I’d never seen anything like it. Sure, for the natives, the
whole thing was a bore, but for me?
I had grown up in a “nice” neighborhood, which meant that
each house had a large lawn, one or more flower gardens, a stay-at-home mom who
baked her own bread and experimented with new recipes. There was the wildly
thrilling new casserole that would appear, for example, with water chestnuts!
The height of adventure!
So I stepped out the door of the Ritz, and bam! How even to
get into the pedestrian flow? I knew, for example, that I wanted to get down to
Times Square, and that required a left turn out the door on 60th
Street? But how to turn left, when the constant stream of passerby were
trotting in the other direction?
‘Go with the flow,’ I thought, and so I went right, turned
right, and turned another right, until I was on 59th street.
And so I walked on, trying not to appear like too much of a hick. But the city!
The cabs—everywhere! The people, so well dressed, so sophisticated! I watched
as one beautifully dressed woman came out of a brownstone, stepped to the
street, and hailed a cab. A bore to her—one more cab to hail down. But for me,
a marvel! Would I ever learn to do that? Or did you have to be born here, grow
up here, get the rhythm and pulse of the city into your blood, or maybe jeans?
Whatever, I couldn’t imagine it.
The buildings were like nothing back home. The brownstones
that still remained were a novelty—I peered in windows when I could, and
imagined the lives that were lived there. He was a doctor, I decided, and she
was a social worker—they came home each night into that elegant living room,
with the grand piano that had been played by his grandmother, a concert pianist
in Czechoslovakia. They had a leisurely martini by the fire, and then popped
out of their door. The husband, his wife on his shoulder, hailed the cab, and
then they were off to the theater, to be followed by a late supper…
“Get off the rag, bitch, ‘ cause you is not the only Niggah
on the block. And if I catch you messin’ with mah shit one more time, girl, I’m
gonna be wiping the floor with that Niggah face of yours!”
Right—my reverie had been interrupted. The people in front
of me were tall and willowy—they both wore extravagant high heels, the tightest
of miniskirts, and makeup my mother would never have dreamed off. The eyelashes
were nearly whisk broom length and lushness. The eye shadow was magenta on one
girl, a violent crimson on the other. The lipstick was a wild, though
complimentary shade, and both wore the darkest of lip shadows. Have you seen
the Rocky Horror Picture Show? Well, these girls made Dr. Frankenstein looked
like a school librarian.
I followed behind them, fascinated. Where were their
mothers? Who could have let them out, looking like that? True, they were older
than me, but I would never have dared…. I knew it was rude, but I couldn’t help
staring at them. All of a sudden, they erupted in laughter, and in song:
“’There’s a new kid in town!”
“I don’t wanna hear it.”
“There’s a new kid in town!”
Right, I’d been spotted. Should have known—I was wearing
Madison, Wisconsin all over my West High School face.
“OK—you got me,” I told them. “Do you know the way to Times
Square?”
“Girlfriend, do we know the way to Times Square! Why little
miss thang, we virtually IS Times Square. We is know up and down Times Square
for our vast beauty, wit, and repartee! Yes’m, the mayor herself got into a
hissy fit, when the entire city council chose to up and sit at out table at 21.
Why, those boys couldn’t stop ordering us drinks! Fortunately, they was a squad
of limousines, ready to haul our Niggah asses back to our humble abodes. Which
would be your average penthouse, overlooking the river!”
“Mine’s overlooking the park!”
“Don’t you listen to little miss Thing, dear, ‘cause she got
less than the cockroaches scampering over the kitchen floor of the Hell’s Angel
tenement that she crashes!”
“Bitch! One more word, and I is sending your fat Niggah ass
straight into that traffic!”
“Yeah? Well you can eat out my black Niggah cunt, bitch!”
“Oh don’t you wish!”
“Look, I’ sorry if I upset anybody, or anything…”
The most flamboyant grabbed my arm, and addressed me in a
stage whisper.
“You must excuse the outrageous behavior of my sometime
companion, the former Manuela de la Puta Madre,
as her whorish mother called her, when she was born into the humblest of
circumstances, down there in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Yes, that was the spawning
ground of señorita Manuela, and my, did she live up to that name! Though it
could have been Lingüela, or Bichuela or even, two or three days a
month, Culoela! Because not everyone
is as refined as you and I dear….”
She patted my hand as she said this, and looked archly at
her companion.
“No, we is ladies of refinement, is we not? Not like some,
who slept their way from the bottom to the top and then down to the bottom
again of San Juan society. That is, after she got done doing all the jibaritos up there in the mountains. So
she accepts my gracious invitation to accompany me on my very numerous forays
into the very highest circles of New York society….”
“Bitch couldn’t pay her half of the rent on that basement
dive she calls an apartment….”
“The Rockefellers, the Carnegies, you know. Lovely people of
distinction and refinement…”
“So she start whoring to pay the man, and then she gets the
idea—call her childhood friend. So I fly up here, and what do I find? Girl’s
laying tricks left and right, with every dick’s got twenty bucks in his pocket.
On the ten most wanted list of the Venereal Disease Board. Known to every
precinct captain in the borough!”
“Pay no mind to Miss Manuela,” whispered the other, though
people across the street could easily have heard it. “She is suffering from
various mental conditions, which I am laboring daily and nightly to combat. Oh,
not a day goes by that I suffer for my generosity! How I am repaid for my
kindness!”
She had assumed the voice and mannerisms of a southern
belle—one of Scarlett O’Hara’s dear friends….
“Anyway, it is providential that we should meet, because who
knows what unspeakable things dear Miss Manuela might do, down there in
Times Square! I force myself, dear, to go with her me, for I fear for her
safety, I most assuredly do! “Cause don’t you know, Miss Manuela gets near
anything in pants, and she completely LOSES control. All but knocks them over
and into the curb, hits ‘em so fast they don’t never feel the clothes being
rips off their backs, and then, girlfriend, is she on ‘em! Nearly tears the
balls of ‘em, so desperate she is!”
“You cunt! You stop that jive-ass Niggah mouth of yours, or
I’ll rip the balls off’n you!”
“What does she mean?”
“Delusions, dear. Part of her sickness. She is uncertain and
insecure of her feminineness, and so questions…”
“Huh—that why you wearin’ that thong? You know what you got
taped up there up to the brown eye!”
“Please excuse her…”
Oddly, it didn’t seem to matter, this fight between them; it
had the familiarity of dirty dishes in the sink. And so it continued all the
way down Broadway. And just as curiously, no one paid the least attention to
us. In Madison, Wisconsin, there would have been a fleet of police cars tailing
us….
“And now, dear—prepare yourself, as we is about to enter the
rarified world of salon society. Those writer and thinks and captains very
especially of industry! Scions of the very very-ist of societies! Gentlemen by the
scores await our highly critical eyes, all very much desirous of making our
elite company. This dear, is Times Square!”
It was a visual riot, an assault on the senses. There were billboards
flashing everywhere, neon lights in ever window, people ducking into and out of
shops, others thrust pamphlets into our hand, rats scurrying in the gutter. And
every blinking, flashing, pulsating sign?
“XXX”
“Busty Babes Live for You!”
“Male Only Bookstore!”
“The Ram”
“Girls Delite!”
“What is this!” I asked.
“Here you is, girl friend! You have arrived, sweet miss
thing, into the very creamiest of cream of New York society! “Cause the very
same gentlemen who denizen this here square will be taking their wives to the
Metropolitan Opera Ball two hours from now. But now, they seek relief! They
seek distraction! They seek the discerning judgment and cultivated good taste
of young ladies like moi, and the
former miss Manuela de la Puta Madre, late of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Yes, we is
here! The gentlemen await!”
And here, she grabbed my arm, and led me into the Triple XXX
Arcade.
