WHY NOT?

There's a woman
who wants me
to shave
into her mirror.
She's also
a gambler,
though she wins,
she told me.
Texas Hold Em
doesn't appeal
to me
the way five card
does, but gambling
is gambling.

I told her
that I'm best
at playing
with myself,
with words,
I mean, letting
them tumble around
& land
with a freedom
I'm hard pressed
to allow
into other
areas
of my life.

I'll help you
enjoy yourself
despite yourself
she said
& smiled.
Maybe
she can?
We'll see.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

LOVING THE LIVING...& THE DEAD

COULD YOU MAKE THAT GENERIC, PLEASE


Harry was slumped over his breakfast tray; his beatific face sublimely nestled into a blueberry muffin. The only problem the nurses could discern was that he looked to be on the far side of blue, and, as far as they could tell, not a whisper was coming out of him.
In that instant the boredom of bedpans and blood pressure ceased, and a code blue was issued. All of a sudden from lethargy and sullenness, an immediacy sprang to life harnessing all their energy and focus on their lifesaving call to duty; I would imagine much like how a S.W.A.T team would feel being roused in pursuit of a cop killer. One thing was for sure: it beat the hell out of morning rounds, or meetings.
Unfortunately, besides taking the briefest of histories and current medical needs, they didn’t know shit about Harry, except that he almost bought it last night in the emergency room. He had screamed then about how much pain he was in and to prove it, threw up on one of the poor admitting nurses who had the bad luck to draw him. He had tried to warn her. He told her that among the many problems he has, he had a diabetic ulceration inside the cavity that remained after having four toes amputated. He was in so much pain it was making him nauseous. She said he couldn’t be seen until she had taken some history, including the type of insurance he had. It was then that his projectile vomit caught her a little below the opening in her blouse. Her first instinct was to brush it off her chest before it ran down her cleavage, but, luckily, she stopped herself before her hands, too, got into the goo.
Finally making his point, he was escorted into the bathroom where he rinsed out his mouth and was then led to a gurney. As soon as he was inside the ER and lying on his side, he calmed down and soon afterward was asleep. It was only when the same nurse came back to get the insurance information from him, this time wearing a surgical mask on her face and a plastic gown covering her torso, that anyone noticed that his chin was resting on his chest; a chest which was not going up and down and up and down and up and down.
Blessedly, all thinking stopped. For how long, nobody could know. All the powers of the emergency room, was focused and put into action. For the first time that night they were mercifully back to reciting the multiplication table the old way. Their reaction time was spellbinding. A nurse began stripping him of clothing and shoes. Into a new vinyl bag they went; it looked much like a large trash bag, only clear and thick. Another shook him, while still another nurse began to run a line into a vein; and another began attaching those electrodes to his chest and hooked him up to a heart monitor. The first nurse who was done with her assignment, ran back in with a bottle of glucose, should he be diabetic and in insulin shock. Harry, groggy, and in a fog, had tried to lift his eyelids. They fluttered. To Harry, it was all a berserk swirl. Jump cuts. A spastic’s dance.
One other thing moved in Harry’s struggle: his eyeballs. They rose into the back of his skull. We might consider that trivial, but they were all signs! And all they needed. Working even harder, having more purpose, (if that was possible), they began to rush in with antidotes for everything that Harry might have taken, as they hurled questions at him: Drugs? Poison? Dreams?
Harry, after a time, was coming around. And for some reason he was angry. Each question they asked he screamed out a wobbly “no” to. There was a nurse situated behind Harry’s head who dutifully recorded each “no” to their questions. They asked if he had mistakenly took more medication than prescribed or obtained illegally, drank, or wanted to end his life. Each time he answered he seemed to become more awake. Who’s your primary doctor, phone number? Harry was like a resistant submarine breaking water. A doctor went behind him, put his hands underneath his arms, and hoisted him up to where his head was lying on the pillow. Once satisfied that he was out of the woods, they returned to triaging more mundane patients. A little while after that, Harry was resting comfortably, his color having returned to his cheeks, (he now looked like a skinned pig slung over the back of a Chinatown butcher, the head lolling over the butcher’s shoulder), his vital signs stable.

It was a busy night as far as New York City’s sickness was concerned; there was never any shortage of disease. It was standing room only; so much so that they had to put people on stretchers in the hallways. A chorus of moans, grunts, mixed in with the smell of fear and antiseptics, greeted the new patient or civilian.
Harry had been down there twelve hours. Once they were sure he was well enough to travel, Dr. Dallas who thought Harry looked like his father, (and kept asking him if he was), persuaded whomever to allow Harry, even though he was a medicaid patient, to be brought up to an exclusive room on the fourth floor. It was a room that cost nearly a thousand dollars a day on top of what the patient’s insurance would pay; in Harry’s case next to nothing. But the hour was getting late, and they had no beds to put him in save this one. So after a little arm twisting, Harry got a break and was wheeled up to the next best thing after heaven.

Harry opened his eyes just when night was giving in to light, and thought he was in The Waldorf. At the very least, a Holiday Inn. He had no recollection of a nurse taking his blood pressure, temperature, and history last night, after he’d been brought up here. All he now saw was the wooden furniture, desk, desk chair, television in a beautiful mahogany bureau, and a red sienna leather lounge chair next to the bed he was in. There was a wooden closet near the door where, Harry figured, his duffle was stored. Holy shit, Harry thought, this is way bigger and nicer than my goddamn postage stamp apartment. He thought a mistake had been made and soon someone would be up to throw his ass out. Careful not to make a sound, he got up, tiptoed to the closet, found his duffle that held his toothbrush and paste, and made his way into the bathroom.
First he took a piss, but didn’t flush the toilet. C’mon, what are ya crazy? He pushed the lever. Fear rippled up into his chest. The sound the toilet made could have woken up King Tut. He put his finger to his lips. Ssh, he said to the swirling water. Almost sixty and still out of your fuckin mind, huh? He laughed and looked into the mirror. The face that looked back at him smiled, and made his eyes twinkle. Not bad, Harry, not fuckin bad, the face said. Just be cool, quiet, but stand your ground and you’re gonna stay here; nobody can throw you out. You’re here. That’s all you know. If a mistake was made, tough shit, it was their mistake.
Slowly, Harry turned the faucet on until a slow, but steady, stream of water reached his toothbrush. He loved the way that morning brush cleared up that disgusting mine field that was in his mouth. After washing his face he looked into the mirror again. Satisfied with everything except his hair, he turned to leave, but examined the shower first and shook his head reacting to another surge of happy disbelief. Tough shit, he said again to the voice inside his head, left, and crawled back into bed.
Panic seized him when he closed his eyes. Again, out of the bed, back to the closet where, after closing the slight crack that the door to his room made, searched out his duffle. Lying at the bottom it was, but with the huge plastic bag with his evening’s clothes and shoes on top. He, again, slipped his hand under the vinyl, and slow as a caterpillar, pulled the zipper open. His heart was beating faster as his hand was feeling around its innards. He squeezed the two individual pouches. Faster, Harry felt between underwear, t-shirts, and other garments until his fingers nibbled on the toes of the correct sock stuck into a corner of the bag. He felt the container that once held a hundred Bufferin. A puff of air came out of Harry’s mouth. He zipped up the bag and returned to bed.
No sooner had he pulled up the covers, when a nurse’s aide, dressed in janitor’s blue, came in to take his vital signs. He always thought that waking someone up to do this was a curious habit that hospitals had. Was it something written into the bylaws, or understood like the “silent you” before some sentences, for a nurse’s universal revenge?
Without a good morning, she went about her work after seeing Harry’s opened eyes. He could have been dead, but that hardly mattered. How times had changed since nurses were charged with doing those tasks. From Kate Smith to reggae. From rectal thermometers, to glass ones kept in alcohol with a mercury vein running up the middle, and finally, to almost the immediate digital kind with a throwaway plastic sheath. Harry looked at a bored, none to intelligent face, and regretted this crippled dance to modernity.
How am I doing? he asked, not out of curiosity, but a need to not only hear his own voice, but hers, too. The nurse, she be in soon, she answered. Her face didn’t reveal whether his readings were indeed good, or bad--not that he really wanted to know--and not that she gave a shit. If the listener cared enough to follow her, she really said it was about money needed, a job is the means, and if you’d like to empty bedpans, I’ll be glad to do what you do, and what, by the way, happened to the streets are paved with gold bullshit?
Anger, sometimes, breeds intelligence, Harry thought. What can you do with that; no matter, he answered himself, and closed his eyes.
Shit, closing my eyes must be the kiss of death, came to mind, as the door opened emitting light and allowing a nurse--a real one--to come into his room.
She’s white! What’s this!? was his next observation, as she came closer to his bed. He smelled blood. Good morning, Mr....
Call me Harry, Harry said, while thinking she had a voice saturated with innocent sincerity. Could be fake, a put on, he reasoned, but it still sounded good.
Harry then, good morning, she said.
Good morning to you, too.
I’m here to give you your Lantus. Where would you like it?
Happy to be on vacation, Harry looked around his body and all the spots the insulin could be administered to. Arm is O.K. She came to his left side, rolled up his sleeve, her fingertips brushing against his skin, and slid the syringe in. How did you know? he asked, with enough good humored surprise as necessary.
Know what?
Know that I took insulin.
Her body leaned away from him as her eyebrows arched and her black pupils widened. Oh, you gave at least some information to the resident and night nurse. Don’t you remember?
I don’t remember shit,” he replied, with so many different inflections that he stood in wonder at himself. They both let out little chuckles. What’s your name, he asked, capitalizing on this quick surface intimacy.
Angela, she replied, her body relaxing once more. I heard you were a bad boy in the ER last night.
Sorry about that; I told her the pain was making me nauseous. I am sorry, though. Please tell her if you see her. Please. And that really was the last thing I remember...I think. Angela in good natured fashion shook her head.
Maybe you can tell me about the pain, and some more things we didn’t get from you last night, but need to know now, today?
Fire away, and fall back.
Harry divulged what information he thought necessary, no more. Yet the way that information came out made you feel as if he was laying bare his whole life and soul. The parts he was asked, but left out, seemed to be nothing more than a man who tried to remember, but couldn’t. And what he let out, each word, each sentence, was crafted through long practice, to get the most mileage out of a gas guzzling dinosaur.
He was lucky to live not far away from the hospital, but unfortunate, (and don’t forget miserable), that he lived alone and had experienced for the last decade the complications of his childhood illness: amputations, pain in his lower extremities, loss of feeling, bypass surgery, and now this ulceration in his foot that was driving him nuts. But, despite it all, he’d never lost his humor, thirst to create, a great appetite to live each day...blah, blah, blah, etc., etc., etc.
Angela, used to hearing symptoms, not narratives, had become hooked. “Keep turning the pages; what happens next?” came her automatic, and somewhat unconscious response, after every period. Until the natural nurse in her rose up. You look tired, why don’t you get some sleep now?
I’ll try, but every time I close my eyes someone barges in here trying to save my life. The nerve of them, she quickly replied, and again they both let out small, conspiratorial laughs. Try, I’ll see you later. I’ll put up a “Do Not Disturb” sign, she said as she was walking out the door.
Harry got so immersed in her, he forgot about his pain. But not for long. No sooner had she shut the door then he was up and over to the closet. He opened up that little Bufferin bottle and shook out a few pills: Dilaudid--yellow for two and orange for four milligrams--and cute, tiny, white demerol pills. It was a combination that worked the best. It took Harry a long period of time and experimentation to arrive at that, but it was not an unpleasant trip.
Back in bed, he rang the little bedside button, and a voice came on the intercom--another strike against modernity. Yes, said the voice. I want to make sure my nurse remembers my pain medication, Harry said, loud enough for him to be reasonably sure it carried to the mouth behind his bed.
I’ll remind your nurse.
The ground was now prepped and the order in, but he was not at all sure that whomever this disembodied voice belonged to would deliver the message to nurse Angela. Harry, with some reservation, (and after he put the pills under his pillow, like baby teeth), once again closed his eyes.

Harry had painstakingly built into his body an internal alarm clock. It would go off every six to eight hours when his nerves began, with the faintest of shivers, to inform him that they were alive, but not at all that well. He knew what to do to ease them before they got fully jangled. The lack of preparation had happened to him in his distant memory past, and boy oh boy was that terrible, but he made sure that that would never happen to him again. Days, sometimes weeks, before he needed to, he began doing what he had to do to avoid another, boy oh boy. Sometimes though, Harry got fagged out, spent, tired, drained really. He needed a vacation. Not having the resources to go island hopping, or to a Roman spa, he took what best can be described as an all expenses paid, Medicaid vacation. After going through the list of hospitals Harry carried around in his head, he would chose one that matched whatever amenities he wanted to have at the moment. It was not that easy. Hospitals had a physical look and a personality all their own. Rooms, bedding, view, food, were only part of their makeup. They also had powers of observation that, depending on the hospital, were either turned on or not. As was the level of care, specialties, discipline, and rules. They, of course, effected what type of staff--interns, residents, doctors, and nurses--were allowed or attracted to work there. Lenox Hill, if it was a candidate for office, would be labeled a liberal conservative: east coast, upper east side, smart, and stuck-up.
It seemed like a second between when he closed his eyes and woke up. He looked at the wall clock which read, almost eight. Harry swung his legs over the side, gripped the styrofoam pitcher on top of his night stand, and poured some water into a paper cup. He looked around, quickly grabbed and swallowed the tiny teeth that had turned into money. Aside from wishing he had gotten up a half hour before he had, he was still pleased that he gobbled them before breakfast, before he drank hot coffee,--but preferably tea. An empty stomach coupled with a hot beverage was the perfect environment he found to allow the pills to come on and do their job--balm and heal. It sounded like a vaudeville team. Maybe burlesque tits and ass. Seriously sexy.
Speaking of sexy, a cute little island babe came into his room carrying a tray. Breakfast. But goddamn he couldn’t eat it without taking an insulin shot. And he couldn’t do that before taking a glucose test. Listen, this is Harry, I need to take a blood test and insulin shot before I can eat, he said, his mouth a few inches away from the intercom. When he needed to do that--which was a minimum of four times a day--there was always a certain urgency which made his voice sound strained. I’ll be right in Harry, came Angela’s response. Immediately, Harry felt his upper body sag. Relaxed, he turned to the tray, lifted the plastic round dome and saw some hardened scrambled eggs. Oh, man. Fuck that. Can’t do it. Just can’t. Won’t, simple as that. That’s it. There was a piece of whole wheat bread, some butter, (maybe), a nice looking large blueberry muffin, and a cup with a lid on top. Before he pulled the lid off, he saw a decaffeinated tea bag underneath the bread. Wanting the caffeine, he was a bit disappointed.
Just spoke with your doctor, Angela said. She’d come in like a gunslinger, two fisted, a syringe in one hand, testing equipment in the other, and extra ammo: another big syringe sticking out of her jacket pocket. Also, she brought a bottle of insulin, her pretty face, and her dumpling delicious body. Harry might be sick, but he wasn’t dead.
Eddie, you spoke with Eddie? Good man. He’s a goddamn good man. Harry couldn’t help but lower his eyes. Eddie was like any other croaker he came in contact with on his merry-go-round in again/out again bout with life. Only Eddie wasn’t a cut throat practitioner of the Hippocratic dictum; he really believed he was not doing any harm, but was helping the patient instead.
Besides, being white, educated, and old could be, if played properly, the holy trinity to gain access to those Wizard of Oz antidotes of common crucifixions: Marriage unraveled; parents dead; money evaporated; body betrayed. And Harry, if the truth be known, was very distinguished looking, could bullshit his way out of Berlin in the thirties, (even though he was a Jew), and be charming as he did it; well, the world, as the saying goes, was his oyster--at least the Disability/Medicaid world. As soon as the docs heard a literate, funny, and engaging utterance, out came their prescription pads. It was just a matter of time before he had them ratcheting up his dose. Not having to pay for visits the “seek and ye shall find” apparatus was in play. It wasn’t too hard to hunt down more than a few doctors who’d do the right thing, get out of his way, and have their secretaries fill out forms. Often, Harry would spy his name on charts on certain dates he knew he was out to lunch. Never there. Docs were making fiction money. And mucho, and how. Not here. Not there. You know, man. Cool. So nice to still be a hipster, glued to this modern, daisy chain, forgery.
Angela sat on Harry’s bed and put the machine on the corner of the table. Do you want to do it or do want me to do it?
I’ll do it. Harry stuck himself with the penlet and put a drop of blood on the testing strip; in five seconds they got a reading: 133. Good. Very good.
Your doctor gave me some instructions, guidelines, but they were so confusing he finally told me to listen to you; seems you know as much as him, she said, and a lovely crimson blush came into her cheeks. She smelled nice, too. Fresh. Like honeysuckle on that certain moment in spring, when it simply couldn’t wait anymore. Harry breathed deeper. He wanted to put his head under her dress; nothing dirty; he wanted just to rest there; maybe just his lips and the tip of his nose nestled against the soft flesh of her thigh. Damn, he said to himself, that sure was quick.
Angela, I could use some pain medication, Harry said, even though he felt the first inkling of what he’d already taken begin to work.
I’ll give you the insulin first.
Would you mind giving it to me in my arm; I’m so tired of injecting myself in my stomach? She smiled, happy to accommodate his request, knowing what a task it must be to stick a needle in yourself five or six times a day.
How much should I give you?
Well, I can’t eat the eggs, you can forget about that, and the bread goes with the eggs... So, if you can swipe another blueberry muffin...we’re in business?
She smiled conspiratorially. It’s sugar, Harry. Are you sure you can eat that?
Sure, I’m sure--as long as I cover myself with enough insulin, I can eat just about anything. Anything. He looked at her, with an embarrassed boyish smile and blush planted on his face, until it became uncomfortable--for both of them.
Harry, I’m trusting you...so,...
Guaranteed, Harry said, or your money will be generously refunded, the redness all but gone as he spoke. But, all right, we’ll play it safe...just a little safe. Harry showed Angela his two fingers, the thumb and index ones, just the tiniest bit away from each other.
You’re a rascal, you know that? she said, and grinned. Her fingertips brushed against his arm again; she raised the sleeve on his hospital gown and deftly gave him his shot. Your doctor said either percocet or dilaudid, but dilaudid, Harry, that’s for terminally ill cancer patients. And I’ll tell you what: I suspect, after what you told me, you might be in a lot of emotional pain that you’re using these drugs for.
Well...I think you might be right, but I’m still in a significant amount of pain, that’s no lie.
How about I give you a shot now, and alternate the percocets, but just if you need it, if you call out for it, how’s that?
Sounds good to me. Angela told Harry to lie on his side and with a syringe that was much larger than the first, being an old fashioned glass and metal kind, (Harry just loved the look of it), she slowly inserted it into the fleshy part of his upper arm. The long steel needle needed to penetrate the first layers of flesh.
What a pretty face can do to me, Harry was thinking as Angela was administering to his needs.
After the shot things got a little blurry. Harry began feeling sweaty, and his eyelids seemed to weigh pounds, but he concentrated to keep his head up--and he did--until Angela brought him another blueberry muffin. As the door closed, Harry inhaled deeply then exhaled, making the paper napkin ripple.

Next he awoke to the sight of doctors and nurses hovering above him.
Apparently, Harry was found slumped over his tray; his Elysiasn face nestled blissfully into a large, cushiony looking, blueberry muffin. One of which was flattened against his nose.
If it weren’t for morning rounds, Harry might have fought his last fight. The young, brightly scrubbed interns, their uniforms as starched and white as the Klan’s hood, trailed a chief resident who, after seeing Harry’s ear buried into the pastry, and his ol “Schnozzola” with a popped blueberry on the end of it, called a code blue, draining the newer one’s blood from their faces, the more seasoned interns into alert, and the nurses into full bodied action. A crash cart, wheeled by a deranged resident, barreled into the room, paddles at the ready. Angela called out that Harry had diabetes, and so an I.V. glucose hookup was run into his arm, lest he had fallen into insulin shock. Also, she informed the doctors that she had just given him a shot of dilaudid, but he was fine, he was fine, she repeated like a mantra. Just in case, get some narcan, a doctor instructed.
Harry, is that his name, a doctor asked.
Yes, Harry, Angela repeated.
C’mon Harry, stay with us, the doctor implored.
Harry, c’mon baby, another voice chimed in.
But the doctors were baffled. Harry, according to the monitors and test results so far, should be able to do The Charleston in the middle of the room. His pulse and breathing, while being slightly shallow and slow, were still well within the bounds of normal; his tox screens, except for the little morphine that Angela’s shot put there, showed nothing else; his blood sugar read like most humans: 123. Fearing that either they or the tests missed something, they continued to work on him.
I think I’m in heaven, Harry said, upon first seeing Angela. It was still a struggle for Harry to keep his peepers open; in fact, for a brief second he looked, with his eyelids fluttering, like an old, faded, funny, male ingenue, or something out of some fag transvestite review.
How do you feel, how do you feel, came at Harry from all directions while a blood pressure cuff was put around his arm. He thought his arm was about to suffocate; all his attention was distracted there; he felt like trying to make a muscle and break it apart. Easy, easy, Harry said to himself. Yeah, they fucked up your high a little bit, but you still feel cool, and there’s always later. Easy, buddy, easy. Buy some time. Be gracious; show some class.
Whoa, what happened? Harry asked.
You tell us, the doctor replied.
Man, how the hell do I know--one minute I was here, the next gone. Whoa. Lemme get back to myself, Harry said good humoredly. You guys probably saved my life.
From what I don’t know, the doctor said. But I’ll be happy to take the credit.
Whaddayamean ya don’t know?
Just what I said, I don’t know.
They had unhooked him from the miracles of modern science, and were now taking all the bells and whistles back to wait for their next chance to perform.
Well, Harry said, when you doctors don’t know what the fuck happened, you call it an “episode.” Harry couldn’t help but grin.
And neither could those gathered around his bed, especially Angela and the head doctor.
When it happens twice, he went on, you call it a law suit.
The grins stopped.
Only kidding, only kidding. I’m a schmuck, I don’t sue, even when they thought nothing of allowing this blind doctor--who even had a seeing eye dog--to do a little neurosurgery on me. Nothing very complicated, they said; nothing to it; just a little growth on your amygdala. It could have been my rectum for all this doctor knew. I think the expression, “can’t tell his ass from his elbow,” came from my operation. You see the shape I’m in; maybe that explains it.

Harry, they don’t even kid around like that, Angela said, after the doctors and staff filed out of his room. Just hearing the word, “sue,” is enough to make their testicles go into a vacuum. Angela!
Harry!
Angela!
Harry! Harry, I’m not as prim and proper as you might think--or want to think.
Angela, I’m not what I appear to be either.
None of us are.
Angela’s face was simply radiant. Harry, without wanting to, was slip sliding away. She left him happily munching away on the remaining blueberry muffin, but not before she promised to bring him back a tea. She was debating whether or not to tell him that a blueberry precariously hung from his nose when she returned.

Harry had some business to take care of; it was on his mind ever since he opened his eyes and saw those mostly hideous, but necessary, faces above him. Most faces were hideous. No sense in arguing, Harry thought, they just are. He crept over to the closest and dry swallowed another two tablets; he wanted to give the initial intake a little more fuel; a boost; a nudge; shove; glad tidings. Back in bed he drank the last of the now cold tea, and laid back in bed. Could be worse, could be worse, he said to himself, much worse.

This time the nod came to Harry slowly, blissfully, nice. That liquid heat ran up the back of his neck and spread across his shoulders. Intuitively he knew he could play with this feeling for as long as he wished, turn it this way and that, and still go to sleep whenever he felt like it. It was one of those moments that made doing what he did to obtain it worth every penny, every second of bullshit. There weren’t many places--or times--that would allow him to feel this much at home...safe. Safe from those persnickety pain in the ass elements that would play with his head, like dying and leaving a mess. Here, for as long as he could stretch it out, would be beyond the grave’s tentacles; beyond the gas man; beyond the chit chat of what passed for conversation between humans; and way beyond the simplicity of bowling balls and heroes.
Harry remembered the first few times he did dope--Christ, what was it now?...forty, forty-five years ago?--he couldn’t get to sleep at all. Must have been the quinine, or somethin with the cut. Or maybe it was the newness of the whole thing, but he couldn’t for the life of him, fall asleep. Not that it was unpleasant. No, not a bit, but...well, but nothin, he just couldn’t get to sleep. No big deal.
Then there were grace periods of, well, nothin. Nothin. Not a drop, or a drug--illegal, that is. Clean; a clean feeling. No filters. Barriers. No, (or little), fear. Sometimes that could last for a day, or a decade. No tellin, with Harry. Strange, huh? But then, like the old joke, “slowly, slowly, he turned”...he went back to the cooker, in one form or another. And anything could return him to that dark place. No tellin with that either. Sometimes six months before the actual action, volition, or whatever you want to call it, he set himself, or was setup, to be, once again, open to the seduction. That last sentence, or thought, had that faint smell of a lie breathing on it. The truth, better stated, was that Harry was both the seducer and the seduced. He knew exactly what would get him hard, and was willing, if it called for that, to make it a very long courtship before he would demand to get laid.
Unless, of course, it was a chick that Harry was head over heels about. Someone so lovely, so enticing, that Harry would have waited forever before he demanded any goddamn thing. After the act, however, that was another story. One chick told a friend of Harry's that her first mistake was telling him that she loved him. The second was, after having told him, she hung around, and stayed.

After five days the doctors were no closer in understanding what caused the seemingly arbitrary nature of Harry’s condition. One after the other they ruled out, in seemingly alphabetic fashion, today’s hit parade of diseases. There was no such thing as “consistency” as to when Harry would have these bouts of near unconsciousness. They thought him incredibly lucky to be found when he was, walking that ol precipice of death. One time they were ready to send him to the I.C.U., fearing that he was near extinction, only to find him, when they came back into his room, requesting cable television for the reruns of The Sopranos.
Even though Medicaid was picking up his tab, they didn’t flinch in ordering every conceivable test that could solve the riddle of Harry. The hospital figured that since Harry was lucky enough to inhabit one of their exclusive suites they’d write the whole goddamned thing off, and every other poor bastard, at the end of the year. It wasn’t quite the, “in for a penny, in for a pound,” ethic; it was more like how can I turn this bullshit around and make it work for us.
Harry, meanwhile, was living The Life Of Riley. It was Alfred E. Newman’s, What, Me Worry? take on whatever life could throw at him. It was arms behind the head, leg crossed over the other, foot dangling, television on, and getting loaded with impunity. He was also pleased with himself for dealing so well with the guilt that he felt when he was with Angela. He wished he could level with her, but even though in the previous days she had shown every indication of being cut from a different swatch than the rest, was still, he thought, too square for him to risk such a racket by coming clean. And it was so hot out that he could feel the days heat and humidity drip through his windows; his windows that looked out to Park Avenue; he couldn’t even contemplate being in the furnace and shit box he called home.

Is it possible to get a haircut around here, he asked Angela.
A haircut?
“Yeah, a haircut. Don’tcha want me to look good being your patient and everything.
You’re too much, Harry.
Answer the question, baby.
You need money for a haircut.
That’s a problem.
Hmm. What can we do. Let’s see. I could, I guess, advance you a little cash.
A little cabbage, yes, you know I’m good for it.
Never had a doubt.
How sweetly you lie.
Part of my charm, Harry.

What else do you lie about, he asked Angela the next day. He couldn’t get the last line she said to him out of his mind. Sometimes, after hearing something someone had said, they look completely different. Almost like another dimension was added. He was positive that before Angela left his room the other day he saw a few creases that life had driven into her face; they weren’t ugly, quite the contrary; they allowed Harry to enter.
Nothing...much, she replied.
Being cute, huh.
You think so; cute, I mean.
He looked at her, studying her, weighing her, Cute, no, I don’t think so.
What then.
I don’t know. Hard to say.
Hard to say, or you don’t want to say it.
Hard to say. Except that thirty forty years ago I’d be in deep trouble.
Is that so.
That’s so. Smart and looking the way you do, damn, always been a very lethal combination for me.
Harry, don’t do that.
Do what.
Harry, the woman was always in more trouble than you were.
Ya see, that’s what I mean. Trouble. Fucking trouble. I’m tellin ya...
Harry, enough. A smile broke across her face and carried Harry out with her.

Did you send up a barber or a foot doctor, were the words Harry greeted Angela with.
She stamped her foot and laughed. Her hand covering her mouth.
You don’t have to say it. Oh, my god!, comes next. I know.
Again she stamped her foot and kept her hand where it was.
I didn’t think that what I had to say to you before would be met with so much retribution. Jesus Christ.
Harry please, no more. I’m going to urinate on myself. Please.
“Urinate,” hmm, how proper we are.
Please Harry, I’m begging you.

Harry looked forward to Angela getting to work in the morning, and Angela couldn’t wait to get in. A few times she even showed up an hour or more before her shift was to begin. People started to talk. Harry felt this tingle that worked it’s way up his balls and into his stomach until it tickled his brain. Not since his early thirties had he felt this way. Usually the word, “Fuck,” was the first thing he uttered upon opening his eyes; now, his thoughts moved more to getting up, showered, shaved, and dressed; he even felt less of a need to raid his drugstore as of late. But Harry kept them there in case it all came crashing down--which was always a likely possibility.
And Angela had finally met someone who was unlike the someones that she kept meeting. Could have been his age, what he knew, the way he thought, the sound of his voice, looks, personality, or smell. Who really knows why we want to get close to the people we want to get close with? The irrational are more rational than the rational in understanding what’s what with that.

Angela came in through the door as Harry was kneeling in front of the wooden closet. It wasn’t anger, or disappointment, judgment, or fear he saw on her face. It was more like, What are you doing on the floor praying? and then she smiled. But again, it wasn’t a smile of compassion, understanding, sarcasm, or contempt. It confused him, but didn’t stop the blood from rushing up to his cheeks, making him feel hot all over.
I thought you were gone.
No, not yet; I’ve been spending so much time in here that I needed to catch up on some paperwork.
You’re flattering me.
You don’t have to do that, you know.
Do what. I was just rummaging around for a pad to write on, that’s all.
Harry.
Really.
He didn’t want to go down this road, but lying was really the only road he knew. The words, even if it were a one word sentence, kept sticking in his gullet. From nowhere he began to stutter like he did when he was five, when each word he uttered had the potential to kill him.
I’ll see you tomorrow, Harry. Have a good night. Again her words were light, neutral, and impossible to understand.
Stay...please.
Harry put his palm on the floor and pushed himself upright. He put his hand through the crook of her arm and led her over to the lounge chair. He tightened his grip, but gently guided her into a seated position. He sat down on his bed and pushed the hospital tray out of the way so there was nothing separating them. Angela, he began, what’s going on here?
I think you know.
I don’t know shit, Angela; why don’t you tell me.
No, Harry; we’re going to do something different this time--for both of us. Why don’t you tell me.
I feel like the old man at the end of, Moonstruck: “I’m confused.” Harry lowered his head and dabbed at his eyes as if he were crying.
You could charm the spots off a leopard. But, of course, you know that. You count on that...and why shouldn’t you...that’s what kept you alive these many years.
Sonofabitch.
If you keep trying to deflect this thing, we’ll never get anywhere.
‘Anywhere?’ He pondered the word. Where would you like this thing to go?
The one dim fluorescent light that was on, made the room look like the tenderness of a welcoming saloon.
No, Harry, she said, low, but resonate, where would you like to go. And please don’t tell me about the thousands of reasons why we shouldn’t go there, why this is crazy, absurd, and then go into your personal trough of misery--or perhaps ecstasy--to cement the impossible. Lets keep it simple: Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby?
Her smile tempered his heart with light, putting out fires so old and damp as wet ash they’d now become moldy with contradictions. I don’t know how you know all the stuff you know, but I’d like to know what you know.
Come home with me, then.
Come home with you?
That’s what I said. I wouldn’t have to talk so fast you’d miss, (or I’d forget), the good parts.
How can you be so sure.
Sure. Who’s sure. That’s what discovery is about. It’s art, Harry. Great art is work. A lot of work.
He stared at her for what felt like a long time. The night nurse came in to check his vitals. She said hello to Angela and then went about her business. Angela and Harry just watched her, and each other. They remained silent until she left the room.
I wish I had a cigarette, Harry said.
Makes two of us...and I never smoked.
Harry laughed despite himself. He knew what came next. Angela, you know what I was doing by the closet when you came in.
I knew two days ago.
You did?
I did.
What the hell can we do to fade that?
Do you want to “fade” it.
His body cleaved in two. The battle was defined, as it always was, but now, once again, verbalized, which somehow made it more real.
Wait, Harry. Think about it. I know it’s not an easy decision--if it’s really a decision at all. Tell me in the morning.
Maybe we both got lucky here; what do ya think?
Maybe you got lucky; I was always lucky. Oh, I see, you think I’m lucky to have you. How did I not know that that was, you were, a golden gift from the gods.
Harry just shook his head. Is it always gonna be this tough a ride with you?
Until you realize that you were always lucky, too.

That night Harry couldn’t sleep. At about two, he thought about taking a few of his pills, but decided to hold off. If he was going to start anything with Angela, it couldn’t be predicated on a foundation of shit. There had to be a reasonable semblance of good honest intention going in to this thing. He thought he had to talk with her about quitting. And wanted to know how she thought the best way to go about it would be. Harry knew that one of the reasons he was drawn to her was because she was a nurse; it was a profession that was loaded, (no pun intended), with fireworks and pitfalls of various kinds, and he was subject to explode or fall into any number of them.
Looking at this honeydew rind of a moon, he decided that he’d give himself one day to enjoy himself in his own inimitable way, and the rest of his life to enjoy with Angela. Off and on, for over forty years of his life, he had researched pleasure and escape that only an ego made of mush was built for. Sometime, the next afternoon, a road would be chosen, a vehicle established to see him down it, and perhaps a destination that he and Angela would agree that both wanted to go to.
Angela didn’t sleep either, but not for the same reason. She was nervous, apprehensive, and decided to clean her apartment. No sense in waiting for the last moment. Or worse, waiting for him to come to her, and finally get there. A sliver of a moon, she thought, the melon must have been very good. She had lived, and survived, her home and men who recreated that home over and over again. With her help, of course. No longer was she willing to pitch in. Angela was no fool, and no stranger to who Harry was; no pie in the sky for her. She knew it would be hard work, but interesting work. She felt drawn to him as soon as he opened his mouth...and not because of what he was, but what he secretly wanted to become, and could become if he gave himself half a chance. Age and circumstance were on her side. Now, if only time would give her a goddamn, and well deserved, break. A little luck.
Finally, at around five she finished and was so dirty that she decided to take a shower right there and then. Afterward, she laid down in her bed, put her hands behind her head and in a moment was asleep. Such a deep and restful sleep that she overslept and late, hurried off to work.

As was his habit, Harry accepted the shot of dilaudid before breakfast. Now, it didn’t get him that high, but still made him feel very nice. Content, safe, and secure in this blanket of near forgetfulness. When the nurse brought in his testing equipment and his insulin injection he told her he’d take it himself and engaged her in some meaningless, but funny, conversation. When he knew she was distracted enough, he secreted the empty syringe under his blanket and waited for her to leave his room before he got it and put it, along with his pills, in his duffle.
He got up and walked over to his window. The traffic was beginning to build on Park Avenue. The bustle of cars, and cabs, and people going someplace. Someplace!? Where the hell were the places that all of them were going to? Damned if I know, he thought.
Looking further upward at the high sky of a deep baby blue, he thought of 9/11 and the exact same color and canopy that day. Huh, interesting, he muttered. On that day, Harry was on the north side of The Brooklyn Bridge when the sky exploded. The ball of red, orange and yellow fire, then black smoke, rinsed the sky of reason. It was enough to knock Harry back against the doors of a high school; the heat followed immediately after. It felt like the outer edge of a furnace. It was official: Hell was New York City.
When breakfast came, he politely asked the orderly if she couldn’t get him a metal spoon to eat his oatmeal with--those plastic spoons feel like they’re melting in my mouth--and smiled at her. I be back, she said.
Harry was sipping his coffee, fully dressed after shaving and showering. He knew he’d have to sign himself out, but knowing that Angela and he would work this all out this morning wasn’t all that concerned about it. Geez, c’mon already. Where is she? he said to himself after a due amount of time went by when she should have been there already. C’mon.

Where the hell were you.
Getting things ready for you.
Harry was instantly calmed. Well in that case...
Yes, don’t worry even though I know you must be going crazy. I know that. I thought that we have two ways to go: one, I could get you into a rehab unit and they’ll do what they have to do and then you’d come to my place, or, two, I could get some methadone and do the thing myself. I worked in a detox unit for seven years and know what I’m doing...
So, that’s how you...
Harry, sweetie, Ray Charles could have seen it.
Harry thought he was invisible. All right, you got me--now what the hell are you going to do with me.
Enjoy you.
Harry didn’t ask her how she would get the methadone. It wasn’t his business. If she said she could get it, she could get it. That’s all he needed to know. That he wouldn’t be sick.
All right, I’ll sign myself out.
A.M.A., against medical advice.
What else is new?

I’ll just do it one more time, give me a jolt before I pack it in, he decided after a brief, if one-sided, debate. Harry sat on the toilet, his sleeve rolled up, a belt wrapped around his arm, with the tongue between his teeth. He held a syringe in the other hand. He had taken three four milligram dilaudid, crushed them into the metal spoon, added water, and with a pack of matches, cooked the mixture in the base. Slowly, he guided the syringe into his one useable vein and watched as the blood came into it, like a rose coming to life, its petals moving to the side of the plastic cylinder. Gently, he guided the plunger down and watched as this slightly water colored orange mixture went into his vein. A pumpkin exploded behind his eyes.

***

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2005-2015

THE FROZEN POND

For W.H. Auden


The ice,
thick
with innocence,
began to fissure
& melt
in late
July.
Mufflers,
& gloves,
& little hats
floated
to the surface.

The old folks
clucked
their tongues;
strange
to notice
a betrayal
not
of their own
doing.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

SIMPLE MATH--THE LESS YOU GOT, THE MORE YOU WORK TO GET IT

LIQUID HANDCUFFS


Winsome was boppin along, listening to some Miles on his iPod. It was Friday, and he was dressed casually: cut off dungaree shorts, huge spattered Hawaiian shirt, baggy, double layered socks tucked inside red Converse high top canvas sneakers. For effect, he wore a multicolored boating skimmer on top of his head and shades. If one didn’t know better, they’d think he was going for a sail instead of being on the C train, coming from 145th Street and Convent, and getting off at 34th and Eighth Avenue.
Bags Groove segued into Simone’s, Love Me Or Leave Me. Her Bach like playing and Julliard education played well against the previous piece fronted by Miles. He, too, went to Julliard. Damn, I’m bad, he said to himself, sometimes I don’t even know what I’m doin, but I just feel this shit, you feel me? An older black bald-headed dope fiend once told him in the joint that feelings predicted intelligence and don’t let nobody tell ya no different.
He parted the doors and exited into Hades; the heat and smell, let alone the density of pressed rush hour bodies, almost made him retch. This is not the kind of thing for me to be doin, you feel me? he mumbled, and gripped the handrail as he made his way up into the early blaze and fray.
It seemed the summer had no brackets; it was just one sweltering ninety-five degree day after another; the only thing that changed was his underwear. Soon, city workers would be walking around with shovels so that they could throw the bloated and dead bodies into carting boxes. Nothing was as bad as a New York City summer where the air conditioners, if anything, made the city even hotter or, the constant, artificial Arctic, cold seeped into your bone marrow and froze any thought that could be birthed.
It was a good thing that Winsome was motivationally lazy. Only two things did he minimally work at: one was making it to fifty; the other was being cool while he did it. Of the latter he knew some people who came easily by it, while others...well, lets just say that they had to be in the know to know just how stupid it would be not to think about what really should be thought about: being cool always, of course, was one of them. Style, brother, was the answer to just about everything. In fact, he preferred these days to do a tedious mind-numbing thing with style, than doing a dangerous thing without it. Most people he knew were just mad stupid and there was nothin to be done about that. Besides, he wasn’t going anywhere; the state and the Feds, science, and himself took care of that a long time ago.
He even gave up shooting dope when that scene became too hard; he was about thirty-five at the time, almost fifteen years ago. It was a young man’s game. And if yous wasn’t rich by thirty-five it just ain’t happenin. And, sheeet, talk about, “mad tedious,” and “mind-numbing,” you ain’t seen nothin til ya have to go to a mothfuckin MMTP, a methadone maintenance treatment program or be in the joint or be dead. Ain’t no other ways to go for niggers.
Even the good ones were mad crippled. I might be a nigger, but I ain’t like these niggers here, fuck no, Winsome would say every time he got on the block that the clinic was on and began the slow, grim, Bataan death march. He passed the human lampposts, some bent over, their heads below their knees, sucking their own dicks, oblivious to the sweat dripping from their foreheads to their necks to the sidewalk; he passed the ones who were still conscious but trying to get bent, bartering or buying one medication for another; passed the cigarette hawkers selling Loosies; and then opened the door to the clinic and climbed those industrial bleach smellin stairs to the emphysematous elevator. Pearls before swine, my brothers, pearls before swine--and that goes doubly for some of the niggers that run this program, too.
The fourth floor waiting room looked like a cattle car; all kinds of cows and heifers kickin up against the stall. Old and young, mostly black and Latino flavored, but some white asses standin and sittin. All of them were waiting. The black, front of the line, staff, had a wall, a door, and a glass window, separating them from the diseased. They used it to the max. If you pestered, or got cross with them, treated them with any kind of disrespect you were fucked. They would simply forget about you. It was, to an addict, the DMV, only ratcheted up to the nth degree. Your dose, that you should have gotten ten minutes before you got there, was a good thirty to sixty minutes away from your hungry cells. Shout, stamp your feet, curse, only made it worse. If you put up too much of fight, you got escorted out, and then you were really screwed. Junkies were neutered a long time ago, though most didn’t know it. Most just talked, but didn’t do a fuckin thing--except when desperate, and that wasn’t very often.
But complainin, that was another story; they were tacitly encouraged to bitch all they wanted. Besides, it’s an addict’s God given right to punch holes, even in heaven. Once again, the smell of bleach and ammonia were wafting around the cramped space, making everyone surly.
On his way over, Winsome was greeted by a few nods of the head or desultory halfhearted waves, but inside the waiting room he was known by many. Not only had he been there for fifteen years, but nearly everyone liked him. He had an easy way, but told the truth as he saw it, without trying to shade much.
Because of the heat and a pissy air-conditioner, folks were mopping their brow or their cleavage. Sometimes both. Sweat could be seen glistening from the tops of plump breasts. But most weren’t interested in that kind of sex now. The only sexy thing was inside the bottles they were waiting for.
How you makin it, man, Earl asked him.
I don’t know how, but I’m makin it, Winsome replied.
I hear you, man; I hear you.
You?
Same here, brother. I’m tryin to get these motherfuckers to put me on a goddamn three day week.
And?
And nothin. They hearin, but they ain’t listenin. I’m tired of this motherfuckin ride six motherfuckin days a week, man.
They got liquid handcuffs on your ass. Even me with three days still is chained to the motherfuckin city man; even if I had a place to go wouldn’t make no kind of difference, my ass belongs to this bullshit, man. I thought it would take the pressure off, but instead its made me more aware just how much of a motherfuckin slave I am. I gotta get off this motherfuckin juice.
Ain’t that the motherfuckin truth.
I gotta.
But Win, man, you been sayin that for the ten years I know ya.

Win, you goin to the bereavement group.
Not it I don’t haveta.
Everybody has ta.
Sheeet, I ain’t “everybody.”
You just a crazy niggah, that’s all you is.
Crazy, not a nigger.
My niggah.
Yeah, well, maybe your niggah.
The bereavement group was put together to have those who picked up their dose on Fridays, and who were a little--or a lot--further up the food chain than someone who came into the program yesterday, needed to go to in order to get their take home dose--at least for Saturday and Sunday.
It sounded like variations of Monk’s, Epistrophy, and looked like Mondrian’s, Boogie-Woogie, only going in the same direction; a static, herky jerky, movement. Each conversation, to Winsome’s ears, sounded alike, but different; a blur, washed of rhythm and color, yet each, if one paid attention, hit different notes, yet sang the same tune. A tune of a sainted victim. Even the isolated ones, (maybe especially them). The stick figures who hoofed over here singularly were sitting, with one leg going up and down, or fingers drumming a knee, or trying to stare vacantly into some distant past, or future. Each, alone or with people, contained, fixed in place, squirming into themselves.
The heat’s a motherfucker, man.
A motherfucker.
A real motherfucker. It’s mad hot.
Yeah, it’s a real one all right.
You stayin or splittin.
I just hope I ain’t gotta stay. You feel me? You might think after comin to this motherfucker for as long as me I woulda built up some motherfuckin trust--you might think that, but you be wrong. Wrong as a motherfucker. Damn. One goddamn time in almost fifteen years I get a dirty urine--which I keep tellin em was a false positive--and they make me feel like a left back retard. One time. Besides, hell, that’s what I’m supposed to do--get high, but here I am, all this time, and I get high--which I’m tellin ya was motherfuckin bullshit--but once. And goin to this bereavement thing. Bereavement my ass. I’m sorry I haveta come to this motherfucker. Ain’t that bereavement enough. You feel me? Sheeet.

They stood and talked, stood and talked; talked about the weather; talked about welfare; talked about getting fucked by landlords, the phone company, bosses; talked about the amount of how many milligrams they’re on or up to and how many more they’d like to be on to feel nice; talked about babies and jobs and picnics and deaths and drugs and stickups and beatings and school and lies and schemes and anything to not talk about this, this exactly, nothing more, nothing less, just this and what, if anything, they’d planned to do about it. Somehow, this was worse than their apartments without air-conditioning; worse than an infant with no milk; worse than a red light in your rear view mirror; this, somehow, went to the truth of the lie that, try as they might, to jettison, was all the more powerful because of it. It showed their ugliness to the world, or really just to the people on the train or bus, or those they jostled with on the sidewalk. A gangrenous soul, a cyst, a malignant tumor, a pus pimple that, if shown the light would not go away, but would spread or burst on themselves or worse, those around them. Almost the same rap and the same feeling week after week after week.

Hey, Win, what’s up bro.
Chillin, just chillin.
Back in this silly ass motherfucker again.
Word-up, Willie. I heard youz was in the joint, man.
Nah, that was a bullshit bust, man. They busted my ass cause they can do it, you hear what I’m sayin?
I heard somebody snitched on your ass.
I was out the same motherfuckin night, man. Tried to snitch me for not payin my ol lady, but that’s some bullshit, man. Really. Tried to tie me up for some ridiculous shit just so he can bone her, you know what I’m talkin bout. Sheeet, she wants to ball his ass, too. I ain’t got no kinda luck, man. Fuckin cops check and they see I’m given her as much bread as the courts call for. If I could, I’d get the fuck outta here, if I could get outta here. Just go, man, find another motherfucker to live, you know where I’m comin from man, like a new start, you dig, But I’m tied to this fuck. Stupid to go somewheres else and do the same motherfuckin shit.
Get on the Bupe, man. They say that shit will free your ass up.
Yeah, I heard about that shit. But I don’t trust these motherfuckers. Must be some kinda angle they be playin to get some niggers on some other kind of shit than this orange shit we be drinkin forever, man.
Nah, man, I don’t think it’s like that; it was designed for white people.
Why ain’t you on it?
I’m gonna be. Get my dose down to thirty milligrams, then I can switch over.
Down to thirty, huh? Shit, that would take me...sheeet, I be dead by the time I get that low. But maybe I should try and do the same shit cause this shit is killin me.
I’m tellin ya, brother, in a short time we all just come in once a month, get a script andaseeyalater. And anywhere in the world we could go and just hook ourselves up with the shit and that’s it, man. And people don’t look at you stupid on this shit; I mean this stuff was made for the rich people, you know what I’m talkin bout? They go to a private fuckin doctor, man, and get a prescription for the shit. You feel me? This shit be designed for white people with bread, but once you on it, man, you just get yourself a clinic anywhere and a doctor to give it to you. Shit, they can even give you refills. But even if we only gots a thirty day supply; give me enough for thirty motherfuckin days and I could be king. You feel me?
Shit, I’m gonna do the same motherfuckin thing.

They kept drifting in, one by one and couples. There were no more seats or benches so they stood; horizontally, they’d look like detritus on the beach after a fierce winter.
Ari, the facilitator of the group, stopped at the receptionist’s area, behind the glass, and said something to them. They all laughed. It seemed like he stopped at their desk every Friday. None of them looked at the faces that pressed against the window like Rwandan refugees looking at a food shipment that was just dropped, but guarded by soldiers.
When he opened the door, the crowd filed passed him as if he didn’t exist. It was their only form of protest. If that in any way bothered him, he gave no sign. Some would quickly whisper to him that they needed more medication, or reimbursement for the subway, or a letter for Medicaid, or something that they needed yesterday. Go Go Go, he would say to each of them in turn, lightly patting them on their backs, (but pushing them, too), toward the room that the group was held in.
Motherfucker is crazy.
He ain’t crazy that way, Winsome replied, and don’t you think he is. He counts on that shit; but he’s a crazy sly smart motherfucker; always lookin for information and then he French fries your ass. Don’t sleep on him. You feel me?
But Winsome needed Ari, badly.
And Ari knew it.
The welfare folks were threatening to throw Winsome out of his section eight housing on his ass. If they did that he might as well look for another pad on the moon; shelters were out of the question and there was no one who he could hole up with that he wanted to hole up with. The woman he was seeing did what Winsome suggested she do a few weeks ago: she took it “on the arches.” Winsome missed her less than a beat. However, he did miss the bread that she generated from two places: a scam she had going with Medicaid, and the half ass job she was doing slinging a little crack to people outa the apartment. And there lied the trouble. The welfare folks got wind of what she was doing and had the right to throw his ass out with her, if not send his ass to jail--with her, too. It was a law that you can’t sling rocks in government housing. Period. End.
Winsome had told her over and over that he couldn’t risk losing the place, and she kept him at arms length, but her pussy was right up against his dick. He needed Ari, (not his dick), to stand up for him; needed him to write letters and go up in front of the welfare board and testify about him being oblivious to what the woman was doing and about him turning his life around, good character...blah, blah, blah. Winsome didn’t care if he told them that he took a dump on the head of the mayor as long as he was able to stay where he was. It was the only pad that Winsome ever had that he thought he was more than a transient in; he kept it spotless, and had nothing personally to do with anything bad from his past. Even when he was growing up, his mom could never stay in one place for too long. It took her a year or so to get most of the people she knew to like and trust her, and another year to take as much of their money as she could.
There were only two things that Winsome took with him wherever he went: the first was his father telling him before he finally split, he really wanted a daughter for his first born and how he didn’t want to change the name he choose so that’s how he came to be called Winsome, (now he dug the name, but it was a bitch growing up with it); the second thing was an indelible photo of his mom being a living breathing “ho.” She brought home man after man after man. When he got older, still a teenager, and still in some hell hole with her, he saw most of the men she spread her legs for in the next room, the living room. He saw her sometimes widen them for anyone with a goddamn pencil for a dick. Not even smart enough to be a pro, (she was certainly beautiful enough), he’d think over and over again. She couldn’t help but to laugh at some, and then they’d slap her good. Fucking embarrassing.
Now Ari was trying to make him bend over. For the last few weeks he was making demands upon him that were sickening to Winsome’s way of life for a long time now. He wanted Winsome to do two things for him: score some good reefer and introduce him chicks he could fuck. He told Winsome that on both matters there’s nothing like a colored man to obtain good weed and snapping pussy. Instead of grinning in this half-assed male conspiracy, he grimaced. Ari took offense and told him so; he accused him of lying and told him that as far as he was concerned he’d let him kick in jail before he said word one to the welfare board--let alone write him character reference letters. Winsome slipped and slid around him for a couple of weeks, but the noose was tightening.

Well, sheeet, when are you gonna get some teeth, man. Enough bereaven already, sheeet. You been gummin your food too long now. Get yourself some choppers.
Winsome tried to hide his laugh by ducking his head down. His skimmer nearly fell off; he caught it with his hand. Damn, my tribe is funny, he thought. Pain and laughter, how else can you make it, he asked himself. I’m a shallow guy, a laugh has got me by, he said to himself.
Mr. Butler, Ari said, to Winsome, what have you been grieving about lately.
That the last woman I was in was The Statue of Liberty.
Seriously....
I am serious.
The laughter rose in the room and Winsome knew there’d be some kind of hell to pay. Better back up; better be cool. Yeah, Mr. Ari, serious, I be serious. Here it is: I’m grievin that I’m still, near fifty, tied down to this motherfucker, but I’m sicka grievin. I wanna go on that Bupe program, man, that, whatdayacallit, Buprenorphine shit. Then, after I do good for a time they let me come once a month and shit, and then I could be a little more freer to do what I want, you know what I mean.
There are certain protocols that have to followed, first of all my name is Mr. Rabinowitz, you realize that don’t you.
Yeah, I do. And I’ll do whatever it takes, man. Whatever them protocols be I be doin em; I’m serious, man. Let’s start first thing next week.
We have an agenda to follow, Mr. Butler. We can’t just do anything anytime you want to.
Yeah, I know, I know, but I’m ready now. What’s the big fuckin deal?
To you it might be nothing, but we have an agenda that we have to follow.
Yeah, I heard that already. When we meet next week you tell me exactly what agenda that is.
You see, there you go again, Mr. Butler. Always your schedule. It just so happens I’m all booked up next week. It’ll have to wait another week, maybe two.
You’re too much, man.
What do you mean by that.
Just what I said, too fuckin much.
Too much what.
Too much bullshit, man.
I could take this conversation as a threat.
A threat. What the fuck you be talkin bout? Ain’t no one threatenin you or nobody else. So don’t even play that shit.
Sure sounds like a threat to me.
Rabinowitz got up and went out of the room. All eyes turned toward Winsome. Winsome’s blood started to freeze.
People in the room leaned over to one another or just talked into the air: he ain’t done nothin; he tryin to bait the motherfucker, we saw it, we all saw it; that’s some bullshit, that is; why he bein so motherfuckin tough with you, what you done to him. Winsome made no comment. He rested his chin in his two cupped hands and looked toward the door. I don’t know Win, you best be outta here.
Where I’m gonna go, huh? I need to get medicated, man.
He know that that motherfucker.
Sure he know that.
Two man-eating security guards came into the room followed by the counselor. Mr. Butler, get up please and come with us.
Listen, man, I gotta get medicated. You can’t throw me outa this motherfucker without medicating my ass.
You should have thought about that before you threatened me.
There were some grumbles in the group, but as soon as Rabinowitz fixed his attention on each of them in turn, their heads lowered and the grumbles stopped.
I didn’t threaten your ass. You just sayin that because I wouldn’t get you no weed or get you laid. Yeah, that’s right, y'all heard right. That’s what he wanted me to do. I should sue your white ass, motherfucker. Sue it. Winsome's eyes were bright, and his face was lit up red. And yeah, he continued, you can take what I asked you to do--that Welfare letter--and shove the whole thing right up your motherfucking ass. You feel me?
The guards came closer, as Winsome took a step toward the counselor.
I’m sick and motherfuckin tired of enslavein my own motherfuckin ass. Won’t have to listen to assholes like this no more. Holdin out that orange motherfuckin juice like it was holy water. Motherfucker. Should make you take a bath in it.
Get him out, please, Rabinowitz said.
The two guards came up to Winsome, each put a ham like hand through the crook of his arm and gently led him to the door.
And yeah, you Crisco lookin motherfucker, my name is Mr. Butler.

Winsome knew he was good for another ten twelve hours before the sickness came on. He thought about a great many things, revenge being on top of the list. But first things first.
He remembered that the doctor, Dr. Horowitz, who owned the clinic, was a religious man. Many times in the fifteen years that he’d been coming to the clinic they had had conversations about a great many things, faith just being one of them. He was one of the doctor’s first patients and had the time to even get to know a few of them. They’d gotten into some deep discussions. Even one where the doctor let slip about God creating the poppy so that hopeless men could dream and the trouble he got into when he wrote an article about that for a journal. The doctor got so involved in telling Winsome about those early years of his he knew when he noticed how much time had passed he’d have to hurry to make Friday’s services. He offered Winsome to ride in the cab with him on his way to the synagogue just so he could finish the conversation.
The sun was setting while Winsome waited by the ornately carved door that he had walked the doctor to the last time and that led into the main sanctuary. The beautiful light from the sunset, made his face seem younger, like an elementary school student. Other worshippers noticed him and soon a guard was at his side asking his business. After telling him who he was waiting for the guard begrudgingly moved off.
When the doctor arrived and noticed Winsome he reached for his elbow and gently guided him off. They stood far after the time for services began, and talked.

***

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2006-2015

A MAN'S WOMAN

There's a woman
who said
she's going
to take care of me.
She told me not
to worry; to leave
everything
in her most capable hands.
It was,
I thought,
a very fortuitous
thing. What's
your name?
I asked.
You can call me,
Mother, she replied.
Mother? interesting,
I said, mother what?
Nature, she added,
but just "mom"
will do.
Yes, I thought,
why waste time?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

JUST A LITTLE LOVE...

THE MISUNDERSTANDING


Charlie woke up with the sun in his face, and his pillow scrunched up and held by both his hands. It looked like he had beaten the hell out of it last night. His mouth felt thick. His body felt every bit of the sixty he was about to be. Smacking his lips and moving around his tongue, he remembered the tail end of the dream: every time he tried to close the blinds another slat broke off. Talk about wish fulfillment, he muttered to himself.
He let that thought roll around his head a little, proud that he still retained that stuff from the time he went to college--junior high school, really. Charlie was what they called, a precocious child. He was a little crazy, but overall a very good student in subjects he liked; the others could go take a flying fuck.
Even this early in the morning the sun was blistering hot. The weather had been 95 degrees, with 85 to 90 percent humidity for the last week now. And today promised to be no different. Without moving, Charlie could feel the sweat in the small of his back, bead up and run down the crack of his ass. Wonderful, Charlie said out loud, another day to enjoy the woodsy outdoors. Another day to be grateful that the gods shown down thy grace on me, he finished, then looked around for the men with butterfly nets to swoop down and take him to the scientific playground of shock therapy, insulin therapy, “ping-pong, and amnesia.”
An ant touched the circumference of Charlie’s ear. He knew it was time to get up. He jumped up and swatted at the ant; the last thing he needed was for it to go traipsing into one of his canals, taking a free ride inside the inner circle. Next, he picked up a pretty hefty duffle bag and went into the mens bathroom. Each park that Charlie slept in had its very own level of care and comfort, even at different places in the same park. He preferred to stay, when he could, in Central Park, near 59th Street and Central Park South. There he was in high cotton. Pretty swank shit. Even the bathrooms were better equipped, taken care of, cleaner and, most importantly, safer. Sure, once in awhile one of their transient brothers had some kind of fit, went bonkers for a few minutes, lost it, but those incidences were few and far between.
If you were lucky enough to make it through the night without being chased from your spot, you could enjoy a pretty good wake up: take a shave, a whore’s bath, shit, a change of clothes, and come back later to wash your dirty garments, all without being disturbed. Of course, the cops and park rangers tried to discourage those smarter folks from doing just that, lest the Duke and Duchess of my asshole get the wrong idea seeing a naked man in a public toilet grooming himself. But even some of those folks who guarded other folks knew they were only a step or two away from joining those former folks, and so they often looked away. Hey, give it a name.
Charlie was glad there was no law forbidding him to smoke in the bathroom while taking a crap. It was one of the few pleasures in life he had left, he thought. Then, while thinking of nothing in particular, a feeling came over him so pronounced it got him excited: A cup of coffee. Acupacoffee, in a real restaurant! With air-conditioning! A spoon, a cup and saucer, sugar, milk, (maybe half and half), a glass of water. Ice water! And a refill; he could always get at least one refill. God damn! He knew he had about two dollars and change from his extended mitt and cup soft shoe from the night before. Charlie began to rummage in the bag, while sitting on the toilet. Reaching the bottom, he felt something cold and round and silver, (not real silver of course), and brought all the loot up to his eyes. A quick check, and two dollars and three cents were lying in his palm. Hell, yes. I’m going to live like a gentleman and get myself a cup of java. That’s right!
Out came a white shirt from the duffle. You can never go wrong with white, he thought. Next, out of the stall and over to the sink where he took off the striped shirt he was wearing and decided to throw it in the basin. Shit, it’s so hot, he said to himself, that shirt will dry real quick. He tried to regulate the water, but because the sink had two separate faucets it was hard to get the right temperature between his cupped hands. Luckily, one soap dispenser still had some of that gooey pink shit, but not at his sink, however, and so he ran back and forth soaping his hands and washing his body.
Wearing just his skivvies, and dripping water, he tiptoed his way back to the entrance, held the door frame with two hands, and leaned his head outside. Nobody there; nobody coming. Quickly he went back to the sink, lowered his shorts, and washed his genitals as thoroughly as he could. You never know, he reasoned, what lurked in that nether world and when you’d get a chance to clean that dank and dense all but piss forgotten region again. After he was satisfied that most, if not all, of the creatures there were dispelled, he took his towel and dried his body.
Charlie decided to use some of that soap on his scalp as well. He couldn’t remember when was the last time he washed his hair. Out came his black pocket comb. Charlie needed two hands to rake it through his hair, purposely pushing down a little harder than necessary to satisfy the itch he felt. Soon, one side of his head had his dandruff, twigs, dead grass blades, piled up; it all looked like dead autumn leaves on one side of his skull, waiting to be set on fire. With one slap of his hand he brushed it all off. He then went about soaping his head and washing it out. Purposely, he left the hair as wet as he could, knowing it would be easier to groom. This time the comb went through easily. After trying a number of styles, he settled on combing it straight back until he looked a little like Pat Riley, only his hair was much longer, and he wasn’t dressed in an Armani suit. Still, goddamn, he looked good.

Hey Andy, Charlie nearly whispered, coming up to the Sabrett vendor.
Charlie, Andy said, almost glad to see him.
Andy, can I leave this shirt here on that rock there, and could you just keep an eye on it til I get back?
Yes, sure, Charlie, but if I get busy...
Of course, of course. I understand; I mean that’s understood, of course.
Where are you going, Charlie.
Gonna get acupacoffee. Charlie’s face beamed as he said those words.
Coffee, well...high time, Charlie. In that case, for a special occasion like this, here, here, take this frankfurter bun. Have you a coffee, but maybe ask for some butter and break off the pieces and eat.
Hey, Andy, man, thanks a million, man. Thanks.
Charlie took the bun and carefully tried to put it in the breast pocket of his shirt. But after Andy just looked at it and laughed, he took it from that place and gently guided it into a pocket of his khakis. In there, only one end of the bun was slightly visible.
Good, that’s good, Andy said. Maybe I give you frankfurter, too. Both he and Charlie laughed until their sides hurt imagining the limp looking frank dangling from Charlie’s pocket.
That’s all I need, Charlie said, between breaths, someone telling me that my dick was on wrong. Again they held their sides. I could piss outa there--talk about paying outa pocket! I’m pissing outa pocket!
When they finally got to themselves, Andy asked Charlie whether he wanted a container of the fake orange juice he had. Charlie shook his head, no. He wanted nothing to diminish his first taste of real coffee.
Charlie took his shirt and laid it upon a rock near Andy’s cart. Perfectly within eyesight. The rock sizzled. Shouldn’t take long, he said. He took care in smoothing out as many wrinkles as he could and was tempted to ask Andy to watch his duffle as well, but didn’t do it. Besides, he reasoned, walking in with a duffle indicated that either he was coming from someplace or going someplace, and those some places had the chance of being important.
It was early enough so that the park was infested with joggers. Bugs of different sizes and shapes were displaying their commitment to life by running around the circumference of the park. A tune from Fiddler On the Roof began to insinuate itself and Harry concentrated hard on something else to get it out of there, quick. What miserable and confused and conflicted days those were. Jesus. These days are tough, but not as tough as those were--house or not. Each day that Charlie came home from school, or playing with his friends, he never knew, as he was putting his key in the front door, what awaited him behind it. Sometimes he shook so bad that he’d throw-up before he went inside.
His mother, schized as she was, was either lying in bed with the covers over her head, or had her head in the oven, or came to embrace him like a long lost child just returned. His father took to having a few belts before he came home. The amount, though it varied from day to day, was no insurance against his wrath one way or the other. Charlie was no stranger to the hospital’s ER, and even knew a few of its doctors and nurses by their first names. He was at that age when broken bones could have come from contact sports, bruises and welts from school yard fights, and the occasional lost tooth from being on the loosing end. A resident and nurse suspected, but nothing much came of it, except the hurricane forced winds inside his body telling him to get the fuck outa there.
And get out he did. By seventeen he had punched his father in the face and blew out of the house like the hounds of hell were chasing him--and they were. He had not seen, spoken with, nor heard from them in forty-three years. In that time he had disproved a psychiatrist and the psychiatric literature that he was shown which said that Jewish people usually don’t end up as drunks, drug addicts, or serve time in prison. Charlie had hit the trifecta, stopping off and staying for awhile at each particular place or circumstance. All in all, it wasn’t a bad trip. Some of it was hideous, but not bad. What they did was open up these secretive places in and outside of himself that were consciously unsuspected. And all Charlie did was play the cards dealt him.

Charlie shook when the blast of cold air hit him. He shivered and wiggled his arms and shoulders. Whoa, Moma, he said. He went over to the counter and took a stool where there was nobody on either side of him. He laid his duffle across his foot so that if anyone was going to try and snatch it he could not only see them, but feel it as well. You never can be too careful, he knew.
A waitress, Shirley, ambled over to him.
Need a menu, sweetie.
No, no, just coffee please.
As she bent down to get a cup and saucer, Charlie saw her cleavage and smelled her soap, Ivory, he was sure. She was good looking in a matronly kind of way; had an easy manner about her; seemed like she’d been doing this gig forever. When she walked to where the coffee pots were, he had occasion to see her legs; they were heavy waitress legs. Shirley returned, set the coffee in front of him, with a silver pitcher of milk.
Would you have half and half, Charlie asked.
Sure, honey, comin right up. Anything else.
Nah, that should do it.
He watched her, noticed the way she walked, bent over, and came back with two tiny containers holding the rich cream. She laid them on the rim of his saucer and then went back down the line giving refills of coffee to awaiting cups. Charlie knew a refill was not going to be a problem.
Oh, yes, Shirley, Charlie said, I did forget something: a large glass of water with a lot of ice, please. And butter.
Butter?
No, forget butter, I don’t know what I was thinking, he said, and pushed the frankfurter roll deep in his pocket.
The glass put in front of him already glistened with beaded water droplets and was used, Charlie knew, for malteds. Damn, what I would give for a chocolate or vanilla malted. Hell, one of each, and then one mixed for good measure. I’d have to sell one of the kids to get that, he chuckled to himself. He remembered when he was a child drinking a chocolate malted and eating one of those big, pencil like pretzels with all the salt on them. For some reason the salt mixed with the malted was heaven itself.
But now heaven was inhaling that wonderful brew that sat below him. He put his hands around the cup that in this cold felt good hot. After making it just right for himself, he brought it up to his lips and sipped a little off the top. Marvelous. He wished he could light a cigarette to make this a complete experience, but Bloomberg fucked that up. Isn’t it a kinda free will type of deal, Charlie thought. What’s with choice nowadays. Government, this government, has to protect us from ourselves? What a crock of horseshit that is. Somewhere in the dim recesses of his mind he remembered Weblan and Marx and their take on government. Marcuse. Sartre and all of those counter lunatics.
Charlie was pleased with thinking this way. It wasn’t often when he let his mind run around and focus on things besides life’s basics.
Could I have a refill, Charlie asked, when Shirley came his way.
Sure, sweetie, no problem.
And it wasn’t. Smooth as silk she took his cup, refilled it, and brought it back to him with two more creamers on the saucer’s edge.
Thank you, Charlie said. Shirley smiled at him and walked away. Who knows, Charlie said to himself, in another time, place, circumstance, whatever, he had a shot with her. He could tell by her smile. It was inviting, warm, had some meaning behind it.
The restaurant was getting full of breakfast regulars and Shirley was busy attending to the rush. A man sat beside Charlie and made a big deal out of his duffle being in his way. Charlie looked unimpassionedly at him and inched his bag away from him. Another guy sat to his right, and Charlie then had to rearrange the whole goddamn thing vertically in-between his legs. It stuck out in the aisle so he had to put it on an angle until no one could trip over it. For a second, Charlie remembered why he left this world behind.
One of the men left behind the newspaper he had been reading, a New York Post. Charlie grimaced at the paper, but took it anyway. He began reading the Sports section, but had trouble with his vision. Shirley must have noticed, for soon she was at his seat offering her reading glasses which hung around her neck. Charlie smiled and tried them on. Surprised that they cleared up his eyesight, he asked her for his third refill and Shirley readily obliged.
You’ll be up all night, she said, as she turned from him.
Coffee doesn’t keep me up, this life does, he answered, and laughed. Shirley turned back toward him and laughed as well. Once you get them to laugh, Charlie thought, you’re in.
When she returned with the coffee Charlie said to her that perhaps she’d like to go out with him sometime. Shirley studied him and said he seemed like a nice enough fella and Charlie quickly concurred.
What’s your name, anyway, she asked.
Charlie, he replied.
Charlie, I like that name; a good honest name.
For a good honest person.
She smiled wider and went back to her other customers. Charlie took a deep breath and began looking through the paper. He now owned the world.

But when Charlie asked for his fourth cup of coffee, Shirley, a bit, begrudgingly, went to fetch it. Charlie saw the expression on her face and knew that he had better make this his last cup before leaving. He kept debating whether or not to ask for her number. One never knows what good fortune, like bad fortune, might be in store for them.

Finally, his brain caffeine charged, and body racing, he asked Shirley for the check. When she placed the check in front of him, Charlie smiled nonchalantly and handed her back her glasses. Shirley returned the smile. The check read a dollar ninety-eight. Charlie had two dollars and three cents, which meant that all in all he had a nickel left. The question to him was: should he leave the nickel or not. If he just leaves the nickel she’ll think that he was somewhat in a hurry and just casually left it, or perhaps just forgot about it; or maybe with all the credit cards he has doesn’t carry much, if any money, in New York City on him. If, after he asks for her number, he scoops up the two cents she’ll just think that he doesn’t believe in tipping no matter what the circumstance. Charlie knew he could sure use that nickel. Ah, hell, don’t ask for her number now, get some more money then come back again and ask for her number making believe that the other day he had just remembered an important appointment and had to dash out of there...blah...blah...blah...but now, well, he’s back.
Even in the air-conditioning, Charlie felt himself starting to sweat. He had a drink of his ice water; automatically he wiped his mouth and thought for a second. He reached into his pocket wanting to grab his change. He forgot that the frankfurter bun laid on top of it. His hand came out with not only the change, but with pieces of the bun mixed with it as well. He took the three pennies and stuffed them back in his pocket. Then he piled the quarters, dimes and nickels in separate columns. Nervous, and without thinking of change, he grabbed his duffle and moved toward the door. Shirley saw him do that from the corner of her eye and went down to where she laid the check. It was then that she saw the six quarters, four dimes and two nickels waiting for her amidst the bread crumbs. Hesitantly, she poked around his saucer, as her heart sank.
Charlie, she hollered, don’t forget your change.
Charlie tried to make his head disappear into his neck and shoulders, as he pushed upon the door leading out. When he got back to the park he quietly went over to where his shirt was still spread out on the rock, trying in some way to avoid Andy’s eyesight. The shirt, when he touched it, was still damp.

***
Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2005-2015

JIMI HENDRIX'S HANDS

came to me
in a dream
last night.
They were
long & black
and feathery.
They played
with the grace
of eels
fingering
my strings;
my dreams
moaned
like Bessie Smith.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015