by Barbara Kent
Paddy and Big Richie cruised Broadway, two dogs sniffing in
alleys for 
something to eat. They begged food from the pizza-man and Nedicks on the
corner but got kicked out and cursed at. They begged weed from Princess, The Deal
on Gates Avenue and consolation from one of her girls, but got neither one and ranged
further in their scavenging. Carole and I watched, ducking into a doorway every time
one of them turned around and it seemed we might be discovered. We laughed at their
futility and schemed to rescue them after a good, long while.
The el on Broadway locked the street in sharp shadow on hot, sunny days, and in winter the snow beneath it never melted but solidified into sooty black masses of ice. It seemed that you could never really get "outside" for the el and the tall buildings constructed a ceiling that blocked out all but an occasional glimpse of sky -- and that always took me by surprise. I never looked up. The el and the merchants and the traffic filthied the sacred air with a din that only outsiders could hear. Those of us who lived beneath the el were not conscious of the blasphemous clattering and chattering of the train every ten minutes morning noon and night until you died.
You could wander Broadway all your life and never want for anything if you knew where to look. The stores crowded together door-jamb-to-door-jamb and the shop vendors loitered outside their store-fronts arguing and philosophizing and politicking with one another until a customer approached and was escorted into privacy so that business could commence. People there liked to trade money the way most made love, behind thick drapes and locked doors, while their fornication was relegated to pissy hallways and debris strewn back lots, usually with inappropriate partners, local urchins seduced with coins or merchandise.
You could eat Chinese, Italian, Jewish or Greek -- ice cream or hot-dogs or fish-fry and if you were really flush, there was the Claridge; white linen and mushroom caps, sadly out of place under the el. There was a furniture store that advertised three rooms of furniture for $150.00, two jewelers, a pawn-shop, a hosiery store, a record store, the Bootery, remnant of better days, two clothing stores and the tailor. Usurper of Thursday night paychecks and disenchanted fathers was the Dew Drop Inn, which reeked of stale beer if you passed it during daylight hours. The crown jewel of this coronet was the Loew's Gates theater --opulent, gilded, mirrored and plushly carpeted in red velvet. Cherubim, oil paintings in thick gesso frames, marble floors. I still have sublime dreams about that place.
Broadway and the rusty el that swung above it cut the neighborhood in half, east and west. I lived one block east of Broadway, which was the "good" neighborhood, or at least what passed for "good" in this ex-urb of New York City. Paddy lived four blocks west, which put him in the heart of the ghetto. Carole lived a few feet west of Broadway, which put her technically west, but not yet in the ghetto. Big Richie lived with whomever would have him and often lived nowhere at all, making a park bench or cellar entrance home-for-a-night. I think he was from Philadelphia. We were the first generation raised by television, and when we were old enough to venture outside alone, we were stunned to see that we did not live in Hollywood. Each of us aspired to escape, return to Paradise as depicted on NBC, but none was as determined as Paddy. Ultimately though, society conspired with the fates to make him a prisoner forever.
I hadn't ever seen anything like Paddy's house, a solid ersatz brownstone that had probably been just as ugly new as then. The steps had worn away in the middle by a century of children's footsteps running up and down, so that it looked as if the stone itself was sagging. The wrought-iron railing did not curve and dip in the fancy curlicues the way they did on my block, but stoically stood out in straight pipes that ended in round knobs. It was peeling, and the matte black finish was worn through on top to shiny chestnut.
The first time I entered the front door, the smell sickened me. It was death and shit and crushed crayons --urine and rotted garbage. Odors with substance and weight in the dark. At the end of the hallway two open doors faced one another and spilled heavy yellow light into the hall. Paddy lived to the right. There was a tub in the kitchen with a board over it and bundles of clothes on top. Hard-shelled roaches skittered all over every surface and marched nose to tail high on the molding, like soldiers. Even though there were no curtains on the windows very little light filtered through the grimy glass so that even mid-day, the lights were on, mimicking night. Tripping on the ripped linoleum almost assured the sickening crunch of some exoskeletal creature, and a daybed piled high with clothes had to hide more vermin.. Everywhere I looked staggered threatening mountains of clothes -- on every chair, on the floor, on all the beds. That first time, I would not sit down, but whispered to Carole "We're not staying here, are we?"
Paddy's mother was a tall, truly ugly woman. Her face was full of lumps and nodules and festering sores -- she was so ugly I got scared, but Carole, said to me, soto voce, "She's got impetigo. She's not always this ugly." His father looked normal. Chubby and blue-eyed and clean, but when he turned to greet me his eyes lit up as he took in my figure and his first remark to me was, "Hey, Kiddo! It's what's up front that counts, eh?" accompanied by a lewd gesture, holding his hands in front of his chest as if he were cradling breasts. His attention was quickly regained by Porky Pig on the television as he waited for his supper.
But Paddy! My adolescent heart tumbled on the spot and I am sure that I was instantly in love when I discovered that bright spot in the squalor. He stood tall and handsome with Gypsy eyes and thickly curled black hair and lashes. His body lithe and beautiful, smooth, Irish white skin stretched taut over marble hard muscle. Everyone wanted a piece of Paddy. As she introduced us, Carole explained to me that he was seventeen and had just come out of the Navy. I had never known anyone who had been in the Navy. My father and uncles had been in the army though, so relationally Paddy seemed much older and wiser to me. It did not occur to me that he was only 17. He shimmered in his winter uniform and graced me with a devastating smile. Dimples.
Paddy twirled and left the room abruptly, Carole grabbed my hand and whisked me out behind him. This set the tone for all future events with Paddy. He was pure energy, just moved, and everyone else followed. We hit the night and the three of us tramped up to Broadway. If daylight was dreary on the avenue night was a wonderful contradiction The cacophony of the el was muffled by the movement on the street. Disparate music, country and rock and roll, spilled out from the Dew Drop Inn and the jukebox in the pizza place. The lights on the movie marquee flashed and rolled and a loudspeaker blasted Tchaikovsky into the street. "2001: A Space Odyssey" was playing. We raced up the stairs to the train platform.
I could see my bedroom window from the gritty perch of the el, and it felt as if I were looking at an old black and white photograph--as if it were a memory already. A slightly built and short blonde boy wearing a bluish-green suit-jacket and gray tie came running up the stairs after us and Paddy shot down in a karate crouch, kicking and chopping his hands in the air after him like Bruce Lee. The mock battle was punctuated with grunts and oomphs, and I noticed here and there a hard slap that looked and sounded real, a ferocity on Paddy's face that evoked some undefined emotion in me, fear, or passion. Paddy won the fight, and the boy was on the ground, legs pulled up to his chest hands over his head yelling "O.K.! O.K.!! I give!" Paddy brushed his hands together and strutted around the boy before he offered his hand to help him up. The boy did not accept though, and leapt to his feet like an acrobat, without even using his own hands. Carole introduced me to Richie Ward. She linked her arm with his and that surprised me. If this was going to be a "date" type night, I'd have to go home.
Carole was not the kind of girl one expected to be dating. With her concave chest, she was hardly a girl at all, occasionally mistaken for a boy. Razor-lean she wore her dust-colored hair semi-short, like the punks in the neighborhood. She walked with an extra "bop" in her step and was considered "tough." Some girls in the neighborhood even treated her as if she were a boy and flirted with her openly. At sixteen she was only a year older than me, but far more advanced socially. Seeing her with this boy gave me a different perspective of Carole. She turned on to him. They looked so much alike, they could have been brother and sister, and I suddenly felt out of place.
The train rattled into the station and we scrambled on through two different doors. The car was empty and at first we each sat on separate seats and only merged together as other people boarded the train at each stop. We switched trains at East New York where subway clamor belched seriously from the gaping hole, like a monster trapped deep in the Earth -- and rode to West Fourth grinning and grimacing and making burlesque sign language at one another because there was no chance that verbal conversation could be heard, the air vibrated so thick with train.
Scattering into the late summer night was a pleasure where the sounds of human beings pattered over the roar of the trains chasing us through the gratings in the street. Land of Wonder, Greenwich Village, 1966. Amazing place. The women wore long skirts and long hair and gauzy blouses with beaded fringes. Most people were barefoot. The men had rangy beards and steel-rim glasses, faded, re-patched jeans and checkered shirts. Music overflowed from every cubby and heathens danced in the streets. The air was alien, comprised of more parts patchouli than oxygen and the sizzle and crack of roasting peppers and sausage and the deep, omnipresent bite of forty years of spilled beer. It all floated on a pervasive current of carbon monoxide.
Paddy had a friend who played guitar at the Cafe' WAH and we tried to get in there but no one believed I could be eighteen. Paddy was pissed. "What the hell'd you have to bring HER along for?" he yelled at Carole, but she yelled right back at him "Nobody else here is eighteen either fuck-o, so just shut up!" He sneered at her and walked into the cafe and no-one stopped him. Carole turned red and she and Richie tried to follow but the bouncer stopped them with his extended hand and a raised eyebrow that spoke loud and clear. She gesticulated at Paddy's back, "He's not eighteen either!" but the bouncer looked at her stonily and said "Sorry, babe, but if he's old enough to wear that uniform, he's old enough to hoist a few." Richie tried to calm her down by saying he'd go to a deli and get some beer, but Carole was so mad we had to hold her so she wouldn't jump on the bouncer.
We sat on the sidewalk in front of the cafe that swallowed Paddy and watched the street. Richie returned in a few minutes and motioned us around the bend of the building into an alley. He had a grocery bag and a big grin. "Some guy bought this for us..." and half-pulled out the biggest bottle of beer I'd ever seen. We passed the bag around and listened to Carole fuss. She paced and fumed and sucked up beer and looked over at the bouncer a hundred times, muttering foul things under her breath. Her delicate white cheeks blushed neon and her bay-green eyes tinged red with fury. There were maybe two or three slugs of beer left when Paddy re- appeared. Carole was all over him in an instant. "You got some NERVE walking into a place like that without us! Who the fuck do you think you are? I didn't come here just to sit in some alley and drink beer!"
Paddy was cool though, and just kept smiling at her. "We're going someplace else to party, dear..." he added an extra inflection on the "dear." Just then a big black guy with a guitar came out of the club and joined us. He stood about six foot four with an elastic face half covered with stiff-brush beard and mustache. He had a wide, toothless, dopey grin and carried himself the way people who think they are too tall, do -- that is, with his head in a low, turtle- like position. He came up behind Paddy, and Paddy, looking Carole in the eye, slapped the black guy in his chest with the back of his hand. "This is my man, Richie," he said. It seemed only proper that Big Richie, for we needed that designation to distinguish him from Richie Ward, join us in following Paddy around town.
In spite of his initially inferior status in our eyes, he was, after all not Paddy, Big Richie's age and stature, both physical and social, was our entree to places otherwise closed to us. We rested on a bench behind some trees in Washington Square Park, and Big Richie produced a pipe from one of his many pockets. With a tiny pen-knife, he dropped what looked like a little ball of tar into the bowl and lit it with a match. He sucked furiously on it until the bowl glowed red and a thin, flat ribbon of fragrant smoke slithered into the air, and then he pushed the hot little pipe into my hands. Carole and Richie urged me to put the pipe between my lips and inhale. The stem was bitter, and I was concerned about his saliva on the pipe but I took it anyway and inhaled an invasive and abrasive, completely unexpected substance into my lungs. For a moment I could only see smoke, and a harsh, burning pain filled my chest. The smoke was propelled from my lungs by a violent coughing spasm and my eyes stung until I could breathe again and see again. The pipe had been taken out of my hands and passed around. I declined the second hit. Richie Ward was sitting next to me on the bench, and rambled about a story he'd read, "CLAY", I think it was by James Joyce. He said, in a slow, dreamy voice, that he thought in the face of the final reality, that what we lived was less significant than a dream. He looked up through the trees, "Illusion, all illusion," he mumbled, "...this life I stumble through half blind and all alone." Paddy agreed with him, and, teetering on the top of the backrest of the bench said he'd like to experience death, but that he thought it was not much different than life. He gestured out toward the park with his hand and said "Sometimes I see out through my eyes, and I look at the street or my father or wherever I am, or even my hand, and I feel as if I am not really attached to any of it and maybe I am just piloting this body like a ship..." his voice smudged into the rapidly distancing city-background. I remembered the moments I had when my physical presence occurred to me, and I got an eerie feeling of wonder at my existence. Big Richie only laughed, "You guys are high!" he said, and gathered us up like so many little chicks and herded us to an apartment building across the street. It was a beautiful brick building and the inside was pristine. I felt too dirty to be standing on the shiny floor. We were offered paper cups filled with electric punch. I sniffed at mine, and asked Big Richie what it was. He smiled that wide latex mask grin of his and said "It's good stuff! Have some! It's got the Kool Aid in it, with some Vodka and a little bit of home made acid!" I declined, I had to get home eventually and already felt like a slinky-spring toy. I could not keep up with myself. Richie Ward's appetite for drugs was staggering, he gulped down two little cups one right after the other, and then he drank mine. We left the beautiful apartment and were ushered some blocks away into a stifling basement lit by hundreds of candles. We drank warm, purple wine and listened to chanting by a dozen long-haired, white-robed Krsna-Murti fanatics. Richie and Paddy joined in the chanting, eyes closed black skin and white skin pulsing in the near-dark. Carole and Richie and I watched, visitors from the future peering into a cave. The vibrations bore into my belly and churned the strange ingredients and made me nauseous, but I held it back until we got out into the less oppressive air of the street and I felt better. In the back of my brain was a steady, familiar thunder that I could not identify.
At one point I found myself in a drug-store overwhelmed by fluorescent lights and huge mirrors. At first, I thought my reflection was another girl, and when I looked closely, I was surprised and greatly pleased to see it was me. My long, dark hair was just messy enough to look cool, and my eyes were all dilated and animal, like a raccoon. I glanced at the clock on the wall and saw that it was already midnight, and panicked. "I've got to get to a phone!" I told Carole, but she would not or could not hear me and I was afraid if I stopped to call my mother they would just keep moving, and leave me alone in the City. And they would have, too.
Richie had passed out, and Paddy and Big Richie dragged him down the concrete and steel edged subway steps and arranged him in a seat. I had been mostly ignored, or perhaps tolerated all evening, so it was with some surprise that I found myself in Paddy's arms on the train back to Brooklyn. I looked around for Carole but Paddy pulled me closer to him and said in my ear "Shhh...she's doing Richie in the cab..." I had no clue what that meant except that Carole and Big Richie were not in the car with us, only Richie Ward was there, half laid out on a long seat, so pale and blue-tinged he looked dead. I could only appreciate the situation intellectually, since my brain was fried and my body was drained. When Paddy kissed me I analyzed the pressure and moistness of his mouth, the precise position and weight of his hands around my waist and shoulders, the slight tremble of his thigh next to mine. His tongue penetrated between my lips and teeth and startled me, I had never imagined such a thing was possible or desirable, and I did not object but stayed still so as to observe it. Perhaps, if I captured my first kiss in a picture, I'd be able to recall it tomorrow and give it my full attention. I wondered if the feeling that spilled from my belly to my loins was love, and wondered too, whom I could ask about such things. When I did replay it the following day, it was accompanied by the unconscious recording of the subway rumble-click-clack-hum that rocked my belly like the Krsna-Murti mantra.
My goal was to re-create that subway kiss in a conscious state in a quiet place since I had missed the entire experience. Thus motivated, I took to following Carole and Paddy and Big Richie nearly everywhere they went. We ran as far as we could from Brooklyn, in search of the neat and clean, black and white kinescopic ideals of the right reality as it should be; the only reality we understood -- the Cleaver Family, and Robert Young and Lassie sown early in our brains, for the Technicolor lives we lived were incongruous. There was no Robert Young in Brooklyn, but the crude vulgarity of Paddy's father and the mysterious absence of my father and the indignity of Carole's father, whose mother found him humping their Puerto Rican neighbor standing up in the dark downstairs hallway of their apartment house. We futilely searched for the block that Kathy and Beaver lived on and hoped that when we found it we would live there happily for however long "ever-after" was. Our parents did not call us "Princess" and "Young man" but "bastard" and "loser" and "son-of-a-bitch!" Mothers did not wear black pumps and organdy aprons and neatly bobbed hair. No soft words of comfort for some slight, imagined misdeed, but the presence of a television antenna whistling through the air before it landed on flesh and muscle and drew architecturally correct lines of blood on buttocks, back, arms, legs, wherever it could reach. We never left the Metropolitan area, but our travels took us to such exotic places as Staten Island, Forest Hills, City Island and Howard Beach. Where-ever we could get by train, we went. I grew fond of Staten Island because it was different, and while it was not California, I had no doubt about it's existence. The swampy marshland was not solid enough to support a subway, so that undercurrent rumble was missing and you could breathe without feeling your organs rattle against your bones. I figured if I ever grew up and got married, I'd live on Staten Island.
We went out together maybe three or four times a week. They went out some nights without me, but that was OK, because I had school work to do. Carole and I were the only two still in school, but she did not work as hard at it as I did, nor did she attend on a daily basis, spending most of her days at Paddy's house, getting high with Paddy and Richie Ward. Big Richie was in his twenties and he was an excellent musician, became quite the success shortly after we knew him. He held two jobs, designing wallpaper freelance, and singing in the cafes at night. During the days he stayed out in the streets. He was not welcome at Paddy's house because Paddy's parents hated black people. One night Carole and I were waiting for Paddy when his father came home angry, puffing through the front door like the IRT express, and his wife tried to soothe him until she learned he'd been thrown out of a neighbor's house for sniffing around. He called Mr. Ortiz a "dirty Spic" when he found out he wasn't good enough for his daughter. "I'm white!" Paddy's father screamed out to his numb wife..:"She was with some nigger before she met me!" His anger dissolved with a pint of Irish Mist, two Quaaludes and a joint. I felt Paddy's shame. Sometimes Big Richie got to sleep in a warm house on a limited basis and sometimes he took a lover. He favored youngish, short Puerto Rican boys and blonde, ultra-white chicks. He fancied himself in love with me for about a week, but I was too dark and not yet experienced enough for his jaded taste.
In spite of the filth and poverty and turmoil of Paddy's home, it was the center of our micro-society. Maybe even because of it, since there was absolutely no control or discipline there, and we could do as we pleased. Sometimes we would drop by whether he was there or not, and hang out with his mother and sisters and just wait for him. One night Richie Ward showed up with a new girl, Martha Johnson. She was a fat blonde with long, nails and thick, black eye-liner. We were introduced, and then she and Richie huddled together on the couch on a pile of clothes. I don't know how they could do that, consider what might have been crawling around in there...in full view of Paddy's mom, and us, they started to make-out, without the slightest embarrassment. I was glad they didn't come along with us when we went out. That night, for the first time Paddy wore a striped polo shirt and pale blue slacks instead of his Navy uniform. The slacks were soiled and frayed at the cuffs and the shirt was too short for him. We missed his uniform, it was such an integral part of his personality. He was not as aggressive, or as confident. I asked him why he didn't wear it and he replied "I had a job interview at Nedicks." He was subdued and remote while we were together, and finally, we went home early. The next time I saw Paddy, he was back in uniform, and I never saw him without it again.
By Christmas we learned that Richie Ward got Martha Johnson pregnant and they had to get married. I saw her once in front of the movie and my eyes tried to avoid her big belly. She was only a little older than me and already her teeth were black and falling out. "Aren't you scared?" I asked her. She looked so peculiar, her beautiful blonde hair all teased up neatly and her make-up so carefully and artfully applied and then the black and missing teeth. "No," she smiled. "Richie's got a good job with his dad now, and his mom treats me real good." She spoke like an adult and I thought it would be a long, long time before I ever felt grown-up.
All of that responsibility didn't stop Richie from going out with us though. He drank harder and did more drugs than anyone and Carole told me he even tried smack. Sometimes he nodded out on the subway and Paddy had to drag him out when we reached our stop. Lots of times he just carried Richie around town and we'd tell him not to even bring him along but Paddy loved Richie more than he loved anyone although I never understood why. During one of Richie's lucid moments on a biting-cold night on the el, he told me how much he liked me and how he'd like to go out with me. I laughed at him and said, "But you're married!" Paddy heard me laugh and he spun around to face us. His eyes were narrow little slits and he snarled at Richie "You have to have everything, don't you? First you knock up Martha now you're going for her?" Richie and I were both startled. Paddy swelled with anger, eye's bulged and Irish flushed as he yelled at Richie. His breath came out in great frosted balloons, "Is this what you're gonna be forever? A junkie and a cheat?" He yelled at him. Richie cringed as if he were being hit and Paddy redoubled his attack. "You've got a BRAIN, man! You have OPPORTUNITY! You have FAMILY!" He swept his arm out to encompass the neighborhood beneath us, packed tightly under the el, "You think this is all there is to life? That the world is only this filthy, fucking neighborhood? It's a big world out there, and you're just blowin' it all away.!" He walked half-way up the platform, shivering in his now inadequate uniform, and struck a pose. "You gotta do things RIGHT." I felt guilty. For once I was grateful when the train finally came and drowned out his words.
Once on the train we took our accustomed seats in the back so the four of us could face one another. Carole shouted at Paddy, kidded him about wearing his uniform all the time. He yelled back at her "I'm prouder of this uniform than I am of anything else in my life. The Navy was a great place to be -- they do things RIGHT there." She laughed at him, "Then why'd you leave, Dummy?" He hunched over avoiding Carole's face and his answer was lost beneath the steel wheels. Later that night he grabbed me again, and I thought that he would finally kiss me, but instead he told me I shouldn't go out with them anymore, because they were bad and I was good, and then he abruptly let me go. Of course, this fired my lust further and I would have followed him to the very gates of Hell, which in fact, I did.
Paddy didn't get the job at Nedicks. I guess he didn't want to go back to school, either, or maybe he couldn't afford to go back to school -- he might even have been kicked out of school and I just didn't know about it. Whatever, he spent each day cruising the streets, hustling dope or chicks and scrounging just enough money to get high.
Carole and I cut school one day, and decided to see exactly what he did when he wasn't with us. We were crossing Broadway under the el when we saw him and Big Richie, but they didn't see us. I guess we thought it would be a laugh if we just followed them without their knowing about it for awhile. It took me unaware, from this distance they both looked very shabby. I didn't want to see that though, and followed them through the sharp cold, my eyes never leaving the frayed blue and white of Paddy's uniform. Carole and I giggled, jumping now and then into a warm doorway, or hiding behind one of the massive steel girders that held the tracks high above the street.
She poked me and pointed to the steps of the el, "Look who's here." It was Richie Ward. It was unusual for him to be out during the day because he was working for his father. Well, he was obviously very, very stoned, and just sort of hung on the steps, one foot up and partially supported by the cold steel banister, ascending the steps in slow-motion, pulling himself up by his hands. "Oh, God," I muttered, "he's so stoned." Carole corrected me, "No, that's what he looks like when he's wasted. Probably doing smack again." We were in the exact middle of the block. From there we could see the steps that led up to the el on both sides of the street. On the west side of the street Big Richie and Paddy were going up the steps to the train platform, and on the east side of the street, Richie was going up the steps. They did not see one another. Carole and I planned to go upstairs behind Paddy and Big Richie, and surprise them on the train. Maybe we'd go partying in the village.
We waited in the station near the token booth, it was warm there and we would not be seen. We laughed at how we would surprise them. The station was empty this time of day, and every now and the we'd look outside and listen for the rumble of an approaching train. When we felt the train should be a station or so away, we crept up the steps and watched. Big Richie and Paddy were standing together, and at the very end of the platform we cold see Richie Ward finally reaching the top of the steps. I giggled, he looked like a cartoon, his gray coat blowing in the wind at sharp angles.
Paddy saw Richie and hesitated. Then he slowly, menacingly, walked over to him. Richie was so wasted, I don't think he even knew who Paddy was. Big Richie followed Paddy, one arm outstretched -- I could hear only the approaching train. Carole and I reached the platform, but the boys were moving away from us and didn't see us. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I could see that Paddy was angry as he advanced toward his best friend. Big Richie caught up to Paddy and grabbed his uniform blouse to stop him, but Paddy pulled out of his grip in a shrug. Richie Ward was too high to avoid Paddy, and merely turned his cheek and closed his eyes, but it looked as if he were laughing. I felt something, and started to run toward them and Carole ran after me. The infernal cacophony of the train was like a beast at my back and I ran faster as if I could outrun it -- as if it were crucial for me to do so. I was fixated on Paddy as he grabbed Richie by the front of his jacket and shook him. He shook him so that he looked like a dancing marionette and his feet did not touch the ground. In an instant Paddy had Richie suspended in the air and the next instant his hands were empty and Richie was gone. The train did not even shudder more than if it had hit a newspaper.