memory from childhood. fannie annie they used to call the bloated alcohol wench who lived in our streets...her standin' in front of the bar, short black hair that didn't match her alcohol reddened complexion, looking everywhere, but looking at nothing. she wants in. but she won't be allowed... picture yours truly at eight years old...a few steps away from her...staring...looking at her halter top thinkin'...what if it falls down?...i get to thinkin' of the sight and it repulses me but it'd be my first sight of a real breast...sometimes experiences are introduced to us in this unsavory way...like people whose first sight of a corpse takes place under the grotesque guise of a war casualty, as opposed to those who first see death in a silent wake at a morbidly picturesque funeral home...there is your narrator staring. she smiles as she sees me and tells herself a joke...some old vaudeville one-liners... a few moments of fixing herself...she feels drunkenly self-conscious, and primps herself as a drunk...pulling up her top to make sure it is covering her bosoms, though it is crooked and slunked over them precariously... shifts her polyesther shorts...brushes herself off and the door behind her opens. out comes my father, with that purple coloring in his forehead that comes when he was past the point of being a nice drunk... when he was in that volatile, violent stage. he sees me staring at fannie annie and he stands right next to her and puts his arm around her like she was his sweetheart..."aaay...annie....that's my kid over there..." points to me...he makes a thin, slick grin ...and he grabs her ass..."aAAay...fannie annie... ha haaa...." he becomes a professor and looks at me like he was standing next to a blackboard...he rubs his hands on annie's breast...she is as oblivious as the blackboard she has become..."obzoive..." his typical new york accent...the erl instead of oil voice..."this is how ya hold a tit..." he pulled her breast out from the shirt and cupped it underneath ...like an involuntary response, she pushed his hand away...she doesn't look but annie laughs slightly and shifts to leaning on her other leg. my eyes switch to another direction...I wasn't supposed to see this... this is meant for grownups. i knew i was watching a game i didn't like. "now...ay, don't look away from me...whatta you a fag? you pay attention!.." your narrator shakes embarassed and nervous...the street is suddenly full of life...but there is nobody around. it's the concrete breathing...it's the doors with eyes...it's the sound of the windows talking... all around, yours truly is feeling watched..."aah... she don' give a fuck...she's a rum-dum cunt anyway... obsoive..." his hand reached around and under her ass...he sticks his finger somewhere under the shorts ..."ya stick ya finga in huh TWAT and rub it around...." annie wakes from her stupor and propels herself away from him...he is laughing...."heey....come back.... ahh....so now ya know, son....how ya gotta be with these cunts...." she walks a few feet then resumes her stupefied gazing. my father waves his finger across my nose...."here...smell it...that's what happens when cunts don't take baths. fuckin' dirty bitch." now he has his rage...that rage which he drinks for... he will make me go upstairs and tell my mother that he wants her to come down to the bar right now. My mother will say no and tell me to go nextdoor and stay there until she comes to get me later. i will hear the fight through the walls.

washington the crackhead leaves his house and shuffles his club foot past my door...i recall the day before, when his body lay stiff and drooling in the elevator...up and down he travelled stoned...up to twenty-four, down to one...until i pushed the button on my floor. i heard the ringing bells of the approaching elevator and as the door opened i blindly rushed in...falling over the foul crackhead. he reeked, i wretched. and i pushed him out onto the twenty-second floor hallway and left him there...i was hoping someone would come by and kick him.

now he is dragging his desperate body out onto the slush with a cup in his hand. i still hope someone kicks him. Behind my door once again i find myself...worried that i'll have to go out. again. yesterday it was bad enough...stumbling over washington... but today it's much colder and i'm almost broke...i didn't buy enough food yesterday, so i've got to get some more...or maybe not. i could starve to death and that might be okay...but i'd be regarded afterwards the way the people here regard the old ladies who lie diead for weeks until their cats wind up having to eat them and then the neighbors finally call the police expecting the worst and they find something even worse than the worst. no, i won't go like that. i'll wait until it happens by accident. and it will...lots of people go by accident. and i know i'll be one of them. i'll do what i have to do and wait. meanwhile, let me make a phone call...maybe i can get some food delivered...

"yes...what apartment?"

"twenty-two-jay."

"OH NO...not YOU....come on, give us a break already...you never have money....do you got money this time?"

i cannot tell the truth anymore...nobody believes me....

"yes, this time i do. i swear...just bring me an order of spaghetti and meatballs please...and throw in a can of ginger ale..."

"if you don't pay this time, we'll stop deliverin' to your whole BUILDING and we'll tell everyone it's 'cause 'a YOU... you got it?"

"i'll pay you...i swear."

i didn't pay...and i watched through the peephole as the tiny mexican or puerto-rican or whatever amalgamous latino boy shook his head while he walked back to the elevator...carrying my spaghetti and meatballs and ginger ale. bye boy...

the phone rings five minutes later...i know who it is. not the pizza man...he always threatens me but he never goes through with it because he dare not lose the business of a building with nine apartments on each of it's twenty-four floors...i hate him and hope someone kicks him, too. i know who's still ringing... six times, seven times...keep going, i won't answer....eight times...no more. i sat right next to the phone while it rang... i hugged myself with that wonderful feeling of being able to look at your enemies through a protective fortress....aha.... bill collector, thou shalt not win...surrender...or ring my phone FOREVER!

i've owed american express almost three thousand dollars for about ten years. it would be about six thousand if they counted the cost of all the calls they make to my house each day...i wish there was a debtors prison...i'd be glad to go there if it meant that i'd have amnesty...the phone begins to drive me mad. all day i sit in my chair and think...and when the sun goes down, i turn on the lamps with the bulbs radiating yellow dull light on my table...i have walked a thousand miles in this room, pacing, walking, talking....it's okay to talk to' yourself, i say...but just make sure you hear what you're saying ...i know each floor tile...all of it's marks and scratches and sometimes a new scratch appears out of nowhere and i have to wonder where it came from.

tomorrow i will go down stairs and check my mailbox...perhaps there will be something there i've waited for...but there won't be. i shouldn't kid myself. nobody sends me anything anymore...not even the stupid catalogs come anymore. two years ago i stopped writing...so the rejections don't come anymore. nothing must exist outside this building...well, maybe SOME things do...like the pizza shop, and american express, and the post office. and there must be people outside, or washington wouldn't try to beg for money on the icy streets...but i don't want to check and see. it;s time to watch the news... so i can have a laugh.

you see, i know all there is to know in this world, so the news is comedy...stupid clips of stupid things for stupid people...

before i lay down to sleep i look over at my clock. it says 1:53 and i get up to get a gulp of water from my fridge...and the clock in the kitchen says 1:27 so i walk back to my living room and the vcr clock says 2:10 and i start panicking 'cause i don't know what time it is...what if all the clocks in the world just broke down...how would we know what time it was? wait, i say, the clocks in my house are screwed up because last week i was on an anti-establishment kick. that's why i didn't flush the toilet for a week either...or why i stayed naked... or why i burned all my identification. now i kind of miss my birth certificate. i'm just like the clocks in my house... they can tell the time but it's not necessarily the right time...i can tell you who i am but i may not necessarily be right. i pour the water in a cobalt blue glass but the glass slips out of my hand and shatters all over the floor tiles... the moon is shining in from the window and it sparkles the blue shards...it's like an ocean. and i marvel at its shine for a while...then i walk to bed. i'll clean it up in the morning.

but i didn't clean it up...it just looked so artistically wonder- ful...like it was meant to be there. i have to use the kitchen though, so i made a bridge made from my book shelves that lets me walk over the blue glass fragments...and suddenly today i see my kitchen as a lovely japanese garden...i pull the table out and leave only the blue shards sprinkled all over the floor and my oak bridge supported by phone books and i walk over the bridge and follow it to the sink and back to the fridge and then to my hall- way. wait...maybe i'll do the whole house like that.

but then wahsington comes knocking on my door.

"what do you want washington."

"come on man, open the door..is col'in this muh fuh..."

"naa, i wanna know what you want."

"look, i'll tell ya inside man come awn..."

i opened the door. for the first time since he moved in, washington stepped foot in my house. i'm not sure why i opened the door and let this filthy crackhead in my house...i think i wanted to show him my beautiful japanese garden.

"yo, lissen...you think maybe, uhm...you could, like...help me out man...y'know, 'cause ma check,y'know...it ain't come...you know?... so if you could lend me like, maybe twenty, ah pay you back soon's ah git my check...y'know?"

he wants money. now, what if i don't give it to him? does he kill me and rob me? is he fiendin' for crack? is he ON crack? i ask myself a million questions in the space of a second...my brain working like a supercomputer...i decide what to say...

"lemme check my money first...you want something to drink?"

"na, man...i'll just wait right here...."

my money is in my pocket. i don't even have twenty dollars. i walked back to the bedroom and looked around. i thought to myself... almost out loud...

"he scares the little girl that lives down the hall. he scares the old ladies...he intimidates the other addicts...and he comes to me for money. he looks for sympathy because of his club foot but it's probably one of them junky club foots from shooting up so much."

and i search my closet...

"thousands...maybe millions...die from this crack stuff. all the gunshoots and stuff that kill little kids by accident...all because of this crack shit."

inside the boxes...i shuffle under the papers, under the playboys, under the old shoes....behind the piles of magazines and on top of the old typewriter....i search under my bed...

washington calls out....

"ahm 'o use ya bafroom...."

"sure" i yell out "go ahead..."

i can't find anything...what am i looking for actually? i think of a russian novel i read in high school...what was the title? yeah, the guy's name i remember...RASKOLNIKOV...i always remembered that name...and i get back to my search...thinking...

"washington brings his crack whores up and they hang out in the stairwells...he never bathes...i tried to be nice when he first moved in and this is how he repays my kindness...by asking me for money? money that i don't have???what...does he need more CRACK????"

i start going through the pockets of the clothes that i hang in my closet...i hear washington flush the toilet and get out of the bathroom and i notice i'm sweating. my heart is going very fast. i feel anxious...washington calls out again....

"yo man...wus goin' awn? you ain't got it, then juss say so, man... you don't gotta be frontin'awn it...."

"just give me a minute, and i'll see..."

"yeah, but i gotta get goin'...y'know...i gotta see my girlie..."

is he going to attack me and rob me now? i wonder. and dammit, i think, dammit i can't find anything....ah...wait.....here's something maybe.....

"i'll be out in a minute...."

"yeah, well i'm otta here...i can't be waitin'for this shit."

i come out of the room and stop in the hallway. i hear him shuffle out the kitchen and out the front door. i am standing with a knife in my shaking hand. the slamming door knocks a rush of hot blood to my brain and i realize what i was going to do...and then the rush dies but i walk to my room in a daze. i put the knife back under the stereo and sit on my bed...my hands tremble.

i like the way this feels.

being that i'm afraid of heights, it's pretty funny that I live on the twenty-second floor of my building...don't ya think? so whenever i wanna go out, i have to get in the elevator. now, normally i wouldn't mind riding them once in a while...but doin'it a few times a day has become a routine i'd kill to be rid of...maybe it's the fact that as we pass each floor, a bell rings...._ting_....._ting_ ....._ting_.....etc....so that blind people will know what floor they are on. fine.

there's not a single blind person in any of the 120 or so apartments.

someone put a sign on the elevator...looked like one of those haphazard signs that pianters put up that say, "cution, wet paints"...our elevator sign said, "all you crakcheads (sic) better get out of this bulding (sic) or else your (sic) gonna get thrown out of here by the good tenents (sic)!" it was signed "x". how fuckin' corny. like this letter is gonna really do something....the crackies can't read. what would they do if they could? leave? because some citizen with no balls or language skills threatens them with harm? if i was gonna write some kind of sign in the elevator...and believe me i've thought about it many times....if i were to write one, i would've told the crackies that EVERY tenant in the building wants them dead...and i would've ended it with, "SO??? what are YOU gonna do about it?" with the hopes that they would knock on all the _good_ citizen's doors and threaten THEM. i figure, if these tenants would actually CONFRONT the crackies, rather than say hello to them when they walk in the building, then maybe someone would snap and kill a crackie...hey, bumper sticker idea: kill a crackie for christ. one of them lives on my floor....washington is his name, supposedly. One time, as he lay fetally in a stupor on the floor in front of his door....a door that had to be replaced when some terrific kids taped some blockbusters to it on fourth of july and blew it to shreds...i kicked him in the stomach. his grimace of pain came in slow motion....it was eerie.... surreal, almost, watching my sneaker land in his solar plexis and seeing his drawn out sloth response...maybe it takes a few seconds for pain to register in the crackies brain. i tried it again...this time his hands crawled down to guard his stomach. i felt a little guilty about doing it....it was pretty scummy to kick a man when he's down. but...y'know ....guilt is a useless emotion, as all of my ex-girlfriend's would say after i asked them if they'd feel guilty about cheating on me.

so what was i saying? oh, so this note that "x" wrote stayed up for the rest of the day. at some point in the evening, it was taken down...probably not by a crackie, but by one of the few yuppies that slum by living here. another sign replaced it, though, next day....it said, "A notice to all and sundry: We, the united crack addicts of this illustrious edifice, would like to state here that we abhor these threats of violence, we detest your irrational sensibilities, and pray that you find the time to educate yourself so that your neanderthalesque threats can be lucid enough so as to elicit a proper response."

i wrote that one.

SUBTERRANEA on zooming subway bullet little spic boy blares radio in defiance of laws but wary just the same...he play ultra-high frequency rap ditty like a nigg'd out dog whistle callin' out to the black spots and rovers...who respond accordingly with nodding rhythm head motions ...we wait for the appropriate response...and in come da fuzz... clad in the armor...we assume the instructed positions. display for us the power of badge, of automatic pistol with magnum force, of six dicks on one spic...the arrest takes place with quick trauma to spic skull, he go dizzy for a minute and is thrown onto seat...out come the duct tape...radio taped rapid like a rodeo hog-tie to spic head...speaker to the ear...and soon slow volume uplifts...a few decibels at a time...each turn brings the wince and grimace...spasms until blood runs down side of spic head...arrest will end with deaf and damaged spic to be dragged off and parachuted onto any one of the random assortment of enemy countries...then the demolishing of radio...and out come the photogs...snapping up the visuals...the color of bloddy red skull and dead black metal radio hit the new billboards of subterranean rules of conduct...the resurrection of public hangings laid out in full hi-res color..."little reminduhs faw ya fuckbags! don't fuck wid us! y'uunahstand? y'uunahstand?" say the cop gang leader pointin' his club like he about to jerk-off and squirt us...the damaged spic slinks out of train dragged on thin plastic dropcloth with trail of blood smears...smears being quickly licked up by the groveling voids better know as fuzz-sycophants... who follow and suck shit with desperate aim to please. but cop gang leader jackboots a stray runt sycophant for being too small to please...sycophant will go home and suicide himself but not without taking a few family members with him. cop gang disappears off into tunnel darkness. end of scene. cut to astor place train station kiosk where the old whores are selling body parts...peddling at the top of the stairs we see old mary-tin-leg gimping down towards us... "aay, sell ya some toes! come on...give me a friggin' break, huh? I got kids..." she give us the finger...only one she have left. and her tin leg clanks itself and her few body parts back to the market- place. there is now a government grading of the female species... and if you ain't grade a parime, you gonna be a liability to this town...and as such, yer days be numbered sweetheart. read the one about the one who was forced to have an abortion though she have no uterus...cold scalpel jabbed inside and she is routed out like a hollow tree. all creatures become meat, my friend, at some time. that's the truth.

alfred vitale po box 6872 yorkville station new york, ny 10128