The naked whore next door screams about money and smashes wine bottles against filthy walls. She hops up and down on her bed, a man desperately grabbing onto her buttocks, and she howls demon howls and exhales cool, blue smoke. Lit cigarettes tossed haphazardly on the carpet and the stink of urine coming off of a dirty pair of stockings. Her television, black and white and ancient blares the voices of actors that have been dead longer than I have been alive.

Lucinda. I paid her 10 dollars to fuck her one night and I went back to my room with my mouth tasting of sour beef and menthol Pall Malls. I emptied my balls into a condom that was in her and now I have to hear every other man in the world give it to her every night. The bed smashing into the wall is a constant reminder that I had once been so desperate as to lick her hamburger cunt and call her dirty names.

I don’t know why, but whenever I hear her telling her new John that he has the biggest cock ever I get a little jealous. I know that my package, my John Thomas, my Johnson, my dick is not the biggest, nor is it large by the standards set by society, but she had once told me the same thing.

Though, it is not like she would have told me that I had the most average cock in the whole, wide world.

Sometimes I turn on the television in my room to drown out the sound of wet slapping and ankle biting. The Three Stooges are plumbers fucking up a simple job and Lucinda does not care. Lucinda bangs away and, like some ungodly machine, never stops unless it is to shit or collect her fee. She never eats more than cold canned soup, and she drinks whatever booze that has been left in her room.

One morning as I came back from the Laundromat she was checking her mailbox and scratching at a giant pimple on her left cheek. She had her auburn hair in a bun and she smiled at me as I came in through the apartment building’s main entrance. "Hey lover," she said, "I am available for a few minutes if you got the time." No, no time, no time for sex or blow jobs, no anal sex on a bed of crusted semen and excrement. "No thanks," I told her, "I am only here for a minute and I have to go do this…..thing."  "Well you know where I am if you want some, I miss that big thang you got."

I tried to avoid rolling my eyes.

I took the ancient elevator to my third floor apartment and grabbed a pack of Marlboros from my bed stand and the hat that I think makes me look thin and headed out quickly before Lucinda would catch me in my lie. I had nothing to do; nowhere to go. All I had was this apartment and and a midnight-shift job at Sal's Diner, open 24 hours. There were no friends in this state, they were all off getting married in warm hamlets or dead. Everything I had ever known was buried a few states south of here and I had no desire to run back.

I took the train to a random stop and got off with a group of Asian design majors. They had slanted eyes but they were whiter than me and they spoke better English. A few of them looked at my stained stooges shirt and sneered and I tossed them a look that said I would not hesitate in kicking all of their asses. They looked away and continued their conversation about some new television program whose demographic they fit in.

People always surround themselves with people who dress like them. The style of your dress is your new uniform and you had better not change it if you know what is best for you. Hipsters in dress coats and jeans. These Asians wearing clothes that cost too much and thinking that they are the hottest things to come from testicles. It has come to the point where who you are, what you think, is nothing compared to the style of sneakers you are wearing. Your hat, rather than your heart, is the only thing that matters in this city full of beautiful people and lost Bohemians.

Me not wearing designer underwear makes me a radical. I swear, I am cutting edge.

The city was in the middle of a heat wave and I could see the air as it passed over the sweltering black top. Everyone, except those who thought they were too cool, wiped sweat from their foreheads and  fanned themselves with newspapers. Dogs panted extra hard and stopped along the sidewalk in hopes that fresh water would come to them while their owners talked on cell phones and blew hot smoke out of their asses.  Everything seemed to move slowly, like the ground was molasses and we were all stuck in some constant effort to get from point A to point B to point R.  It was a hot day, just like the day before it, and the day before that.

And there was a bar at this busy intersection that had peeling paint and dirty windows. There was a once-white, now gray awning with the address on it, and a neon sign in the window was lit and advertised a beer that I knew was not just piss-water. I weaved through young Jewish women and black people who had forgotten their history and made my way for the door of the bar. A police woman, short and stocky, asked me if I had seen a young man wearing a football jersey, I lied and told her that I had just seen him enter the subway. "Yes, I saw him, and he looked like he was up to no good. Good luck, we don’t need people like that roaming the streets." She thanked me and I made my way into the bar.

There was loud music coming from some hidden speaker system -Something like blues and jazz and country mixed together; a man’s voice like throat cancer grunted words that were too deep to be understood. The place only had a few patrons and most of them sat by themselves drinking and staring at random objects around the room. The bartender, a young woman with large breasts greeted me with a half smile and invited me to sit down for a while, have a drink. Two men carrying buzzes played pool and stared at me as I sat down on the leather stool at the bar. "Newcastle," I said, "and some peanuts if you have them." "No peanuts, but we have pretzels." I nodded my head and stared at the television that hung above the bar- some terrible sports-related thing where men did something with a ball on a field.

I began to wonder about these people who, like me, were alone and drinking on that hot day. Were they avoiding the whore that lived next to them, which I found doubtful, or were they  just hiding from some kind of other whore? Were they running from the angry wife who wanted them to spend less time at work and more time with the kids? Were they there because alcohol was the only reprieve from an otherwise joyless life? Were the two in the back playing pool here to play pool, or were they hiding from whatever demons that hid among the regularities of their lives? Somehow, I got the sense that  we were all different in appearance and experience, but we were all the same in our fears, our faults, and our desires.

The beer was cold and refreshing and I was soon ordering another one when  a young man wearing a New York Dolls shirt came in and sat next to me. He ordered a Rum and Coke and smiled at me when we made eye contact. He was handsome in an ordinary way -not beautiful, but earthy and manly. He reminded me of a character from a Steinbeck novel in that he was from the edge of reality and dreams. He was real, and short, and dark haired. His smile was yellow and his nose spattered with black heads. A tattoo on his left forearm indicated that he was once a big fan of Robert Johnson.  He wore blue jeans that were black with absorbed motor oil.

In a town of wax models, it was liberating to find someone who, like me, just did not care about fashion magazines, or Bjork, or hipster life-styles, or pretentious art, banning smoking, French movies, Oscar fucking Wilde, the lives of blonde cunts who had convinced the world that they were celebrities, Foie Gras, expensive scotch, top 40 stations, hip-hop clubs, or Paul Simon.

The music now was a simple jazz tune carried by a trumpet and a piano. I watched as this guy, this new character in a life full of characters, tapped his finger in beat with the music. He sipped the brown liquid in his glass and smiled in recognition of the song. He glanced over at me and I looked away, hoping that he had not seen me staring. Admiring. Dreaming. "Hey man," he said, his voice southern and rural, "that is one cool shirt you are wearing."
"Thanks, you too."
"Yeah, not enough people these days knows what's good or what's bad."
I laughed, "I was just thinking that."
"You dig Monk, Coltrane?" He must  have noticed me nodding my head to the song playing.
"This is a great album."
"I'm really into it. Monk was, shit man, he was Monk."
I nodded my head in agreement and motioned towards his tattoo. "He was no Johnson."
"Aint nobody like Johnson. Never before, never since."
"I guess the Devil got what he paid for."
"And vice versa."

We both smiled and nodded.

"You’re not from here, are ya?" I asked.
"No, Austin Texas, you?"
"Baltimore, Maryland."
"I been there once, hated it."
"That’s why I left. Never been to Austin."
"Ain't missin’ much. Good music scene,  it’s still Texas though."
"What happened in Baltimore?"
"Some asshole tried to start a fight with me in some shitty bar. Had to kick his teeth in."
"You remember the bar?"
"Some place with terrible music that served watered down drinks. Yeah, real shitty place, that Baltimore. Funny, that was the place I almost moved. Before here."
"Good thing you didn’t,"  I said.
"Naw, this place is just as shitty."

I noticed that he had finished his drink and was calling for another. I told the bartender to add it to my tab and ordered another beer for myself. He thanked me and told me that he would get the next one.  

"Look," I said, "I will be right back, I need to smoke."
"Me too, mind if I join ya?"
"Not at all."

We walked outside and we ran into a wall of heat and exhaust. The smell of the city was overwhelming. People on cell phones walked by and did not give us any attention. A black child walked by and stared at us and we both waved. He smoked the same kind of Marlboros as I did and I lit his cigarette for him as it dangled from his lips. He exhaled and the smoke caught the city air and slowly drifted up and away. Neither of us said anything for a minute as we watched the city move and sway with life and evolution. We both stood and understood that we, us, were alone in this city and that the rest of them, the ants, the cattle, the herd, controlled everything while we smoked and watched. And we were content with this.

We liked being the strangers.

We liked being lost.

"How long have you lived here?" I asked, making conversation more than anything.
"Two years this September."
"Now that you are here and you found out how you hate it, where do you plan on going?"
"You ever read On The Road?"
"A few times."
"I wanna to do that. I wanna wander this country looking for the right place, that place that produces the energy.

I knew what he meant. There are certain places that produce this feeling -this energy, that binds itself to certain souls and will not let go. It is the feeling of being home. Some people find that home is a two-story house in Miami. Others find that they fit prefect in the suburbs of Chicago. He and I wanted the same thing, a home in a world that neither of us felt comfortable in. Maybe we would have effortlessly found a place if we existed in a different time period, say the 1920’s through the 1950’s,  but this was not our decade. We were old souls in a new world, and we knew that we had to search, even if it took forever, to feel that energy that makes a place feel right.

New York City in the early 21st century was not the right time, nor place, for us.

And he told me that his name was Edward and I told him that my name was also Edward and neither of us laughed at something so trivial.

We both finished our cigarettes at the same time. He flicked his cigarette butt into the stale traffic that waited at a red light and smiled. "I was hoping to make it into that taxi’s window." I squinted my eyes and saw the taxi he was talking about, I sent mine flying and it made it into the cab. We quickly made our way back into the bar as the cab driver desperately searched between the seats for the source of smoke. We were laughing as the door slammed behind us.

Back at the bar our drinks were waiting for us. We both took our seats and sampled our beverages. He raised his. "Nice throw," he said.

"Nah, it was lucky. I was shit at baseball."
"What position you play?"
"Catcher, then pitcher, then right field."
"You couldn't do good in any of 'em?"
"I tried, but no."
"How old were you."
"God," I said, "ten, maybe eleven."
"Just a kid, you could be better now."
"I don’t have any desire to find out."
"I played. Before I moved here. I was short stop.  I liked it, but not as much as I liked playing soccer."

I looked at him.

"No, I did. Soccer was fun, even though all the kids at school called me a pussy. I used to say, ain't no pussy can play soccer without getting his ass kicked."
"It is a tough sport. I did enjoy soccer."
"Damn right it's a tough sport. I got two teeth kicked out once. Broke my collar bone. Nose too."
"Goalie?"
"How’d you know?"
"I was one too. You are always the guy to get fucked up by the other team. You go to grab the ball and some overeager bastard tries to kick the ball and gets your face instead."
"I got into more fights than I saved balls."
"Do you watch any?"
"On T.V?"
  
I nodded my head.

"Nah, ain't no fun in watchin' it."
"I watch it when I can, which is almost never."
"You watch it at some bar?"
"Something like that."

Drink after drink and numerous visits to the outside for smoking and the bathroom for pissing and he tells me that his whore is is a mean old man in Austin. A drunken father who failed at everything he had ever done, including child raising, who felt fit to punish every good thing on earth for it. Edward had not spoken to his father in years and he wanted to keep it that way. Back at his apartment in Williamsburg, Edward had a girlfriend who slept around and drank too much. "She smokes all of my cigarettes and doesn't do a damn thing but sit around. We use to have sex, not anymore."

"I work for this guy in Queens. He sells cars and I fix 'em up before he pushes 'em onto some dumb son' a bitch with too much dough. I hate it but it keeps me fed. I have a place to sleep. Not like before, when I first moved here, I had to crash where ever I could. Sometimes on the train or on a bench, made some friends in the homeless crowd and they helped me some."

We shared a knowledge of the cities homeless hangouts because we both had been homeless when we got here. We knew where to find the freshest meats and cheeses(the red dumpster behind Paul's on 7th), and where to bed down for the night without a cop stepping on our heads. We exchanged stories about hassling tourists for smokes and coins in Times Square. "I remember this middle aged white man, thick glasses and button-down shirt, holding his two kids close to him and demanding me to leave him alone. He told me to get a job and I told him that I was trying, Goddamn it, now how about a buck?"

Around midnight the bar had picked up and the music was significantly less pleasant on the ears. Some asshole with a Mohawk and a 600 dollar wardrobe was asking us where we were from. His head was swaying left to right on his shoulders, and his breath was a factory of wine-stink. "Where you guys from? Not New York, bet you guys are hill-billies!" His friends sniggered and told him to leave the tourists alone.  Edward, drunk as any person I have ever seen, grabbed the faux-punk by the Mohawk and slammed his face against the bar.

"Look here ya little faggot. You talking to the wrong people here. You got any sense in your skull you'll fuck off and mind your own."

Edward let the punk go and he joined his friends. His face was no longer a smirk, but a dark frown and an expression of embarrassment. "Punk rock is not a fucking fashion statement you dumb fucks," he screamed for good measure. "Fucking kids these days, stupid little bastards never worked for nothin'. Shit, their fingernails are clean and their fingers are smooth. Ain't nothin' but worthless."

We made our way outside, our bellies full with booze and our heads lost in clouds of undecided direction. He was worked up a bit by that group of assholes, and I had to stop him from going back in there and hurting them. I knew that he could, he had eyes of eternal darkness that would scare the strongest men. I could tell that he was made to be a killer, his father's son. We are our fathers, and Edward may have been  nice to me but I knew that there was a bastard hidden deep within his chest that could be let loose at any moment. Instead of violence, we decided to skip on our tabs, which had made their way into the range of hundreds of dollars.

We got on a train to Chinatown and sang Tom Waits songs as loud as we could. Two girls that were sitting in front of us smiled and blushed as we looked at them and made loud, lewd comments about what we would do to them if given a chance. The blonde would have been fucked 10 ways till Tuesday and my face would have been the brunettes ride for a while. Two girls totally out of our league and we made sure that they knew that we did not care. We forced them to acknowledge our presence with songs of sadness and words like "fuck," "pussy," "blow," and "fist." They got off at St. Marks, and Edward wanted to follow them for a while. I agreed.

We followed behind them through the neon-lit station and up the slippery steps that led to the street. They giggled as we stumbled behind them. We called to them as they crossed the street and made their way to some yuppie bar. "C'mon baby, just one kiss!" "Let me have at it, just once!" "We'll be gentle." "We'll be safe." "But we have boyfriends." "That's okay, we got girlfriends," he looked at me, "well I got a girlfriend." "I have a 20 dollar whore that lives next to me." "Yeah, he's got that." The girls laughed and headed into the bar and disappeared from our lives completely.

"Stupid whores."
"Stupid whores," I said.
"They woulda had a real good time too."
"Yeah."
"Fuck 'em."
"Fuck 'em."

The streets were bright with the glow of street lamps and there were dozens of people wandering the sidewalks. Music flowed from out of doors and windows, the traffic on the streets buzzed and honked and was a constant machine. Men kissed men on corners while girls kissed girls in doorways. Everyone was kissing, laughing, dancing, singing, crying, pouting, smoking, drinking, eating, and existing. We walked and watched, silently smoking and thinking about the world and the city.

This city is too big for its own good. There are too many people here who expect everything from everybody else. Everyone looks down on one another. Everyone believes that they are more important than those that they surround themselves with. They waltz through corridors of loneliness with raging hard-ons of self-righteousness, judging others on superficial nonsense rather than character. This is not a town for humans, but robots on self-destruct mode. They all act so enlightened, but their lives are on a loop that is unending, a millennium snake that is as pointless as gold teeth and earrings.

The smells of the city were out as they usually were. Food odors floated past the buildings, over the heaps of trash that dotted the sidewalks, and rested somewhere up our noses. Thin crust pizza made with real mozzarella and Prosciutto. Hot dogs covered in brown mustard and onions. Somewhere a deli was preparing the perfect Reuben, too good for human consumption- a sandwich so delicious that it belonged in a museum for future generations to shed tears over. In Chinatown, the Dumpling House was open and served the sick and diseased scallion pancakes and dumplings in clear broth. Indians served curried goat out of their  restaurant of questionable cleanliness.

We made our way to Viet House, a Vietnamese restaurant that had opened during the turn of the century and decided to never close. Mr. Minh, an old man of about 109, and owner of the restaurant,  greeted us at the door with a big smile and led us to a small table in a secluded room. "Edward, he said, would you like menu?" "Please. Can we smoke tonight?" He looked around and smiled, "that should not be problem. Just put out if you see other white people come in." "Of course." He walked away to get out menus and I lit a cigarette. Edward laughed and lit one of his own using the lighter I had sat on the table.

"You must come here a lot."
"I like it. Mr. Minh has always been good to me and the food is really good."
"I ain't never had Vietnamese."
"You like Chinese?"
"Of course, this like that?"
"Better."
"I can dig it."
"And we can smoke."
"Must be the last place on earth you can smoke indoors."
"See, Americans don't have a fucking clue."
"Naw, we don't. Ain't they worried about the man?"
"Shit, smoking is the last thing they are worried about. The kitchen is scary-dirty. This place is a health inspector's wet dream, with all of the roaches and all. That bother you?"
"My apartment's got roaches and I eat there."
"Guess not."
"Naw."

Mr. Minh came back to our table, a smile on his face as usual, and handed our menus to us. He stood and waited for us to order. I ordered the number 5, beef noodle soup with onions, and lime juice, and fish sauce, and bean sprouts. Edward ordered the pork chop on a bed of rice vermicelli and two spring rolls. We shared a pitcher of beer. Mr. Minh walked away with the menus, he was whistling a song that was foreign, yet it sounded familiar, like something that I had heard before in an alcohol-induced dream. It was a song that haunted. It was a song that pierced one's soul and made everything seem like it was being viewed from far away. I wanted to reach out and pluck it from the air.

"I'm glad they have pork chops."
"They are pretty good too."
"My mother used to make really good pork chops. She was a hell of a cook. You should have tried her chicken pot pie. Woulda brought tears to your eye."
"Where is she now?"
"Dead."
"Jesus."
"Ain't his fault. My dad's the one who did it."
"Sorry?"
"Killed her. Stupid fucker was driving with a jag on while she was sleeping in the seat next to him. Always did that, drove drunk, but that taught him a lesson. Shame mom had to be a part of that lesson."
"Man, I, uh, I'm sorry."
"You kill her? No. Ain't no need to be sorry. That son of a bitch is sorry enough for everyone. He has to live with it. Fucker."

There was silence that was only interrupted by Mr. Minh bringing us our drinks. "Food be out soon. It very good tonight!" We nodded our heads in thanks and he wandered off. Edward and I sipped our beers and took long drags off of our cigarettes.

"That is why I left. I was so mad I almost killed him, and if I woulda stayed I woulda killed him. Woulda strangled him to death with my bare hands. Instead, I left for New York in search for some stupid dream. I ain't found it yet."
"Let me know if you ever do."

We were young, and we were still wide-eyed and open minded in this world of bitterness. We were is search of the American dream and we thought that we would be able to find it in the city that gave birth to so many writers, artists, and people who lived on the edge of fantasy and that which was solid, tangible. Like every other young person, we wanted to live lives that were not weighed down by excessive bills, or bosses, or 9 to 5 days where everything always seemed the same. We needed to see that we could live. We wanted to be humans, not slaves to some system that worked us until we were dust and forgot about us two days after we died. The American dream of yesterday was money, and it would be foolish to assume that it is not the same, but now it just seems a little more complicated than that.

Maybe that was our problem, we did not have a legitimate dream or destination, we just knew what we were running from.

Edward seem to enjoy his food even though it tasted nothing like his mother's cooking. We both ate, and our conversation turned from dreary to delightful as we drank more. We talked about our favorite writers, and we agreed that Henry Miller could kick Shakespeare's ass any day of the week. Also, Hemingway and Steinbeck would have been tied, and Hunter S. Thompson would have shot them all in the face with a shotgun before turning it on himself. We made fun of Ayn Rand, and spat when Machiavelli was mentioned. We raised our glasses and toasted Melville, Burroughs, Kesey, Kerouac, and Ginsberg.


We paid the bill and left a 110% tip and we walked out into the night air. 2:30 A.M. The night was still an infant and we wanted to grab the bastard by its head and shake it around a bit before retiring. "What can we do?" He asked, looking to me for an answer. "We can go to this book bar in Hell's Kitchen, I have never been there because it has always struck me as pretentious, but we can see what the score is." "Right, sounds alright."

We could tell that we were in the wrong place the moment we stepped through the door. There was a large portrait of Joyce pained on the ceiling, and the air was thick with the scents of cleaning agents and expensive cologne. Edward and I had already established our mutual hatred of Joyce, especially that overrated work of his Fennigan's Wake. We agreed that there had been better drunks who had published better drunken ramblings. Edward joked and said that he wanted "Fuck Joyce" tattooed on his forehead, and I had almost convinced him to do it when the haze of booze began to flee.

We sat at the bar and ordered Belgian beers that were surprisingly not bad. The man behind the bar had thick, horn-rimmed glasses on and his hair was cut just above his ears. He wore a shirt that had Joyce's face emblazoned on the front. "You guys here for the poetry?" "What poetry?" "We are going to have people reading poetry in a few minutes." "What kind of poetry?" "All kinds!" Edward and I both grunted, the last thing we wanted at this point was some sad bastard on the microphone rambling about whatever tragedies his upper-class life has provided. "We are here to drink." "Well, no reason you can't enjoy both, is there?" I resisted the urged to say no and took a few gulps of my beer. Edward did the same.

The stage was at the rear of the bar, near the bathrooms and the door that led to the kitchen, and there were a few lights that hung from the ceiling shining down onto it. A single microphone stand rested at the edge of the stage, and there were simple leather and metal chairs placed in rows of six in front of it. There were people throughout the bar doing the regular bar thing. Conversation covered the music and Edward and I sat and watched the people. Men hit on girls and everyone pretended to have a degree in English. Everyone studied some form of literature, mostly French. Keats, Yeats, Rimbaud; all were represented.

Another thing I had found that I liked about Edward was his ability to shut the fuck up and just watch as the world did its thing. Everything took place while we sat on the sidelines and smiled. He knew that constantly talking was superfluous, and that silence was essential. Together we watched as people who thought they were alone, ignored, picked their noses. And we saw a girl prettier than a Greek Goddess puke her fucking guts out all over the shirt of a indie rocker. We were the only ones who noticed the bartender dropping pills into this dizzy girl's drink before giving it to her.

Edward called the bartender over. "You do anything to that girl and me and my friend here will personally rip your nuts off." "But, but, but....." "No, seriously, we will," I said. "And I will make you eat 'em," Edward added. "Alright, I wont do anything."

"Damn right you wont."
"Good call," I said as the bartender recalled the girl's drink and poured another one.

"Always pissed me off," said Edward, "you can't get pussy so you gotta go drug girls and rape 'em. Ain't no dignity in that. What you say we hurt him anyway?"
"For good measure."
"Teach him that he can't get away with just some warning. You know as soon as we leave he will just do it again."
"Yeah, but let's wait a bit. We have time."


The first person to stand at the microphone was a boyish-girl with overextended teeth and thick glasses. She thanked us for taking the time to be there, and began her poem. It was shit. It was terrible and cliche and reminded me of something I had once read on the wall above a urinal I had been using. She was using words that she could barely pronounce, and it did not make a lick of sense, even in that metaphorical way that every liberal arts major claims justifies their ramblings. A young man came after her and did not do any better of a job, more wasted words disguised as poetry. Verbal turds that deserve flushing. A few more people send their poetry into the wide open space of the bar and finally a chubby girl wearing square glasses climbed onto the stage and kinda impressed us with words of sorrow and love. I think that is what inspired Edward.

He walked to the stage and grabbed the microphone, his hands gripping the metal shaft tightly, and began to recite a poem from memory. The poem held the attention of the audience, my attention, and bashed our heads against every surface. It flipped and flopped and pulsed and zoomed and mesmerized. The words were bars of gold and musical notes. They were images written across a caves' wall and we were the dumb, silly cavemen wearing our pathetic clothes and wearing faces of astonishment. His poetry was God's, and we could do nothing but sit and listen as our ears were treated to a poem that could be forgotten and then worshiped and studied two hundred years in the future.

Once finished, Edward walked back to where I was sitting and, with tears ready to fall from his eyes, he asked if we could leave. Struck silent, I nodded my head and stood up, motioning my hand towards the door as a gesture for him to lead the way. He walked in front of me and I stared at the back of his head, wondering what kind of life of stories could be found inside that skull. If that poem was from him, and I was certain that it was, what else laid in there like rats waiting to leap out and gnaw on the minds of innocent watchers? What other talents were buried deep within that glob of gray matter? Who was this person, this Edward, really?

We were halfway to my apartment when we remembered that fucking bartender and how we were supposed to stomp his guts out. "Oh well," I said, "next time." "Yeah," Edward said, "next time," his voice trailing as he finished saying it. The train was a loud mess of metal and bolts, hard wood creaking and cracking, and the loud sighs of the drunken and the homeless. The windows showed the darkness of the tunnel, the occasional flash of white halogen cutting through and blinding me. Edward sat in silence and stared at a patch of dirt on the floor.

"About that poem you read."
"Piece of shit."
"No. It was really fucking good."
"Still a piece of shit."
"That place and I, we loved it. That was one of the best poems I have ever heard."
"Hmm."
"Really."
"Thanks, I guess."
"Seriously."
"Hmm."
"You have any more?"
"Yep, got plenty, but I don't read 'em to too much."
"Read them for me?"
"Maybe some other day."
"Yeah?"
"Maybe."

By the time we reached my stop he was in a much better mood. He laughed and smiled at dull jokes about pretentious art fans, even contributing a few as we made our way through the station and onto the street. "Where do ya live," he asked, looking around at the red-brick buildings that made the neighborhood a giant, hulking thing of stone and metal. "About two blocks," I said, actually, exactly two blocks. "Ain't too bad of a neighborhood." "Yeah, but you have not met Lucinda yet." "Who?" "Neighbor, woman, whore. The one I mentioned earlier." Oh yeah, how much is she again?" "A cheap 20." "Introduce me." I laughed and shrugged it off, another joke, Edward the kidder. I was happy that he was feeling better, that his mind had gone from an ocean to a block of ice.

We stopped at a taco van, a white and silver R.V. that had been converted into a mobile kitchen. A dark-skinned woman with a round face and her hair in a bun stood inside the vehicle, near the register, and asked us what we wanted to eat. We ordered beef and spicy pork tacos and imported, fruit-flavored soda. The woman spoke to a gentleman standing at the grill in a soft Spanish, obviously telling him what he had to make. Edward laughed, "she just told him to jack off in our food." "Really?" "What do you think?"

Sometimes I feel so fucking gullible. Sometimes I am.

We walked and ate and drank, not saying anything as the sky held high and red. Steam rose from gutters and caught us in the face, neither of us reacting. Homeless men extended their arms to us, "got a smoke?" "Some change?" "C'mon, a buck so I can eat?" I stopped and handed one a five dollar bill, he breathed from his mouth and I could smell cheap wine, cigarettes. "Drinks are on us tonight," I said, "go and forget that you are miserable." He gave a million thanks to us, tucked the five into his pants, and walked away. "Mighty nice of ya," Edward said. "Well, sometimes my karma needs refreshing." "Ain't no fixin' mine," he said before taking another bite of the taco.

My door was locked and my keys were in there, somewhere, either on the table as you come in, or on the counter, or in my pants from the night before. We were locked out and my landlord, a sore on this earth, would not be awake until a little after seven. I would have woken her up, but she had a shrill voice that pierced my skull and caused my innards to ache and she would not have shut up about waking her for hours, even days after. I motioned towards the heavens and told Edward that we could go to the roof and watch the day begin.

On the roof, the place I have gone to a million times to smoke cigarettes and stare, the night was growing old. There was something about the city, the way it smelled before day broke, that made it seem more beautiful than it really was. It was like a ghost of a long-dead family member coming to remind you that they were still dead, but that there was hope coming like a wave of smog and exhausting heat. The possibilities of a new day, and the fact that yesterday's failures and tribulations were nothing but history and could be forgotten if one only wished to forget. I could tell by Edward's expression, a slight smile and open eyes, that we were on the same page. He was looking forward to a day of new regrets.

We stood on the edge. The street 14 floors below us, and we gazed down at it as if it were a metaphor. We both smiled, and for some reason, like we were reading each other's mind, we both un-zipped our pants and pissed over the edge. Two streams of urine illuminated by the city lights and a new sun rising.