Last night as the aurora borealis was dancing in the skies I visited the ghosts again...
Every place I go feels like some haunted arcade. I was trying to quietly enjoy my sandwich and I heard them, I felt them. I went to the old neighborhood last night. I ended up eating at a Popeye's that used to be our pizza joint. Between bites of chicken sandwich and fries I heard the disjointed voices of Luis and Felix and Sixto. Hollow echoes from the late 1970s.
So wasted on pills and dope we could hardly walk, we'd sit and eat pizza and drink Pepsi and plan our world domination.
There was nothing good or kind or philanthropic in our alliance, we were bad people who did bad things, but in our alliance of blood brothers—literally we cut our hands and rubbed the oozing sores together—there was an edgy comfort. I came to be at a time your crew defined you and options for friendships became limited.
The same cast of evil clowns that would sell dope and coke and weed from the trunk of Poppy’s ‘63 Chevy would help old ladies carry their groceries up four flights of stairs in the housing projects, for a thank you and a reassurance we were ‘good boys.’
The same hard-edged leather adorned hoodlums who would become doo-wop singing corner boys when a pretty girl would pass by. Songs sung so horribly out of tune, and most of the words so wrong as to make the original tune indecipherable... Hoods and thugs with so much greasy hair. So much leather and greasy hair.
This area Luis called ‘the neighborhood’ in some tongue in cheek shot at Mr. Rogers, that was filled with Captain Kangaroo motherfuckers; anyone who wasn’t one of us was a Captain Kangaroo motherfucker, the day I met Luis, he called me Captain Kangaroo. This neighborhood in one of the more rundown parts of the small and collapsing upstate NY city; just far enough from the Bronx to offer Luis and his family shelter and a place to hide.
They are all gone now, my boys, my troops. Some of their deaths quite ugly and violent, their lives lived out on a hard edge.
I realized last night deeply invested in my Dr. Pepper and Popeye’s Cajun fries that I’ve always been just a visitor, a reporter gathering a story, and when I’d collected my story—though it may take years to do—I then simply left and morphed into my next version, assuming whatever costume and attitude and mindset was required for my next role. But I always seem to find my way back to visiting the ghosts, the haunted places.
I find the old neighborhood still run by the young studs, but they seem to possess an edgier attitude, more money, better dressed, flash and gold and rings and studs in their ears. I doubt they carry grocery bags for the old ladies. Maybe they don’t need the reassurance of being called good boys any longer.
Whenever a confrontation with another crew was pending Luis would call it a ‘meeting of the mines,’ despite my failed efforts to correct him that it was a meeting of the minds… these events often turned violent and we’d find ourselves back at the pizza joint licking our recently collected wounds, planning revenge.
I find myself amused tonight as I worry about the fat and calorie content of my chicken sandwich and tasty fries, the days of chemical and alcohol insanity a distant but vivid memory. I’m not OG, I’m just old and lucky.
I look at this new breed of self-made tough guys I’m wondering, could we have taken them in a ‘meeting or the mines,’ Luis… where are my boys?
That was really good! I hope this story and character will be expanded on.
I love ALL your books, and am thankful for you time with your boys, as that's what gives your stories such heart.