the city of my youth

I was told as a kid (by another kid) that if you threw a penny off the World Trade Center it could crush an entire car on the street. Or go right through somebody's head and body. Curious and terrified, I chucked half a pistachio shell over the edge.

The walk from Penn Station to my grandmother's apartment went by Times Square. Back then when Forty Second Street was nothing but sleeze and skank, I managed one time to go into one of the places rather than just look at the pictures in the windows. Inside, I put a quarter into a slot and a window slid open. A woman walked over to my compartment and asked what I wanted. The compartments were aligned in a slight semi-circle so I was able to see what was happening through little windows on the other side of the room. It was sickening. The woman again asked what I wanted and I still said nothing. She said if I gave her two I could touch her. I asked her, "two what?" She said that I knew perfectly well that she wasn't allowed to mention anything about money. I ran out.

I once saw a woman in the street who had jumped from a very high building.

When I was four, a straggly looking man walked up to me with eyes of delight and rubbed my head.

I sat next to an old man at outdoor concert who blew spit bubbles.

Outside a very crowded restroom a woman asked me to watch her baby while she went in.

My grandmother sat us at the very front at a showing of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well... even though people had been sitting for hours holding their seats. We sat on electrical wiring in a place which everyone but my grandmother had deemed to be off limits. As we sat down someone behind us yelled, "they let animals sit here," and my dad turned around and let them know that if they didn't want to be eaten by said animal, they should just shut the fuck up.