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INTEGRAL MEMOIR
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| Later that morning me & some of Tonio’s other kids were playing in Irving Square Park, watching the old black dudes who would gather on the cement benches & play chess on the cement chessboards. That’s when I saw Iggy, Danny & the other kid. They were across the street & running towards us. Then I heard an explosion in 1 of the old, burnt-out old houses. As they came toward me I could see the glee in their faces. I asked what they were doing & Danny said they were ‘fuzzin’ the junkies’. I asked what that meant & Iggy pulled out this little red, round container thing with a string coming from it. I asked what it was & he said, ‘A blockbuster, ya’ dummy!’ He explained that if you took a match & lit it, the match caused a big explosion. Danny said they loved to light them & throw them at the junkies & rats that lived in & near the buildings. They offered to show me. We went across the street to this huge pile of rocks. The fat kid whose name I don’t remember asked if we could play King of The Hill on the pile. It looked like a dangerous thing to do, but before I could ask what he meant Iggy told him to shut the fuck up. We were here to ace rats, not play games. After a few minutes of searching we found an old dumpster where there seemed to be a mother rat nursing her ratlings. Iggy pointed this out to us. The nameless kid seemed nervous, but little Danny smirked, as if he knew exactly what Iggy was gonna do. He lit a blockbuster & was about to toss it in the dumpster when this old gray-haired hag came down the other side of this alley. She screamed a hideous scream our way & I was petrified. She looked about 100, wore dirty, smelly clothes & pulled a metal shopping cart on wheels behind her. She had clothes & all sorts of crap in the basket. She yelled that she was sick of Iggy & the others ‘stealing’ stuff from ‘her’ dumpster. She tossed the bottle she was drinking from at us. Iggy retaliated by throwing the blockbuster at her. Somehow it landed inside her clothes & she yelled & stuck her hands into her coat & dress looking for it. We ran the other way & then turned around as it exploded. The smelly old woman fell to her back. She had run into the middle of the courtyard that adjoined 5 of the burnt out buildings. The echo of the explosion still reverberated as we ran up close to her. There was blood on her chest & her right hand was bloody & seemed to be missing a finger as she clutched it to her bosom. She cackled as we approached. The fat kid covered his eyes. Danny yelled, ‘Ya got her Iggy!’ Iggy seemed joyous in his triumphant battle over what seemed to be an ongoing enemy. I had never seen anything like it. Then the woman roared up & scared the shit out of us. The fat kid, Danny & I jumped back but with her still good hand she grabbed a hold of Iggy’s ankle as he backed away. She seemed to want to try & bite it. Iggy took a stick & started beating the old crone. The fat kid started tossing little rocks at her head. I just stood in horror until Danny came running. Apparently he had run back near the dumpster & gotten 1 big gray alley cat they all knew. As he neared he tossed the cat onto the old woman’s bloody chest & she let go of Iggy’s ankle. The cat started hissing & mauling the old woman’s face, as Danny chimed in, ‘Go get that cunt, Rex.’ Apparently Rex & Danny had a Dr. Dolittle kind of thing going on. As the cat attacked the woman all 4 of us started walking away. Iggy said that that old bitch needed to be taught a lesson. Before we got all the way back to the alley he rushed back towards her, picked up a heavy rock, & dropped it on her knee. The crack echoed through he courtyard. Shaken, Danny put his arm around me & told me ‘dere ain’t nothin’ ta worry ‘bout. She always starts in wit’ some 1.’ When we got back to the park I felt that the trio of kids now accepted me more as 1 of them. I told them that we could go see a movie. I showed them my $5 bill- that could pay for all 4 of us, + candy & soda. Iggy smiled & said that I had sucked dick. Danny & the fat kid giggled. I paused, then said, so what if I had, I was richer than them. Danny told me that they could get into the Ridgewood Theater for free, just by sneaking in the back way & climbing into 1 of the old elevated theater boxes. He did not seem as repulsed by my sucking dick as Iggy was. But none of these kids took me up on my offer. Our little adventure together faded as quickly as the presumed bonding I had felt. Over the next few months &- eventually- years I continued at Tonio’s. Iggy moved away, & I saw less of the fat kid. Danny & I became, if not friends, good acquaintances. There was 1 time he told me of how he hated these 2 kids who were brothers because they had tortured & murdered Rex the alley cat, & many other cats. It seemed odd that Danny, who loved killing mice & rats, had such affection for cats. Then, again, I’ve always thought them barely a step above rats, myself. Danny said the older red-haired kid, about our age, was named Ditty & he had a younger blond brother who always terrorized the Stephen Street kids - as Danny called’em - with his loud Big Wheel tricycle. Ditty & Roughrider (as the younger brother was known) would pay 1 day. Danny hated these 2 & plotted their downfall. But, as years passed Danny moved away & I became a full-fledged male prostitute. I worked for a rival of Harold Rankin’s. I’d almost forgotten about Danny until 1 day, over 20 years later, in the mid 1990s, I was in the hospital, just having been diagnosed as having HIV when I got a letter delivered to me. No, it wasn’t from Tonio. He had died of cirrhosis in the early 80s. & it wasn’t my dad. He also had died a few years after Tonio, of a heart attack. We had reconciled, a bit, although he did not approve of my lifestyle. & it wasn’t my mom. That would be a year or 2 later. Believe it or not, of all the people I had ever known, most of which had abandoned or forgotten about me, or just up & died, the letter was from ‘little Danny’. Although he was a man, now, I still conjured up the idea of his boyish face as I read it. Apparently he had heard of my situation from a friend of a friend. Years earlier he had kept tabs on me when he found out I was hustling out of a fag bar named Manny’s, in East New York, in Brooklyn. He knew the crowd I knew & then 1 day my name was mentioned by some rogue cop he had met in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the city near where he lived. The ‘cop’ was apparently threatening him & warning him of how many of the people he knew had met with bad fates. I was 1 of the examples named. After hearing of my state Danny had called around back in New York & located the hospital I was in. His letter recounted the rat & bag lady incident. I had nearly forgotten it. He also said he wished for me the best, & that I would recover. He told me some of the dark turns his life had taken & I must admit - save for the HIV I had contracted - I would not have traded my life for his. But, the most interesting thing was that he told me he had become a poet. & from what I can judge a pretty good 1. Ya wanna read it? Here it is, take a look:
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