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10 fuckin business! I wanted to yell, but he was much big-
11 ger than me and I was in no state to defend myself.
12 It scared me the way that man stood there because in
13 the city you learn to be scared of every man that is unfa-
14 miliar and takes an interest in you. My stomach was
15 turning over in a nervous sort of way. I released the tight
16 grip I had on my legs and let them stretch out in front of
17 me. Then I stood, very slowly, because the sickness
18 wasn t gone yet.
19 I started walking real calm-like. I couldn t let that
20 man know I was worried, couldn t let him know I was
21 under the influence because they re both invitations for
22 assault, both signs to let him know I was free for the tak-
23 ing. So I started walking like nothing was wrong. Only it
24s was hard because I heard those other steps fall in behind.
25 I had a plan brewing. I d walk at an even pace to the
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end of the block then take off running in whatever direc-
tion was nearest. I could see the shadow moving in. I
didn t think I could make it to the corner but I did. I
increased the rate of my legs to superhuman speed, run-
ning until I couldn t feel my feet touching pavement
anymore.
I wasn t at all surprised when I heard the quickening
of steps trailing behind me. It made me push harder
until I felt the ache of fire throughout the skeleton of my
body. I knew if I could outrun him then I d win.
The old man ran out of steam quick. He must have
been a junkie-mugger looking for a fix, else he would
have lasted longer. He gave chase only for about two
blocks or so before giving up. I wasn t worth it, I guess.
He d move on to other prey that would be less deter-
mined to escape.
Even after I was safe, I couldn t stop running. My legs
were stuck in their reflex motion and my racing brain
was unable to pull them out of it. I kept thinking of dif-
ferent nightmares of pain and how much I hated people
for being so revolting.
It wasn t like I was afraid that guy would shoot me or
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1 kill me. No, Philly isn t the kind of city where you d get
2 murdered. It s more of the old-fashioned kind of thug
3 mentality. I was more likely to get stabbed, or jumped
4 with baseball bats, or sold for money so some sick fiend
5 could get his high. And it was thoughts of this kind that
6 kept me running. It s thoughts like these that can keep
7 you running your whole life if you don t say fuck it and
8 get on with living.
9 It wasn t until I found myself in the old warehouse
10 district over by Spring Garden that I finally paused to
11 catch my wind. I freed a much needed cigarette from my
12 depleted pack and lit it. I saw an ease of mind in the
13 glowing at the tip. And as it burned down I tried to forget
14 why I had sprinted there to begin with.
15 Standing in that empty part of town, I had the feeling
16 that I had died once that night. My vision cut through
17 the walls of brick, the cement, and the nonsense. I
18 looked closely at the rusted hinges that held weathered
19 doors together by the splinters. I examined the rooftops
20 as the sky came to lay its weight upon them. From left to
21 right, I swept the expanse of ruins . . factories now fit
22 only for ghosts to make their homes in.
23 I stood perfectly still, admiring the symmetry of ero-
24s sion and realized how fleeting life could be sometimes.
25 The old, sad music was cueing up in my head. . the kind
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of tune an orchestra plays when the princess of the ballet
has died. But it wasn t a princess that died, it was my own
sense of purpose. I was wandering around like a peasant
on the very same streets I usually strolled with an attitude
like I was the king of em. But the guy I was the day
before wasn t there with me and I was struggling to
breathe at the realization.
I wanted someone to come along and hold me. Not
like the way a dirty bum trying to touch on me would,
but the way a mother holds her small child. I wanted
some gentle woman to take me to her breast the way this
woman did in a Steinbeck novel I had read. I wanted to
be nursed back into the years when nothing but imagi-
nary monsters terrified me. But there weren t no one
going to walk by. It was just a futile wish like the ones I d
had as a kid, always wishing that I would grow up to be
a medieval wizard or a knight riding off to slay loathsome
dragons.
I don t know when I stopped hoping for dreams to
come true, but I did. Hope just goes the way of the drug
during the coming down, leaving me dry and tired. The
idea of pretending no longer appealed to me.
The internal monologue was running in my head and
I had trouble following it. I had no control over what it
said. If I couldn t shut it off, then I thought all it said
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1 would be true, like it wasn t me talking but rather some
2 dictator of fate. It was like a word virus and I had no cure
3 for it. It spouted out all my insecurities and laid them
4 bare. It told me that I would die crazy and there wasn t
5 no religion gonna save me.
6 I let my back lean against the brick wall, soaking in all
7 the pollution that littered the area around me. I looked
8 over at a sprinkler attachment that was leaking into a
9 puddle on the sidewalk. Drip, drip, drop. Drip, drip,
10 drop. I let the pattern regulate my thoughts. I let the
11 freezing wind remove away all feeling. Then, ever so
12 quiet, I started to sing . . allowing the years to slip off like
13 so much dirt that needed washing. And the sound of my
14 voice and the childish song it sang made me smile for the
15 first time in hours as I listened.
16
London Bridge is falling down,
17
falling down, falling down.
18
London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady.
19
20
21
22
23
24s
25
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THEY SAY IN THE MEDICAL JOURNALS that if a person drops
acid more than three times in his life then he s legally
insane. Well, I had passed that point a long time ago, and
the voices in my head seemed to confirm the myth. But
if it was true and I was insane, I was gonna enjoy it. I
wasn t gonna be one of those crazies that hid away in the
cellar afraid of everything. Hell, I was gonna shove it in
the world s face and make them smell it.
I took up walking in those near-dawn hours with just
a little taken off my usual swagger. I made my way up
Market Street, passing glances into the store windows to
make sure I still had a reflection. And each time I saw it,
I ended up giving myself the finger.
Then I d laugh because it was funny. It was funny
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1 how I d thought my mission in life was to offend
2 everybody on some level, just to make them think. I
3 mean to really think hard about their own sorry lives. But
4 when I saw my polyester-clad, puke-stained self prancing
5 by in the fancy glass, I realized I d never thought about
6 my own sorry life.
7 I used to think that I could pass through life in a fan-
8 tasy, that if I did enough drugs and dreamed hard
9 enough then I could leave this hellish world on a per-
10 manent psychedelic holiday. I could become a piper
11 with a patchwork jacket made of tweed, piping a flute
12 through the fields of wheat in some Kansas of my mind s
13 invention. All the buildings, the advertisements trying to
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