The Thinker

Pedro rang the bell and we both advanced warily, hands up, to the center of the ring.  Almost simultaneously we both lunged and jabbed with our left.  We circled, and jabbed again.  I backed away toward the corner and when he stepped in my direction I suddenly charged him and threw a right to his head.  He deflected the blow with his left glove and countered with his right, which slammed into the top of my protective helmet.  I retreated, bouncing on the balls of my feet, chin against my chest, my gloves tight against my face, elbows in, guarding my midsection.

            He peeked over his gloves.  His face was red from exertion, distorted from the plastic mouth protector.  He tried a kind of shuffling dance to distract me, but when I felt he was off-balance I charged with a right to his head, followed by a left hook to his body and another left hook to his head.  He gasped.  I followed up with a right to his head, which he deflected with his glove.  I retreated with him following, more warily.  We loped sideways together in a kind of clumsy dance toward the corner.  Now we were getting into it.  The stiffness was going away and we were getting used to the situation, and to each other’s style.  Round after round of jabbing, chasing, deftly and not-so-deftly delivered shots to the head and body.  We took turns chasing each other, going in tight and tying each other up, trying tricks to confuse and tire each other out, looking for an advantage.  The room was hot and stuffy and our t-shirts and sweat pants became drenched with perspiration.  Pedro, acting as both trainer and referee, kept time with us, pushing us apart when we clinched, barking instructions, admonishing against low blows, sometimes cajoling us to fight harder.  “Use it!”, he would scream when he felt one or the other was not using his jab enough.  We moved around the ring in a lump of three, sweating, drool dripping from our mouths, elbows flailing and laces flying.  Occasionally a well-aimed shot to the face would launch a shower of sweat and sputum into the air.

            We were well-matched, neither having the desire to inflict much damage on the other.  After all, we were friends training together, not adversaries trying to kill each other, and the sparring session ended with a handshake.

            Bogdan, Pedro and I sat in the Broadway Baby Piano Bar nursing our beers in a post-workout stupor.  In some ways boxing is better than sex.  Bogdan, my sparring partner, was a Yugoslav, 190 lbs., with black hair swept directly back and a neatly trimmed short beard.  Bogdan was a very nasty piece of work.  Like, he was a mental case.  He had just gotten out of prison for assaulting a guy on the subway.  While he was in jail his ex-girlfriend had died of AIDS, though he said he didn’t have it.  I don’t think he had it.  He didn’t fight like a guy who had AIDS.

            Pedro was 160 lbs, a Puerto Rican who couldn’t speak Spanish for shit.  He was short and muscular, a human pit bull.  In fact, he used to train pit bulls and always carried around a book about them.  Pedro was my boxing mentor.  He was always developing scientific new boxing combinations to mess a man up.  We used to take long runs together in Central Park.  He worked for New York Social Services as a youth counselor.  Once he had gone into a tenement looking for a kid and had gotten attacked by wild dogs in the hallway.  They took a big chunk out of his butt.  Another time, he had sat on a couch in some people’s apartment and got fleas, which made him so sick that he had to spend three weeks in the hospital.  When I heard these stories I was thankful for my nice soft job hanging from scaffolding on the side of buildings.

            That leaves me, Jacky O’Shea, six-feet 180 pounds of fun, girls.  I grew up in a group home in Queens and I had to learn to handle myself pretty young, because when you have no parents to protect you life can be pretty mean and tough, though I didn’t have it as tough as some kids.  God took some things away from me but He made me big and strong, and I’m thankful for that.

            We sat around the table, gym bags and headgears hanging from the backs of the chairs.  Pedro, his dark glasses flashing in the dim pink light, was waxing ecstatic over his new girlfriend, Darlene, an ebony-colored bodybuilder, into whose Brooklyn apartment he had already installed himself.  He passed around snapshots of her flexing provocatively in a chocolate-brown wet-look bikini.  “She’s a really fantastic person,” he enthused.  “We’re gonna get some dogs and start training them.  She says if it works out between us we can go live in this house her family owns in Huntingdon and we can become professional dog trainers.”

            That alarmed me.  “If you’re living in Long Island, how’re you gonna be able to train at the gym?”

            “Don’t worry, man, I’ll still come to the gym.”

            “O.K., then.”

            Bogdan stared glumly at a posterior shot of Darlene, who was bent over suggestively and smiling at the camera from between her legs.  “Boy,” he sighed, “I haven’t tasted pussy for a long time.”

            “Well, it still tastes the same.”

            Bogdan continued, “When I was in the joint, I had to pay guys to protect me.”

            “Yeah?!”

            “Yeah?!”

            Bogdan was pretty tough, so it was hard to imagine a place so brutal that he felt compelled to buy protection.

            “Yeah, it was like being in a cage with all these guys who wanted to fuck you and beat your brains out, or the other way around.  And you could look out the windows and see people on the outside driving around and doing things, and you’re stuck inside with these assholes…

            “Hell, I never want to go back there again.”

            “So whaddaya been doing since you got out?”

            “Working for my uncle.  He owns an apartment building on E. 88th Street.  He gave me a job as super, and I got an apartment in the building.”

            See, people don’t appreciate the value of relations until they don’t have any.  Even somebody as miserable and messed-up as Bogdan was able to secure some assistance, however pathetic, because he had some family ties.  In my case, whatever hard luck befell me, I was strictly on my own.  With Pedro it was the same.  All we had was each other, and, let’s face it, we really didn’t have that either.

            The subject of apartments had a lot of immediacy to me.  I hated the studio I was living in, on E. 94th Street, and I was desperate to find something more desirable in the neighborhood.  The way I got this apartment was, I met this girl in the gym, named Millicent Battaglia.  She was an actress with a rich father.  Originally, this other guy was hitting on her, but she went for me instead.  I was living in Corona, but I was really living in the gym and on the trains, so it was really convenient to have a girlfriend who lived near the gym. So I moved in with her, and when she went to L.A. I got the apartment.  The building was full of freaks who took drugs and practiced black magic.

            I really loved living near the gym, and being in Manhattan, but I hated the apartment.  Millicent wasn’t much of a housekeeper, and forget about me!  I felt if I could find a new place in the neighborhood I could make a fresh start, maybe buy some new furniture or something.

            Putting on the most casual air of nonchalance I could, expecting to hear an negative response, I casually asked Bogdan if there were any vacancies in his building.  His response shocked me:

            “Oh yeah, there are a lot of empty apartments.  And you want to hear something?  They’re all rent controlled.  My uncle is trying to vacate the whole building.  He figures that way he can get a better price for it when he puts it up for sale.”

            That pissed me off good.  Damn landlords!  Manhattan landlords were a whole other biological species completely, some kind of freakin' maggots that had been spawned out of diseased rat sperm!  Nevertheless, hope springs eternal.  Smooth as I could, I implored, “Bogdan, my friend, what are the chances you could get me fixed up with one of those apartments?”

            “Not a chance, Anyway, what can I do?  I only work there.  My uncle Walter hates me.  He only loves money and Ronald Reagan.  Plenty of times he told me he’s going to throw me out!”

            An eighteen year-old black kid sat next to me on the park bench, alternatively taking swigs from a pint bottle of wine in a paper bag and lacing his skates, while philosophizing to nobody in particular, “A lot of people think we racing ‘cause we skate so fast, but we not racing.  We just skating fast.  Not like some mothers who shoot around banging into people, knocking them over.  I don’t do that shit.  But I’m ready for it if it happens.”

            The sun shined brilliantly on the roller skating area in Central Park adjacent to Sheep’s Meadow.  Crowds of people milled around the edge of the large tarmac oval bordered by Sycamore trees, enjoying the brightly-attired skaters who reveled at the sensation  of gliding along on eight wheels.  Suggestive disco and meringue rythems exploded from the giant boom box speakers set up at one end of the oval and the skaters weaved, danced, raced, gyrated, pirouetted in the air and bounded gymnastically in flying leaps.  A muscular black guy danced a licentious lambada with a blond wearing purple lycra aerobic tights and cropped top as they rolled along.  A lithe young woman sailed gracefully as a flamingo, one leg in the air behind her.  Some, wearing Walkmans, practiced skating backwards, created fancy footwork, choreographed new dance routines.  Hard-faced Latins sporting jailhouse tattoos on their arms hawked beer and marijuana without receiving so much as an admonishing glance from the cops who occasionally cruised by in slow-moving patrol cars.

            I was oblivious to all these goings on, however.  I had grabbed my skates and run off to the park not so much to enjoy the beautiful fall day as to get the hell out of that filthy, flea-bitten apartment.  Geez, what a mess!

            I had just about gotten the roaches under control using a combination of Combat, Raid and hideous white roach powder.  Now, to my utter stupefaction, I was finding mouse droppings all over the kitchen counter and in the food shelves.  They were even gnawing through the food packaging to get at it’s contents.

            Aw, the apartment was just revolting in every respect!  The diesel fumes from the trucks passing on nearby Second Avenue seeped into the apartment through cracks in the warped window frames, leaving a fine, greasy soot on all the surfaces.  The linoleum floor in the kitchen area was faded with age and curled up at the edges, exposing solid concrete underneath.  The refrigerator was stuck on “Freeze”, instantly turning into a chunk of rock-hard ice anything that was deposited.  It had been so long since its last defrosting that the ice around the freezer section had grown to 3-4 inches thick and if not chipped away periodically, would actually force the refrigerator door open, melt, and re-freeze, creating the worst god-awful mess imaginable.  The last straw was when I went to cut myself a slice of layer cake, and when I opened the box I found a swarm of fleas flying around inside.

            Yuggh!  For this I was paying $500 a month.  I fumed.  In Queens I could have had a beautiful apartment, a real bachelor pad like Hugh Hefner, for $500 a month.

            But that would have been admitting defeat, that I was not good enough to live in Manhattan, that I didn’t have what it took!  As though, like Roberto Duran, I had thrown up my hands and shouted “¡No más!”  This is why I was so interested in Bogdan.  Who cared if he had AIDS or not?  He was working as a super in a rent controlled apartment building on E. 88th Street, a nice one.  He had already told me there were empty apartments in the building.  Maybe this goofy guy could help me find an apartment I could afford.

            I got up off the bench and skated over to the pay phone.  Looking through my wallet I found a folded slip of paper with Bogdan’s telephone number, which I dialed.  I thought, “Oh, please God, let him be home.”  That was the state of mind I was in that day.

            After an interminable number of rings the handset was picked up, dropped, picked up again, and slammed down onto the receiver.

            I unleashed a current of expletives, fished another quarter out of my jeans and dialed again.  After about ten more rings, he answered:

            “Who the freaking hell is this?!!!”

            “Bogdan, don’t hang up!  It’s Jacky.  From the gym!”

            “What time is it?”

            “I dunno…It’s about four o’clock.”

            “In the morning?!!”

            “No, man!  It’s four o’clock in the afternoon!”

            “Oh, shit!”  I heard a bunch of banging, rustling noises.  He dropped the receiver again and picked it up.  “I gotta get up and take out the garbage!  What day is this?  Call me later!”

            BOGDAN, DON’T HANG UP!  I GOT THIS GIRL WHO WANTS TO MEET YOU!”

            Suddenly he seemed incredibly lucid.  “Yeah?  Is she nice?”

            “Yeah, nice.  She’s a blonde, and she’s real horny.  I just left her.  She’s real hot, man.  She was telling me how she loves to fuck, and how she loves big dicks!”

            “Hey, far-out, man.  Why don’t you bring her over now?”

            “Now?!”  Geez, what an asshole.  “Lissen, Bogdan, I got a better idea.  We’ll all meet at Molly McGuire’s Pub and I’ll introduce you to her.  Howzat?”

            “Far-out, man!”

            “Awright, lissen, I gotta get back to her.  I’ll call you as soon as I get it set up.  Lissen, Bogdan…”

            “What?”

            “If I get you laid, you think you could talk to your uncle about renting me one of the empty apartments in your building that you told me about, just until he sells the building?”

            “Hey, no problem!  What’s her name.”

            “Whose name?”

            “The girl?!”

            “Inch.”

            “Inch?  That’s her name?”

            “Yeah, Inch.”

            “That’s a cool name for a girl.”

            I slammed down the phone and skated away.

            Now the trick was to get Inch interested.  Bogdan wasn’t her type at all---Inch only liked guys who had money.  She was tall (hence her nickname), blonde, and not too graceful.  Her body, which has been spectacular as a teenager, was lately showing signs of compromising with the law of gravity.  She had a warm, sentimental nature but was an uncouth, sloppy drunk.  By the time you got her drunk enough to do it with you, you didn’t want her anymore.  It was conceivable that she might be attracted to Bogdan, though she would have to be pretty heavily anesthetized first.  Bogdan could be considered decent-looking enough, I suppose, in an atavistic kind of way.

            Inch lived in the building at 888 Eighth Avenue and worked in the coffee shop downstairs.  You don’t live in that building by holding a waitressing job, so it was safe to assume that she was serving up something other than club sandwiches on her own time.  I went over to see her when I knew she would be working.  Depositing my gym bag in an empty booth, I slid in after it.  Inch waved at me from behind the lunch counter and brought me a cup of coffee.  The dark wraparound sunglasses she was wearing did not fit in with her pink waitress uniform.  “I’ll tell you later,” she whispered conspiratorially.  “Just come in from the gym?”

            “Year, I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d drop in and say ‘hi’.”

            Inch looked around warily to see if she was being watched.  She was.  Nick, the owner of the place was staring intently at us from inside the kitchen, through the little opening where the dishes are passed through.  “Geez,” she squealed petulantly, “I feel like I’m in prison!  He watches me like a hawk!”

            “What’s with him?”

            “It’s ‘cause I have this friend staying over with me for a few days.”

            “What friend is that, Inch?”

            “This guy Kelly.  He’s a comedian who just got in from L.A., so I’m letting him sleep on my couch until he finds a place to stay.  I keep telling Nick that nothing is going on with this guy, but he won’t believe it.  Look at him, will you?”

            I snuck another look in Nick’s direction.  He looked like he wanted to come over and throw me out of the restaurant.  He sensed that we were discussing him and moved away from the window, embarrassed.

            From my point of view Kelly was just as much of a complication as he was for Nick.  Nick was married, with a family in Astoria.  He only saw Inch more-or-less during working hours (nice set-up he had with her right upstairs from the restaurant.  That, I could respect).

            Kelly, however, was living right in her apartment, a living, breathing impediment to the budding little romance I was trying to promote between her and Bogdan.  Any progress I was to make would be contingent on Kelly’s precipitous departure.

            Inch jumped to her feet and went to take an order.  I also left the booth and walked over to the soda fountain where Nick was standing, smoking a cigarette.  “Nick, baby!” I greeted him.  He was middle-size, out of shape, in his forties, with a thick moustache.  There was nothing remarkable about him.  “Hello, Jackie,” he said, preoccupied.

            I made an effort at conversation.  “Inch sure looks funny in those wraparound sunglasses.”  Nick shot me a disgusted sideways glance and remained silent.  It was evident to me that they had had words and that he had smacked her ­ hence the sunglasses.

            I decided to be a little bolder.  What was he going to do, kick my butt?  “Inch tells me that she’s got a guy sleeping on her sofa.”

            “I buy her that sofa,” he seethed.  “I give her everything she wants.  She wants to go to Florida?  She goes to Florida.  She wants a fur coat?  I get her a mink coat.  Not fur, mink.”

            A mental flash of Nick fucking Inch in her new mink coat momentarily came to me.

            “And now she disrespect me.  She throw that bum right in front of me.  I go up there and find his shit all over the place.

            “A comedian,” he growled, demonstrating the New Yorker’s utter and depraved contempt for levity.  “Don’t worry,” he promised ruefully, “I fix them both.  I kill them.  I cut off his balls.”

            I almost laughed in his face.  “C’mon Nick, you’re a respectable guy, a businessman.  What do you want to get your hands dirty on this guy for?

            “I know a coupla guys who will remove him from the scene spotlessly.  Like a dry cleaner, no muss, no fuss.”

            He blew smoke in my face, “How much?”

            “Five hundred, and that includes my cut.”

            “Make a good job and I give you a thousand.  But she don’t know nothing!”

            I smiled cheerfully.  “That’s understood, Nick.”

            Nick regarded me with a distracted air and said paternally, “You’re a good boy, Jacky.”

            Frank the Cop was flat on his back on the bench press at the Universal World Bodybuilding Gym in midtown.  There looked to be about a thousand pounds of weight on the bar.  When I walked up, he gave a look of “Oh God, what does this asshole want?”

            “Whaddaya say, Frank!”  I stuck out my hand, which he didn’t shake.  Frank was a very large, swarthy Italian with a fleshy, passionate face.  He had about a sixty-inch chest.  His arms were bigger than my legs.  Just to make sure you got the point, he was wearing a torn N.Y.P.D. t-shirt about five sizes too small.  I’m surprised he wasn’t wearing his freakin’ gun in the gym.  “I was just in the neighborhood and I decided to drop in in case you might be here,” I offered.

            “Well, now you seen me,” he growled.

            “C’mon, Frank, lighten up a little.  What happened, happened.”  This was referring to a situation where his sister had gone out with a guy I had introduced her to in Queens and they had unfortunately gotten into a car crash.  And died.

            “Look, if you want, I’ll beat it.”

            “No, you can stick around.”  He sat up on the bench and offered me his mammoth hand.  It was like shaking hands with a catcher’s mitt.  “What’s going on?”

            “Oh, same stuff…”  I surveyed the gym.  It was a purely bodybuilding gym.  A bunch of serious players sweating and grunting.  No kind of neon lights or video monitors.  The equipment was all chrome and in excellent condition.  Over in the corner a really huge guy about seven feet tall was doing lunges with about 400 pounds on the bar.  I admired the calf muscles of a girl doing squats in front of the mirror.  “No, really, I was just passing by.”

            Frank asked me, “You still working out much?”

            “Oh, sure.”

            “Sparring too?”

            “For sure.”

            “You better watch out.  You were never good enough to go pro.  One of these days you’re gonna get your brains scrambled.”

            “You know, it feels good.”

            “Haw haw haw, ‘It feels good.’”  He laughed malevolently. “What feels good, getting your head smashed in, you dumb schmuck?”

            “Frank, even when it hurts at least you know you’re alive, which is more than most people can say.  What about you?  You look great, Frank.  Whaddaya, on steroids?”

            “Hey, this is all natural!  I haven’t missed a workout in six months.”

            “Your wife must be thrilled about that.”

            “Haw haw, I always gotta tell her, ‘Not tonight, honey.’ Haw haw haw.  Anyway, I promised her when the baby comes I’ll cut it down to three workouts a week.”

            “You’re a prince, Frank.  Congratulations about the kid.  I didn’t know about it until now.”

            “How could you know unless you been helpin’ me and I didn’t know it?”

            “You gonna name the kid after me, Frank?”

            Frank ignored that.  He said, “We might build a house in Staten Island or Jersey.”

            “That’s great.  The city’s no place for kids to grow up today.”

            “Not with freaks like you runnin’ around, Jacky,” he joked.  Just to show he didn’t mean it, he slipped out his hand and I gave him five.

            I said, “It’s funny seeing you like this.  I just saw Inch last week.”  Frank, Inch and I had all grown up together in the group home.

            “Yeah?  How is she?” he asked with an air of sincerity.

            “Oh, you know Inch.  She was wearing a mink coat when I saw her.  She’s got an apartment up on Eighth Avenue.  I would have to say she’s doing great.  But when she took off her sunglasses, she had a black eye and a big bruise on her face.”

            Frank frowned.  Aside from knowing Inch, this was Serious Police Business.  “Did she tell you how she got it?”

            “Well, she didn’t come right out and say it, but she’s got this guy staying with her, and I think he gave it to her.”

            “No shit!”  He stood up and stuck his face in mine.  “You know this guy?” he inquired ominously.

            “His name’s Kelly Shine.  He’s a nightclub comic.”

            That really got Frank worked up.  New Yorkers hate anything to do with humor.  They are on principal dead set against the notion of frivolity, and nothing gets them riled up more than the idea that somebody might be having fun somewhere when their lives are so grim and lacking in imagination.  The national bird of New York should be the seagull, who only thinks about eating and stealing the food out of other seagulls’ mouths.  When was the last time you saw a seagull laugh?  The concept of Inch getting beat up by a worthless, useless, piece of shit comedian got Frank so bent out of shape that his face got all contorted and he started breathing heavy, like a snorting bull enraged by a red flag.  “You know where this guy works?” he asked in dead seriousness.  So serious that I started to get cold feet, but it was too late now.

            “The Yuk Factory on Second Avenue.  Lissen, Frank, he’s got a routine about cops that he does.”

            “Yeah?” he said, dripping venom.

            “Yeah, about how they’re dumber than gorillas.  He said we should replace all cops with gorillas.  He said, then we’d only have to pay them bananas.”

            Being a cop was a holy mission to Frank.  Never mind that he used to sell me drugs in high school.  We live in an age of instantaneous forgetfulness.  I shouldn’t complain.  Better he should forget who was feeding him all this bullshit.

            It’s like he was reading my mind.  “Lissen,” he hissed, “Forget we ever had this conversation, you hear me?  If I hear you told me this from anybody, I’m gonna’ come looking for you!  There was no mistaking his inflection: the whole emphasis of the sentence was on the word you.

            “Told you what, Frank?”

            “That’s better.  Lissen, you gotta go now.  It’s late, and you’re distracting me from my workout.  Take it easy,” he turned his back on me and went back to the weight bench.

            “Bye, Frank.”  I wheeled around and made my way past the straining, steaming bodies to the exit.

            I sat at the last table, in a dark corner of the Yuk Factory Komedy Kabaret on Second Avenue.  Half full, it being a weeknight, the room was done in early Greenwich Village motif, with brick walls and candles stuck in old wine bottles on the tables.  The stage, a platform a couple of feet higher than the floor, was furnished only with a stand-up mike and a wooden stool.  There being no backstage, the comics entered from the antebar near where I was sitting when they were announced.  Behind the stage, on the brick wall, was a sign that said “Yuk Factory Komedy Kabaret”, with a design of a nebbishy-looking workman shoveling a pile of steaming manure.

            The M.C. was a skinny little guy with a hang-dog expression, a jaundiced eye and a spine bent from too many years of slouching over bars and nightclub tables.  His name was Paul K. Murdoch, and he was funnier than most of the acts he introduced, though not all his stuff was on the mark by any means.  Let’s face it, if you want to be a stand-up comic you don’t need looks, you don’t even need talent.  All you need is a big mouth and the urge to make a fool out of yourself in public.  Comedians may not be our most valuable national resource, but they are certainly one of our most abundant, with a new crop of jerks springing up each season with the regularity of winter wheat.

            I saw about half of them that night: a little old Jewish man with what I assumed to be a very dirty routine, except I didn’t understand the punchlines because they were all in Yiddish; a boring blonde bemoaning the lack of eligible husbands in New York; a Chinese guy with a motorcycle jacket who based his act on paranoia of anti-Asian bigotry; a Canadian; an overweight brunette who ranted about Haagen-Daz ice cream and sang a revolting show tune to taped accompaniment.  Like, it was really painful.  I consoled myself with the idea that soon it would be Kelly’s turn, the high point of the evening, although he didn’t know it.

            Another tedious Jewish comic was taking a bow for recounting how he used to get picked on at summer camp, and Paul K. Murdoch gave a little leap into the floodlights.  “Allright, ladies and gentlemen, how about another round of applause for Howard Saplow!  Howard Saplow, ladies and gentlemen!  Tomorrow Howard begins a four-year engagement at Rikers Island!  Scattered laughs.

            “Our next comic just blew in from the left coast, where he absolutely killed them at a Ku Klux Klan rally in San Bernadino.  After this, he’s scheduled to appear at the men’s room of the Port Authority  Bus Terminal.  Ladies and gentlemen, the inimitable comedy stylings of the former instructor of the Roman Polansky Institute for Little Girls, Mister KELLY SHINE!”

            Tepid applause as a taped fanfare blared over the loudspeaker, and Kelly made his entrance from the antebar, rushing by me and bounding onto the stage.

            Dressed in dark slacks and a navy windbreaker, Kelly was a six-footer in his thirties with thinning hair, a flattened nose and a round, jowly face.  Already well into his decline, it was obvious that he had just enough teeth left in his mouth not to embarrass himself when he smiled.  If I’m any judge of people, I would say that Kelly had been through enough hard times to lend a kind of immediacy to any kind of stage performance.  He was the archetypical American drifter, had done plenty of menial labor, had committed petty crimes (maybe even murder), was well-acquainted with the law-enforcement establishment.  Pity anybody dumb enough to go on a drinking binge with this guy, for after a certain point he would become a morose, vengeful drunk.

            Nevertheless, his act, though certainly not written by William Shakespeare (“The way he got his name is, he Shakes beer before he drinks it!”), was marked by a kind of vitality and enthusiasm born of desperation.  He quickly got the crowd on his side with his dopey antics: an impression of a pigeon relieving itself in Central Park; a story about a gay cowboy; an encounter between the Incredible Hulk and the Flying Nun, both played by him, wherein the Nun insists the Hulk use some kind of prophylactic protection and he responds by pulling out a green plastic garbage bag.  The audience screamed its approval.  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Kelly went on, “You might be interested to know that I ran into my ex-girlfriend and we made love all night.  The only thing is,” he scratched his groin, “I’ve been itching all day!  Wait a minute!”  He pushed his hand into the waistband of his trousers and pulled out a monstrous six-inch rubber tarantula.  The women screamed with delight.  “Well,” Kelly gave a crooked smile, displaying his sparse crescent of front teeth, “she said she just got back from Texas!”

            Just then three cops, led by Frank, pushed their way past me and right up to the stage.  I squeezed myself deep into the corner and tried to make myself invisible.  The laughing died and the smile froze on Kelly’s face.  “You come with me right now!” Frank boomed, and Kelly, not even attempting to protest his innocence, for who knew what atrocities were preying on his conscience, meekly allowed himself to grabbed by the arms and hustled away, past me and out the door.

            Paul K. Murdoch jumped onto the stage waving his arms.  Never at a loss for words, he shouted, “Don’t be alarmed, folks, those guys are part of the show.  They’ll all be back later.  Now our next act….”

            “You think she’s gonna come?”  Bogdan asked me anxiously.  He and Pedro were drinking light beer.  I was already into my second Wild Turkey.

            “Don’t worry about a thing.  She said she’ll be here.”  I felt quite confident.  Molly McGuire’s Irish Pub was like my second home, after the gym.  It was a congenial place to meet friendly women, or just get drunk and hang out with the fellows at the bar.  They were doing a rollicking landslide business that Saturday night.  The place was packed with reveling New Yorkers and also many expatriate Irish, Canadians and British.  On the dance floor Irish au pair girls danced a lively two-step with construction workers from Staten Island.  The current house band, Freedom’s Sword from Scotland, sang:

                                                            “Willie come sell your fiddle

                                                               Come sell your fiddle so fine

                                                               Willie come sell your fiddle

                                                               And buy a pint of wine

                                                               If I should sell my fiddle

                                                               The world would think me mad

                                                               Many’s the handsome day

                                                               My fiddle and I we had”

            Pedro asked, “What is that, English music?”

            “Not English, Scottish.”

            “Isn’t that the same thing?” he persisted.  I thought Scotland was part of England.  I thought Sherlock Holmes came from Scotland Yard.”

            “Lissen, Pedro, take it from me, if you call these guys English you’re gonna end up getting into a fight.”

            He brightened up at the prospect.  “Good, let ‘em!  Motherfuckin’ English are just a bunch of sissies.  They don’t have any good fighters.  They had that guy whatzisname, Cooper, but he was a tomato can.”  The sap was beginning to flow in him, I could tell.  “Any motherfuckin’ English….”

            “Scottish!”

            “…whatever, who wants to kick my ass, I’ll show him how we kick ass in P.R.!  Puerto Rico could kick Scotland’s ass anytime.”  Pedro was a very patriotic Puerto Rican nationalist.  He had even been there once, when he was a kid, to visit his grandparents.  He didn’t have too much fun, he had confided to me once, because everything was in Spanish.

            I felt the Wild Turkey struggling to take control of my mind.  “Lemme tell you something about the English, Pedro, I’ve made a study of it…”

            “Shit, man, the only thing you’ve made a study of is the business end of my boxing glove while I’m punching the shit out of you!”

            I insisted, “Why don’t you let me talk!?  Most people consider the British a bunch of effete tea drinkers, but that stereotype masks a savagery and bloodthirstiness well-known to any race unlucky enough to have experienced their true nature.  Just ask the Irish, the Scots or the French, all of whom have experienced endlessly repeated instances of mass-murder, looting and rape.  If you wish to dwell upon the nature of the traditional Englishman, look not to the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, but to the murderous mobs of soccer fanatics who engage in mass slaughter at football games.  It might interest you to know that football riots did not just start yesterday, but were going on in the time of Oliver Cromwell, may his soul rot in Hell, hundreds of years ago.  Just dress these animals up in uniform and you have the British Empire.”

            They gaped at me.  Bodgan asked, “What the freakin’ hell have you been drinking?”

            Pedro said, “Is Ireland near England?”

            “Forget it.  Miss!”  I held up my glass to the waitress.  Once, Pedro and I went to a screening of “Julius Caesar” starring Marlon Brando, a particular favorite of his.  Pedro insisted on bringing into the theater two gigantic bags of popcorn which he decided to combine right there in the audience while all the Shakespearean acting was going on on the screen.  He was making a terrible racket, shaking the bags back and forth and messing around with the popcorn.  Finally, a guy sitting in front of us decided he had had enough, and turned around to complain.  Pedro caught his eye and, without saying a word, just growled like a dog.  The guy got up and moved to another seat.  During the scene where the people of Rome are tearing up the city in response to Marc Anthony’s defense of Caesar, I had to explain to Pedro that Romans were Italians.  After that, the movie made perfect sense to him.

            Inch finally materialized through the crowd, and we stood up to greet her.  Her blonde hair was all teased out and she was wearing a mink coat over black aerobic tights and a leopard-print tube top.  Little gold rings with stones sparkled on her fingers, and her face was heavily made up in an attempt to mask the bruise Nick had inflicted on her.  The dark lighting of the club worked to her advantage.  She ordered a beer and turned to me.  “Kelly called me from L.A.  He’s up for a part in a film called ‘Dog of My Dreams’.  It’s about a German shepherd who returns from heaven and saves a child from some kidnappers.”

            I said, “It’s too bad he left town so sudden, like.”

            “Yeah, well that’s comedians for you.  Anyway, if he gets this part I may go and visit him in L.A. for a while.”

            “You really like this guy, huh?”

            “Jacky, he makes me laugh.”  The band finished their set and, seeing a big flashy-looking blonde at our table, came over and sat down.  They had lots of hair and big, thick arms and hands like Glasgow dockworkers.  I introduced everybody all around.  The musicians crowded around Inch, flirting with her and buying her drinks.  Bogdan grew agitated at the sight of so much competition and I ran around the table and whispered to him, “You better get cracking or you’re going to miss out on all the fun.”  I met an English girl named Gillian at the bar and invited her to sit with us at the table.  Bogdan and Inch danced while the band played.  Pedro explained the finer points of defensive boxing, comparing Muhammed Ali with Mike Tyson: “See, Ali would run away from the guy and catch him with his long reach.  He’s the only fighter that I could say had a good jab when he was moving backward.  Tyson relies on his strength.  He likes to work from the inside.  ‘Course he has to because he’s so short for a heavyweight…”

            Inch excused herself to go the Korean deli next door.  A few minutes later she came back with cigarettes and a bag of beer sausages which she offered around.  There were no takers, so she ate them all herself.

            The band finished its last set of the night.  By this time we were all pretty far into the bag.  The band’s manager, an amiable little Irishman named Seamus with a game leg and a dapper Seville Row suit came over to the table and invited us upstairs to the dressing room for a private party.  Inch had switched from beer to straight Tia Maria.  Soon she would be ready for Bogdan’s amourous advances, or so I calculated.

            We walked in a line up a narrow back staircase, carrying our drinks.  The dressing room was a chaotic mess of guitars, costumes and decrepit furniture.  The members of the band greeted us and we made ourselves comfortable, a happy group of after-hours revelers gossiping about bars, bands, who was drinking too much, who was on the wagon, who was going out with whom.  Somebody told a joke about a schoolteacher and an Irish jockey.  The band’s lead guitar player, Gordon, took out an acoustical guitar and strummed a few chords to the approval of two admiring females.

            Suddenly Inch stood up, leaving her mink coat draped over the chair.  “Is there a place I could lay down for a minute?” she gasped, “I feel like the whole room is spinning around.”  She had turned pasty-white and her bosoms seemed to be straining to jump out of the tube top.  They led her to a couch where she reclined and closed her eyes.  “Just leave me alone for a couple of minutes.  I’ll be allright.”

            We all turned from her and continued talking.  However, the explosive combination of beer, Tia Maria and spicy beer sausage inside her was not to be denied its moment of combustive glory, and all at once exploded from her mouth like some great infernal geyser from hell, soiling her and the sofa.

            “Fooking Jesus”, exclaimed Davy the drummer, “Somebody open a fooking window!  God, what a stench!”

            One girl said, “Oh, the poor thing!  Why doesn’t somebody do something?”  Still, nobody moved.  I felt my whole plan collapse like a house of cards.  My new apartment was not going to materialize.

            I hadn’t counted on the urgency of Bogdan’s sex drive.  He raced over to the couch and helped Inch gently to her feet.  “I’ll make sure she gets home all right,” he offered, manoeuvering her toward the door.  A woman gathered Inch’s mink coat and bag and pushed them into Bogdan’s free arm as he rushed Inch out the door and down the stairs.  This signaled the end of our little after-hours party, but not before somebody said of Bogdan, “That bloke must really be desperate.”

            “You don’t know the half of it,” I offered gamely.  “I don’t think he’s been with a woman for a while.”

            A red-headed chewing gum popper named Maureen asked disinterestedly, “What, did he just get out of the Army?”

            “Army, my arse,” deduced Gordon, “Prison’s more bloody like it, if you ask me.  That chap looks like a bad lot.  I would say that girl’s probably in for a long night.”

            “But she’s sick!” protested Maureen.

            “I don’t think he cares if she’s bloody dying.”  He took another swig from his beer bottle.  “It’s going to be a long night.”

            Davy chimed in, “And something else is going to be long too, ha ha ha!”  All the men laughed.

            “You men are worse than pigs.  Even a pig wouldn’t do a thing like that,” Maureen opined with disdain.

            “Oh, yes they would,” countered Davy, who apparently once had lived on a farm, and the discussion turned to the romantic habits of domesticated livestock.

            The next day found me back in the boxing room at the gym, furiously pounding the body bag with my fists as a way of releasing my own pent-up sexual frustration.  The English girl of the night before, Gillian, had wanted to come back with me but I had demurred.  Who could bring a date back to that dump?  What were we gonna do, get it on on a mattress on the floor with mice scurrying all around us in the dark?  As I punched the shit out of the bag, I imagined it to be a living body with a face.  And the face was mine.

            “Yo, Jacky!”  A voice startled me from behind.  I turned, all winded and sweaty, and came face-to-face with Bogdan.  He was relaxed and smiling, and I realized he had gone through with it.

            “So, you took her home with you.”

            “Just like you said.”

            “Frankly, I don’t know how you could get it up.  That broad was a freaking mess.”

            “Try spending some time in the joint.  You’ll find out how much you’re capable of.”

            “She can’t have been very much fun.”

            “Hell, she slept right through it.”  Hearing this, I figured that I could have bought him a rubber sex doll for $29.95 and saved myself a whole lot of trouble.  But he seemed satisfied, so why argue with success?

            “Where is she now?”

            “Back at my place, sleeping it off.  I gotta get back there before she wakes up.  I just came over to thank you.  That’s the nicest thing anybody ever did for me.”

            “Hell, what are friends for?”

            I never did get the apartment.  Bogdan ended up going back to prison for violating his parole by beating up another guy on the subway.  Inch moved to Los Angeles and married Kelly, who became a big success as a movie star playing tough-guy roles in adventure movies.

            I met a German redhead named Greta at the gym and moved into her rent-controlled apartment in Washington Heights.  When we make love she spits at me and screams blood-curdling curses in German.  She terrorizes her upstairs neighbors by banging on the ceiling with a broomstick if they should be so bold as to walk around at night.  All in all, we’re pretty happy.

            One weekend a month I go up to Rockland County and take small arms- and hand-to-hand combat training with a group called the “Committee for the Defense of a Free Ireland.”  Once I get good enough, I plan to fly to Dublin and join the I.R.A.

            I’ve got it all figured out.

Email: Dean Borok

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