"The Gifts Brooklyn Gave" by Brittany Knott - 2024 Brooklyn Non-Fiction Prize Winner

     

         The Gifts Brooklyn Gave

             by 

         Brittany Knott 

 

 

It’s hard to explain why Brooklyn has captured me. It’s been over ten years now, and I think my family has given up  on me ever coming back to South Carolina. 

It’s been a gift. And I don’t mean pictures snapped on the Brooklyn Bridge or that one spot in DUMBO. I mean living here. Making it home.

I grew up in the South, on an old peach orchard, and I never had any desire to live in New York. Had never even been here except briefly on a family trip to see the Statue of Liberty (but we stayed in New Jersey to avoid the scary city).

          When I moved here my grandmother worried. A lot. Every crime that happened in any borough, she seemed to be the first to know about it. I think Fox News had convinced her I was living in a horrible, godless place led by crooked politicians.

And how could I explain? It’s just a place after all. But Brooklyn is where I became a true adult, where I had my first panic attack, where I learned how to stand up to drivers who are disregarding traffic laws. Brooklyn is where I became a mother.

And Brooklyn is where I met Ms. Dottie.

Being far from biological grandmothers, we jumped on the chance to “adopt a grandparent” at the local health center– a place both vast and sad. Some stayed just a short while for rehab, and some, like Ms. Dottie, stayed forever.

I was a stay-at-home mom– a rare thing in this wealthy neighborhood. My daughter wasn’t in school  yet , so we spent our days together. So much empty time! Surely we could go every single week to the Cobble Hill Health Center. I picked Tuesdays. And so every Tuesday afternoon I pushed my big stroller into the health center and signed myself in. I always wondered what the staff thought of me–a white woman and her daughter visiting a blind black elderly woman every single Tuesday for years.

Sometimes we brought snacks. She loved peanut M&Ms. Sometimes she was in her chair, sometimes in bed. She always had fiery opinions to share. She would often badmouth the staff while I nervously kept an eye out to make sure they didn’t hear. I got her a money belt to wear because she was convinced they were stealing her money. Everytime I came, she had me count it and write down the total. I would hear about her childhood in Florida, and about her late husband. She never liked her roommates and I always wished she would get a roommate that she could talk to and enjoy. Because they had so much empty time to fill. She called my daughter “Bear” and I still don’t know if that was a pet name or because she thought that was her name. We started the  visits when “Bear” was about six months old. That was easy–I could roll her stroller right in the room and she would sit happily. As she got older and more mobile, the visits got a bit tricker for me. But Ms. Dottie heard her as she learned to talk and to walk–stretching her hands out and grabbing Ms. Dotties knees. Sometimes, when the weather was nice, I would push Mrs. D to the back patio. On her birthday we had strawberry milkshakes from Hagan Daz.

Bear, when she became old enough to talk, would  sometimes ask me why we go to visit Ms. Dottie and I say, “Maybe she is lonely and we can help with that.”

One Tuesday, Mrs. Dottie was sitting in the common room with her dark sunglasses that we gave her last Christmas and her bright floral dress. Her friend Mr. Mike was to my left. We all talked for a bit and laughed at Bear, with her dress over her head and then Mr. Mike looked at me and said, “Well, how are you?”

I babbled a bit about this trouble with anxiety and sleep and being so sad about it. And this man, old before he is actually old, in a wheelchair and separated from family, listened to me and assured me that it would get better…like some sort of prophet, he was right.

          I had brought Ms. Dottie unsalted corn chips (“Those ones that taste like cornbread.”) I didn’t bring dip or anything, and I can hardly think of a more unexciting snack. Ms. Dottie asked me to offer it to people around the table, and everyone wanted some. I don’t know why, but it struck me. The simplicity, the gratitude, the beauty of these people.

          I know I tell Bear we visit because  they could be lonely, but maybe I am actually starving for perspective that is true and right.

 

Life in a city can be a bubble, just like anywhere can. But in Brooklyn I have found people of truly all kinds. Maybe that’s what I was scared of before I moved here: being surrounded by a mix of people with different beliefs, different languages, different backgrounds and different politics. But, as is usually the case, the scariest things can end up being the sweetest.

 

Raising kids in a city can be confronting, sure. It is a bit alarming to walk by someone shouting about various conspiracies with your four-year-old, but it’s given me the opportunity to tell my kids about mental illness when they ask “Mommy, why is that woman shouting at us?”  Once, when a Very High man waltzed into the dog park and started rolling on the ground, I turned to my daughter (now nine) and said “Please don’t do drugs.”

 

I didn’t expect to be taught so much by these Brooklynites. I’ve been prayed over in a Marshalls, and had “mazel tov!” pronounced over my pregnant belly in a Nordstrom Rack. I’ve made friends who are moms like me–in the trenches and desperate for meet-ups at the “dirty-toy-playground” with cortados and dirty hair.

 

   I’ve also met people like Mark.

Mark, who lived under the overpass near my apartment for about three years. He sometimes was having very heated conversations with himself (or with someone I couldn't see/ didn’t exist). But other times he was lucid and he always remembered my name. Sometimes I wondered what it could be like if life were not broken and Mark was my neighbor in a different way. If his mind was whole and he lived in my building.

          There was also Patty. I kept seeing her in Trader Joes. Always buying a single vanilla yogurt and nothing else. She had a grey pixie cut and bright blue eyes; her clothes looked worn and dirty.
           One particular day, as I was leaving Trader Joes, I saw her sitting on the bench in the entryway. Before I lost my courage, I sat down beside her. She was eating her vanilla yogurt with great vigor. I wondered if it was all she would eat that day. I had my daughter with me (always). I tried to start a conversation with her after sitting awkwardly for five minutes.

“I, uh, think she (“Bear”) is jealous of your yogurt.”

Nothing.

“Weather sure is gross, huh?”

Nothing. I was starting to feel lame and a bit like I was annoying her. Finally I did what I should have done to start. I asked her what her name was.

“It’s Patty.”

“Oh! Short for Patricia?”

“No. Just Patty.” Of course it was. I loved that it was. I felt desperate to hear her story, but knew I had to walk away then. She had opened up enough.
I still see Patty from time to time (almost always at Trader Joe’s). I  always wave and offer a meek “Hi Patty!” But she doesn’t say anything in return–just a small smile at my kid. I’m glad to know her name.

 

I’d have never known those people if not for Brooklyn.

And some of these people have become friends–dear ones. A terribly  hard part about living in Brooklyn is people often leave. City life can drain bank accounts and wear a body down.

But whenever I walk by your old apartment buildings, I remember.

The place you watched my kid so I could get therapy every week. The place you threw my baby shower. The place I cried with you.  The apartment you cleaned for me while I recovered from my appendectomy and my husband had to take my daughter to the ER.

Then those apartment buildings aren’t just buildings anymore: they are landmarks of my life here. And now there is someone new there (paying even more rent) and it will become someone else’s landmark too.

After a beach vacation, we came back to Brooklyn and went to the Cobble Hill Health Center, as we had done every Tuesday for years.  A nurse saw me coming down the hall and paused. “Oh! Um, hello…I’m so sorry...Mrs. Dottie died.” Even though she was old and unwell, I was shocked.

We went into the common room to process and see some other familiar faces. Everyone was kind, but matter-of-fact about her death.  Bear kept asking “Where is she?” So I told her that Mrs. Dottie was in heaven now and could see and walk–all the things she longed and prayed for. She was no longer stuck in her tiny, dark room with a roommate she hated and a staff that she didn’t trust. But it also meant we would miss her terribly. Tuesdays felt empty after that.

Mrs. Dottie’s daughter called me the next day and told me her mother had died on Thursday and was buried on Monday. I couldn’t believe we had missed it. Her daughter told me that in the obituary they listed my daughter as Ms. Dotties “Granddaughter”. 

When I moved to NYC, I imagined cold shoulders and cold winds. Good food and fast talkers. I never could have imagined this borough that gave us a grandmother.

Sometimes when I’m riding the ferry to Red Hook and the Statue of Liberty is on my right and the Manhattan skyline is behind me, I wonder if it’s Brooklyn itself I love so much or the gifts it gave me.

 

Maybe because it’s been kind to me; been safe for me; been friendship and familiarity to me.

Been some of you in the same boat as me.

 Paddling through muddy, churning waters.

Whenever I leave and come  back I think “oh! This feels good. How did I find you, sweet borough? From the peach orchard, from the suburbs, from the city. How on earth do I belong here?”

When I walk the sidewalk my steps echo:

Home home home.

 

"Modern Orthodoxy" by Elizabeth Levine - 2024 Brooklyn Non-Fiction Prize Finalist

 

 

Modern Orthodoxy 

  by 

Elizabeth Levine 

 

 

In 1973, Brooklyn still belonged to the Jews. Midwood anchored my family to our history in the neighborhood. It served as our atlas. Twelve of us kids grew up together on my block, some across the street, some right next door, and some up the road, almost to the Avenue. We sprawled across East 21^st street like an octopus in eight ungainly directions, all arms and legs and movement.  Kids lived from sewer to sewer.

We crouched in the alleyways between houses or behind apartment buildings or my grandmothers’ blue hydrangea bushes, seeking cover.  Warm weather nights ended with stickball, double Dutch, or games of kick the can. The neighbors gathered on porches and debated everything arguable, backing down only if a ballgame interrupted. The Mets won the Subway Series that spring, and for an entire season, Brooklyn forgot about politics in favor of baseball.

That was my world: this big, beautiful borough was home.  All my aunts and uncles and cousins from converged like an intersection at my grandmother’s house, as if our family house were the equator from which we never strayed north or south, but rested in a state of permanent equilibrium, where safety could always be found. Home. Family. History.

That summer, sunshine stretched across to the shady side of the street. Brooklyn wilted. Scorching heat squeezed the air out from under us. Even the asphalt smoked. Fire hydrants dripped water so lethargically, that they leaked with disappointment. Sprinklers showed their spouts, dreaming of rain. Public pools ran out of water as if the heat wave suffocated the water supply. Ice cream trucks ran out of Good Humor Creamsicles and Italian Ices.

We withstood a shortage of rain, wind, relief, or refrigeration. Shoppers and pedestrians abandoned the avenues from the unforgiving, oppressive temperature rising from tar streets.

The entire borough ignited. Fans and refrigerators blew fuses, sucking out all the remaining electricity; Residents without air conditioners smashed shop windows in frustration, stealing fan floor samples on display at Silverrods’ on Avenue J. Blackouts spread north to the Bronx. At night, Howard Cosell’s voice crackled on the transistor radio in our kitchen, “The Bronx is burning.” 

Brooklyn was also burning, but our firefighters were too exhausted from overtime shifts in the South Bronx, or too busy playing Spades, or too fat from eating donuts with the cops from the 66^th Police precinct. Violence erupted across neighborhoods. Before we realized it, a trail of yellow crime scene tape and white chalk bodies decorated the streets and doorways around us, a visual reminder of how crime would alter all of us.

 Vietnam veterans started coming home that year, ghosts in uniform smoking and shaking in front of the Off-Track Betting storefront on the bad side of the tracks.Frequent muggings at the seedy Avenue H subway station displaced the homeless Vets who drank Mad Dog right from brown paper bags and slept on the park benches, even in winter. Phantom Lords, and the Savage Nomads’ gang members stabbed each other in deserted alleyways.Heroin addicts reclaimed the abandoned buildings along Coney Island;the neighborhood looked as bankrupt and uninhabited as the boardwalk itself.  Nobody pretended they had anything left to lose. Only the Atlantic Ocean stopped arsonists or thieves from stealing the shoreline.

Kids had swarmed the Coney Island amusement park rides and arcades only a year before. Now, parents refused to take their children to the beach, leaving the Cyclone rollercoaster and Ferris wheel perpetually lonely. The New York Aquarium, landlocked by violence on one side and garbage on the other, drowned in bad debt. But when the Russians from Brighton Beach finally refused to swim in the contaminated Atlantic Ocean, then we finally paid attention.

Suddenly, parents supervised us more closely, hovering like seagulls on the pier. Our movements shrunk, restricted to the length of our street. At night, like gunshots, we heard trucks backfire in the distance on Kings Highway. Bars covered first-floor windows, altering our view of the outside. Drug dealers invaded Checkerboard Park, shaking down the monkey bars.  Rats rifled through stagnant garbage cans, ripening in the heat because of the Sanitation Department strike.

Brooklyn stayed home that summer. Jews, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Caribbean Blacks and Russians kept to their kind, afraid of one another. Nevertheless, my immediate bubble remained intact, at least for a little while longer. I attended nursery school at East Midwood Hebrew Day School.  Jewish life resembled Amish country, except that Jews believed in electricity.  This enclave sheltered me, keeping me immune from forces circulating outside of school, waiting to implode. Religion floated throughout the school day, like awe. I sang foreign and sorrowful prayers- the sound of lament.  These forlorn, familiar rhythms became my lullaby. I studied English in the mornings and spoke Hebrew in the afternoons when time seemed more sacred. Hebrew letters seduced me with their intricate shapes and mysterious markings. I loved the magic of hidden vowels, the trick of reading from right to left, and the intricacy of this backward alphabet. Hebrew words, on the other hand, tasted like gravel, gritty, and rough sounding harsh and ugly outside of the refuge of East Midwood’s walls.

Yeshiva students normally walked home in groups.I always stayed in the middle of their herd for protection. Strangers made us paranoid, our xenophobia and suspicions following us from Canarsie to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Our Eastern European great-grandparents had passed down their persecution complex as our inheritance. Whenever I stared at my ancestors' black-and-white portraits,they looked identical, their grim lips wearing only worry.Fleeing the pogroms and frequent invasions from neighboring countries, my relatives abandoned their meager Ashkenazy harvest of only limp carrots, hungry from deprivation and persecution.

Intuitively, I understood I was just not like the other students at East Midwood. In first grade, I discovered we were different from Christians. Suddenly, my perceptions about my neighbors shifted and these differences left small, secular scars. Doubts about my Jewish identity swirled around my ankles, as fierce as fire ants. At six, I found myself with an unforeseen itch, one I could not stop scratching. Would God punish the Jews for being outsiders, by casting them into pillars of salt? Would we evaporate or fold, tumbling out of the Brooklyn sky like shooting stars?Suddenly, being Jewish felt dangerous. My sense of anxiety about God, religion, safety, identity, and belonging grew until I finally brought my fears home to my family.

“Why are all Christians bad?” I asked my parents. Silence. Normally, everyone in my family spoke over one another, forks waving in the air like swords. My father grabbed my arm.

“Where did you hear that?”

“On the playground today at school.”

“I will meet with the Rabbi tomorrow.”

News of my transfer to public school spread quickly. Families stopped talking to my parents, demanding, “How could you leave!” My parents did not respond. Kids I knew since nursery school suddenly would not play with me anymore.

My parents enrolled me in second grade at P.S. 152. Albanian political refugees arrived that year and these foreign boys promptly set fire to the grey garbage cans in the bathrooms.   We tiptoed around them, afraid of matches.

God disappeared that year. I no longer prayed, read the Torah, or spoke Hebrew.  I discovered Blondes, Blacks, and Puerto Ricans. I read my new friends like Braille, mesmerized by their mystery. I met Casey Stein when she plopped down at my table in the cafeteria.

            “Hey, you must be the new girl! My name is Casey. I can tell you everything about everybody. I have been here since nursery school, so I know who people really are.How do you like it here so far?” Casey asked, chomping on her peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

“I like our teacher Mrs. Johnston. She is nice and pretty!” 

“Pretty is not important! What matters is Mrs. Johnston is real. She is the real deal!Casey declared, staring straight into my eyeballs.

The bell rang before I could ask her what that meant.When I arrived at class, Casey was laughing out loud. I heard her say to the girl sitting next to her in the reading circle “THIS book. THIS is the real deal!”             

“So, what’s up, pussycat?” How’s life as the new kid?Where do you live anyway? I live in an apartment building on Ocean Avenue.  You will have to come over and play one day after school. You will love my neighbors-they are all old and speak these funky, weird languages you have never heard before.”Her litany of questions, my inability to answer.

That reminded me.
            “Hey, Casey, what does it mean to be the real deal?” 

            “You don’t know what that means?” she asked in disbelief, leaning closer to me, her plump arms pulling me into her as she cupped her chubby hands, her stubby fingers speckled with hot pink, chipped nail polish. She whispered into my ear, “It means no bullshit. You can trust who they are. Finding the real deal is everything. You will see.” For me, Casey became the real deal.

I was struck by the word “trust.” It never occurred to me not to trust grownups.   

“Do you believe in God?” I asked her at recess.

        “Are you nuts?” “Of course, I do not believe in God. I do not believe in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, either!”

Casey was Jewish but she did not care. She allowed me to forget about East Midwood. I could leave Judaism behind now because Casey gave me a new place to belong.  Suddenly, there was no longer any need or room left for God. She taught me about the Chinese Zodiac, a heresy in Judaism, to worship false Gods or indulge in other paradigms different than our own,

“Hey, we were both born in 1964, the Year of The Dragon. Our horoscope promises us we will accomplish amazing things. Nothing will stop us;we are already on fire!”   She roared with laughter.

Casey reminded me of the sunshine, she burned that bright and that hot.   I reminded myself of dusk, that vaguer period between extremes, not day or night but crepuscular. Without her, I could have faded away and nobody would even notice I had vanished.

“You worry too much, Lizzie, that is your problem. We are kids for Christ's sake, we are supposed to have FUN! You are always afraid.  Live a little. It will not hurt! I bet it would be good for you. Let’s cut class and see the Streakers at Brooklyn College! Then you will have an adventure instead of being a goody two shoes,” Casey said one chilly autumn day.

“What do you mean cut class? I did not do things like cut class. Won’t we get into trouble?And what are streakers?”  “Follow me!” Casey commanded. And I did.

We were friends for a year before she asked me to sleep over.My father convinced my mother to let me go. My father was not afraid; my mother did all the worrying in our house.

We walked to Casey’s apartment building.  It was getting dark earlier now, as fall turned into winter.  I was nervous and I could tell that my mother was too. I was about to enter a world of secrets I would carry within me into adolescence.

She lived in a Gothic pre-war apartment, where her Jewish and Eastern European neighbors appeared majestic in stature, like a mausoleum of refugees, regal with sadness and melancholy. They languished in her building. Many had survived the Holocaust, but never worked again, virtually immobilized to leave the safety of their apartments.  Yiddish and German spilled out from salmon-colored doorways; their foreign accents resonated on the landing.   Garish or depressing mezuzahs marked their doorways,tangible proof that Jews lived there, despite their perpetual state of diaspora. 

The Russian refugees in Casey’s building differed in both class and charm from the Jewish residents. Rough, they spit on the street, as if the taste of the cold war coated their lungs, overtaking their other vital organs like hearts or intestines. The Slavic men drank shots of schnapps from crystal glasses, carelessly slamming them down on their handmade wooden tables in their eat-in-kitchen. Like the Polish men, these Eastern European immigrants usually wore white, sleeveless undershirts. Big and bloated from drinking on the docks at the Navy Yard, they often had to work overtime or double shifts, because they earned minimum wage. After their second shift, the men played late-night poker games in Greenpoint, finding comfort in cards.

Latinos did not live in Casey’s building yet, but several still played dominos in the park on the island divider in front of her complex. Most worked as handymen in the apartment complexes. Jesus, the Puerto Rican superintendent in Casey’s building, lived in the basement apartment of her complex, with his five children, who sprouted like tubers in the dark cellar.

Jesus’ kids hated him with good reason. His older children, joined the Pentecostal church in Sunset Park, just to get away from his drinking.  Even God seemed preferable to his binges. Mimi, his eldest daughter, lay on her twin cot with hot rollers in her hair, in the bedroom she shared with her sister, Lulu. She dreamed of their mother who died in childbirth before the doctor arrived at their farm in Ponce.  When it became obvious that neither the baby nor her mother would survive childbirth, Mimi dispatched her younger brother, Tito, to find Jesus at the bar on the plaza, “El Refugio.” Jesus stumbled drunk and pitiful back up the dusty, dirt road to their two-bedroom house without indoor plumbing.

He heard his wife groaning, squatting like a peasant in the kitchen, pushing down to release the baby, breech, inside of her. She hemorrhaged to death as her baby screamed in protest.

“Coňo!” Jesus cursed. “Name that damned baby Dolores, because already she brought us nothing but pain.”  When Jesus moved to Brooklyn, all he dreamed of was running water and the privacy of his own bathroom.

        Casey’s stepfather, Fernando, was the only other Latino besides Jesus. Tenants often mistook them for one another. They smelled of manual labor: a scent of wood, gasoline, and sweet nicotine. Their odor resembled a mixture of elements: fire, earth, minerals, chemicals, or toolboxes of gadgets. They periodically took seasonal work at the Brooklyn Terminal Market, where they butchered and hung freshly killed goats, blood coagulating around their mouths. but this work was better than the Fish Market where they beheaded fish, gutted entrails, and severed tails, stinking of seafood.

Behind each of these doorways, another tragic immigrant story unfolded waiting to erupt into the light of a new day. It was 1973 in Brooklyn, and I had just stepped into a narrative I could not understand yet, but would change how I saw the world.

 

 

 

"Brooklyn-hearted" by Sharmin Mirman - 2024 Brooklyn Non-Fiction Prize Finalist

   

 Brooklyn-hearted 

     by 

  Sharmin Mirman

 

 

                                                 Trinity 

 

 “To him who has had the experience no explanation is necessary, to him who has not, none is possible.”  Ram Dass, Be Here Now

 

Just look at us!  Are we precious or what?! It’s the summer of ‘70 - another carefree Brighton Beach Bay One day that stretches and yawns into sunset. We bask in the glorious freedom of our youth - of belonging. Our beach guy friends pass around guitars and joints and we sing Joni Mitchell and harmonize to Grateful Dead and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. They’re all older than we are and some of them even call this spot YD Avenue because they’re young divorcees. We have no money, no plans, no worries - just another golden day to inhale the salty sea air, slather our bikini babe bodies with baby oil, get tan and go with the flow. We are just a couple of fourteen year old first base virgin girls - semi innocents but we can hold our own with these guys.

 

Our best and favorite beach friend is The Bear. He’s six feet tall and even though he looks kind of rough he has a gentle aura about him - definitely more of a teddy bear than a grisly one. He is one-of-a-kind special - a wacky wiseman philosopher hippie king who wears the term “freak” like a badge of honor.His voice is low and gravelly when he sings but when he is imparting words of wisdom or quoting Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg it becomes kind of nasal and cartoony. He and his friend Zeb like to make up filthy lyrics to songs like Wooly Bully by Steppenwolf and Amphetamine Annie by Canned Heat. You will judge them if I tell you the words but we think they’re funny. Zeb has wild red hair that he tries to tame with a headband that’s got an eye in the middle of his forehead. He hangs out with The Bear but he’s not cool like him. Actually he’s kind of a drag. He even tried to kiss me once and it was such a bummer! I told him to leave me alone and he said “right on!” and flashed me the peace sign. Even if I liked him that way, he’s so old - like twenty something. Ew!  The Bear would never behave like that. When we’re with him we feel protected and sheltered. He's like our bodyguardian angel.

 

We are tentatively inching our way into the ocean because even though it’s a hot humid July day it takes a while to get used to it. The Bear comes charging into the water and, without hesitation, he flings himself under a wave and bursts up from under it right in front of us. “It is Omni delightful to see you Vaginalinks!” he says joyfully. “Give thanks to the sea! She is Omni refreshing!” Beads of water sparkle on his massive afro and it glitters in the sun like a bedazzled halo. He bends down to cup his hands and douse us with a big splash of cold water. “I love to splash vagina!”he says exuberantly, relishing our reaction with glee as we shriek with laughter. “I love to splash Vagina!” he says again and we all laugh. He beams at us and says “The ocean is holy. Can you feel it?” And we can! 

 

Who are we in this liminal

all time - no time Other?

A divine orchestration

Leads us to a threshold

Graces us with a fleeting

deja vu glimpse through a portal

To realms forgotten

When tethered by gravity

And somatic chains

We see now

through a prism

Where life is eternal

And love is immortal

Exalted. Expansive

A soul pact promise

to reunite - to remember

And we rejoice!

And in a fleeting shift

blink of an eye

This nanosecond knowing

Vanishes like a bubble and

We’re back in our bodies and infused with a mighty intuition that distills his intention down to the purity of its essence. His affection for us is genuine and transcends his words.Wehavea bond that can’t be broken or severed with logic.

 

We know it sounds outrageous. How dare anyone have the audacity to behave like that with a minor, right? If our parents knew we would be forbidden to associate with him but they can never grok what we know for certain.The needle on our true north trust compass points to cherished and safe. The Magic 8 Ball says Yes. Definitely! He’s like a luckytarot card pulled from a magic deck - an oracle with no red flags and three full cups. There’s a sweetness about him - an unedited, child-like innocence that finds wonder and joy in everything. We are dialed into the same frequency -three notes in a chord - a consecrated reunion designed by a holy architect -  baptized in Brighton Beach holy waterand anointed with patchouli.

 

                                                         Bernie

 

“Bernie gonna get your ass fucker!  Bernie gonna get your sorry stinkass!” I didn’t know who Bernie was but the woman outside yelling like an urban  town crier woke my ass up. Six floors below, on East 17^th Street, she heralded the dawn of a new day with a 6:00am “Kiss my ass Motherfucker!”.  By the time I rushed out of bed to look out the window, she was always gone. 

 

There was no telling what prompted these outbursts or when she would strike. Perhaps she was possessed and driven by forces beyond her control to roam the dark, deserted streets of Flatbush, preaching her unholy gospel. Years later, when I finally saw the enigma that belonged with that voice, she wasn’t at all what I’d envisioned. There was nothing unusual or noteworthy about her appearance but as the saying goes, you can’t judge a book by its cover. She was small and lean and her plain dark skirt and simple button down sweater were decidedly unremarkable.  It’s easy to overlook a remainder in favor of a flashy bestseller without ever decoding the secrets within. 

 

Like the mild-mannered Clark Kent, she was incognito too.  However, while Superman was driven to help mankind, her alter ego evidenced no heroic behavior.  The Cardiganed Crusader’s predawn ranting seemed more like a self-serving vehicle to exorcize her demons.  One could argue that her wide-a-wakeup call provided a valuable community service but you couldn’t set your clock by the spirit that moved her.Sometimes I’d see her darting around the neighborhood.  Now and then she would slip into my lobby for a cigarette and sit quietly peering out of the large picture window with one leg dangling down off the wide ledge - her foot jerking and flapping like a fish on a hook.  She’d cast furtive glances over her shoulder through the smokescreen, like someone on the lookout.  Like a fugitive.  

 

 

                                                           Midwood

 

 Brooklyn beats my heart - it flows through my veins - a home that is no longer mine - home of my heart - home away from home.  Memories carry me to my four story walk-up nestled at the dead end of a quiet street on Avenue I. I for Innocent - I for Illusion - I for a seemingly idyllic block with pretty private homes, weeping willow and mimosa trees and a freight train bridge that stretched over the tracks to the dead end on Avenue H. I am on the third floor - Paul is upstairs to the right - Robert is upstairs to the left and there are only three apartments at each landing.

 

We are quite the trio. Paul is wild and sweet and brave and looking for love in all the wrong places - always always always looking - sampling from the buffet of boys and men he goes home with and brings home and cruises on the beach and the park and the clubs - boys boys boys! Paul was ahead of his time - a proud pioneer who wrote a Gay Teachers Newsletter over a decade before Ellen came out on TV and way before we had computers or the internet. He was brave and unapologetic in his truth.

 

Me and Paul both had a crush on the same guy on East 16th Street. He had ocean blue eyes and the thought of seeing him when we walked down his block gave us a little thrill. Maybe it was because we shared our fantasies of what we would do with him that made me blush when he held my stare. I promised myself I wouldn’t look away and that I’d say hello but I just couldn't do it. I was too shy and he was so handsome! Paul wasn’t shy. He was a wild extrovert with an embarrassing scream laugh that turned heads but he didn’t care. He had a child-like energy and a Peter Pan never gonna grow old essence.

 

One night I was awakened by a blast that was so loud that it sounded like a bomb went off in the lobby of our building. Someone was screaming and in the morning I learned that it was Paul. He’d been shot for refusing to give up his wallet. For the first time in his life, his piece of shit father was proud of him because he fought off a thief and survived. That was the only time he ever showed any support for his son. Paul recovered from the gunshot but my dear friend couldn’t fight the demon that blindsided him and stole his light and his life.

 

I sure wish he could’ve lived to see how far we’ve come! Miles and miles and miles. He would’ve loved Queer Eye and RuPaul’s Drag Race and it would’ve been so much fun to watch them together. He’d drive us to the gay beach at Reese Park back in that crazy magical time when I could be topless and my body was rockstar and he could cruise to his heart's content. We’d hold hands and skip and then sit by the shore in our little beach chairs and watch the boys go by. Those beautiful summers feel like a dream - soaking in the sights and the sun - so free - carefree - until we weren’t.

Our friend Robert was on the cusp becoming his authentic self. Perhaps Paul was an inspiration - a role model of what it meant to be free. He was blossoming and becoming the man he dreamed he could be. He had been lonely for a long time and he was excited to be coming out and dating men. It felt so good to see him happy and trying on an identity that resonated with him.

We spent many Saturday nights together. We’d rent movies from the laundromat/video store on Avenue J (please be kind, rewind) and then walk down the street to a little neighborhood hole in the wall where we’d get a hot and delicious slice of heaven at DiFara’s Pizza.  It was our little gem long before it became a New York icon.

Robert’s apartment was always a mess and he’d say “I vacuum once a year whether it needs it or not” with a knowing grin that said he was in on the joke.  He had an impressive collection of porn magazines. We’d sit on his couch and look at photos of swoon worthy young men with perfect breasts and doe eyes that seemed to look right into your soul. I could understand his fascination. He’d watch me staring and, with a sly smile, he’d say “Don’t let the pages stick together”.

When he confessed that he was curious about drag and asked me if I’d help him to dress up I was thrilled. It was beautiful to see him flourishing and reveling in his authenticity. And then something unexpected happened. His mother set him up on a date with a friend’s daughter - a naive woman who, at thirty, still lived with her parents and a bed full of stuffed animals.

 

Although I knew that he had been lonely for a long time, I was shocked when Robert said “I’m gonna marry that girl!”. And what a heartbreaking price he paid for that marriage: shrouding himself in lies and deception. Instead of a cool curated drag wardrobe, his courage, dreams and potential were relegated to the closet and locked away.