Bronx Noir

A snapshot. We’re in the living room of my parents’ house on Gunther. We’re Jews, baby, the last of a dying breed in the Bronx. Gary is sprawled on the love seat, legs spread wide with boots on the chair arm. His vest is dirty as fuck and he’s wearing no shirt underneath. Baggy jeans, the brown ones I don’t like with speckles that look like dried blood. He really looks like shit, but it works. As I said, we’re in my parents’ house.

My mother is dead now. So too is my father. Both died this year. My sister Diane died several years before but just a few years after Dad stopped fucking her. Andre, he’s in jail with nothing but a conviction and no remorse. Ten months before they found him at the gate, trembling like they had dunked him in ice. Dude was still clutching the bloody hatchet and shaking like he got fits or something. The Post said they charged him for double murder and resisting arrest. My father had three hatchet wounds in his forehead, fingers chopped off, probably from trying to block the blows. My mom had to be buried with a closed casket. But enough about them. Gary is going to kill me.

Like just about everybody in the Bronx now, Gary is from Jamaica. I don’t know if he was doing guys given how Jamaicans, like, kill homos and shit, but I know he used to kill back there. Back in the ghetto and shit. See, I know, I represent. I miss him. I hate that. I sound like somebody old, and I have to be tough like him. I want to say I miss him, but I can’t. Maybe I’m just relieved. I don’t know. Some things you can’t unsay and some things you can’t undo. I’m at Hammersley and Ely and a car just slowed down. They used to kill people in this park almost every night before Rudy cleaned things up.

Another snapshot. When I met Gary I was already turning tricks, like four months after Daddy kicked me out of the house and I went downtown just to see the river. Nothing but boys in the street. I was so fucking hungry, yo. One of the boys was eating fried chicken. He handed me a piece and I ate the bone. Mad hungry. Chill, bitch, he said. I asked where he got the chicken, and he said I should let an uncle pay for it. One of them will be driving up in his Chrysler minivan soon enough. I’d only have to do two things. One was wait. He didn’t tell me what the other one was.

A car pulled up. He got in and waved at me. Darkness was hiding everything. I turned to go back to, I don’t know, uptown, I guess, even though that would take forever. Then this car pulled up and stopped beside me. “You’re new,” the man said. I didn’t know what he meant. I asked if he could get me some KFC and he said, “Get in.” I’m not stupid. I was sixteen and I knew a lot of shit and it’s not like I was going to vomit. Part of me wanted to be in the car. He got me some chicken and when I started to eat he unzipped his pants and took it out. I thought jacking off a dude was the same as jacking myself off and I was hungry. I grabbed his cock and he said, “No, baby,” and pointed at my mouth.

Gary’s coming for me. So stupid, all the shit that lead to this.