tingle grew in my chest. I blew on my hands. She appeared in the doorway and the first thing I saw was her belly. It looked woman-sexy, like she had swallowed a new life. I felt Junior’s blade go in again.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2007-2015