Rat Salad

One of the most infamous things about New York is the excessive dirt and filth that permeate the city. The horrible malodorous smells that make you want to forget about eating anything...ever, seem to be only a block away. With these sights, smells and sleaze inevitably comes the vermin that feed upon this filth. No I'm not talking about divorce lawyers - but actual vermin of the 4-legged variety. Rats.

Jon Franks, my friend whom I originally met in Washington, DC, had returned to live in his native New York state about a year after I had moved there. Jon's first roommate was a smooth-talking and at times charismatic guy by the name of Danny Eudell. Danny could be brash and obnoxious but he had a good heart and an off-beat sense of humour that I liked. One evening upon leaving Jon and Danny's apartment for a night of drinks and not talking to women, we passed the garbage bins that all residents of their building used for trash disposal. What always struck me as being odd about trash disposal in New York City was the fact that there were no back alleys and spaces away from sidewalks and streets where trash could be stored. As a result all trash was literally on the sidewalk in bins or storage areas adding to the stench of the city. As we passed the trash barrels in front of Jon and Danny's building Danny paused and said "Wait, you guys gotta see this," and he proceeded to lightly kick or shake one of the open trash barrels. Inside the barrel he had moved there seemed to be a lot of activity and commotion and soon a rat climbed out of one of the barrels and scurried away into the darkness. This lead rat, however was followed by another and then another and yet another rat until what seemed like an entire colony of rats which had been inhabiting this one standard-issue "roughneck" trash barrel seemingly disturbed of their "business", had spilled out into the night. With long thin short-haired bodies and quivering tails, the rats visible to me as only silhouettes, escaped from the trash barrel. Their slimy dirty bodies and the action of their emptying seemed to evoke a similar feeling of emptying in my self. A feeling that I could detect in the pit of my stomach that made me nauseous and threatened to expose itself as that evening's dinner on the sidewalk of 91st street.

Jon and I looked at this spectacle and grunted our disapproval. "Oh god, Danny" Jon said under his breath. Danny laughed knowing that the joke that nearly goes over the edge of acceptable is often the most funny and this joke was right on that edge.

"I did that last night too and like 15 rats came out of there", he explained. Jon, whose level of squeamishness was almost as bad as mine was speechless. I continued walking down the rest of 91st street in search of the cab we needed trying to forget the horrible spectacle I had just seen. Obviously I wasn't successful.

St. Splatty's Day

So after 7 or so months I thought now would be a good time for a new post. These next bunch of posts I'll be making will look back upon my time living in New York Fuckin' City. When I was shooting heroin with Rockets Red Glare and living in a fleabag apartment.

My first St. Patrick's Day in the city was relatively uneventful. I had been out before with some friends but the night was still relatively young when I headed home, especially by "Big City" standards. While walking home from the 86th Street subway station I turned down 88th Street towards 2nd Avenue when I passed a young skinny blonde girl blubbering and crying quietly to herself. She had her arms clutched around her shoulders and was wrapping her red zippered sweatshirt across her chest. Given her sniffling and whimpering (and thinking she was kind of attractive) I briefly considered stopping to ask her if everything was ok. But of course I didn't and kept right on walking. Towards the end of the block at 2nd Avenue was one of the more infamous college-kid dive bars in the neighborhood. I had never set foot inside (my college dive bar days having been over for a little while now) and tonight I realized I probably never would.

A large crowd of drunken revelers had spilled outside the bar onto the sidewalk. There was much yelling, commotion etc. I tried to decide if I should wade through the crowd or make a wide turn around them and continue on home. But before I could decide a small "knot" of people emerged from the crowd on the corner and began to make its way up 88th street directly in my path. I slowed and then watched as one stumbling greasy looking guy in his early twenties was pushed out of this small "knot" directly towards the open trap door in the sidewalk that the bar used to receive shipments of the awful horsepiss they passed off as beer to their customers. I had often passed by these open trapdoors in New York City and they fascinated me. They were a peek into the operations of local businesses showing Guatemalan barbacks smoking Marlboros on recently delivered kegs or Bangladeshi bodega clerks peeling potatoes. I sometimes thought that these open trapdoors might be a falling hazard to an ususpecting pedestrian - or in this case a stinking drunk greaseball. The greaseball didn't wobble or teeter on the edge of this trap door but instead fell directly in, ass-over-teakettle and disappeared into the bar's "dungeon". At the time I was shocked to see that this type of event that had only existed in my thoughts had occurred right in front of me. But then I remembered the rest of the angry drunks who had claimed the sidewalk as their own and crossed the street so as not to be drawn into their pointless argument.