One

I hear the sound of a train, cruising through a crossing, horn blaring at no one in particular. The sound of steel caressing steel, creating a steady rhythm that comforts me. There is a train station only a few blocks from here, but it’s not a railroad crossing. It’s the last stop of the Long Island Railroad’s Hempstead line. The sounds I hear aren’t coming from that direction. They’re in my head. The sun’s taking it’s time to rise. So am I. I’m laying in a parking lot, reluctant to return to reality, but reality makes no hesitation returning to me. The soothing rhythms of my make believe railroad cars give way to the slightly bombastic thumping somewhere in the neighborhood of my left ear. I try to lift my head. So far, so good. Let’s see if the rest of me will cooperate. Bringing myself towards a sitting position, I pause to bask in my accomplishment.

I haven’t had my ass kicked liked that since… well, almost never. Not since I was a kid, anyway, and those fights and beatdowns (which were few and far between) were certainly not in this league. Aside from being semi-conscious for a little while, it seems I’m not seriously hurt. Oh, I’m in pain. I got a few bumps and bruises. And I still feel a couple of those kicks my stomach took, but otherwise I’m in good shape for someone who took on three guys. Actually I took on one of them, and the other two decided to join in.

Faggots.

Then again, who started it?

Even at four or five in the morning, it seems you can’t have the world to yourself. I’d been hanging out with a couple of friends in Manhattan (more on them, later). Instead of catching the LIRR back to Hempstead, I took a subway to Jamaica, and from there, the N6 bus. The N6 runs all night, pretty much, though with much less frequency than in the daytime. With a transfer, a trip to or from the city costs only $1.50. A great bargain compared to $5.25 for an off-peak ticket. The major trade offs are;

1) Even in the early a.m. hours, one is not guaranteed a seat on the bus, though it won’t be nearly as crowded as it normally is during peak hours of the day.

2) The seats on the bus, and the ride itself is not likely to be as comfortable as that on the Long Island Railroad. Ditto for the subway, though, I can comfortably catch a few Zzzs on the subway (not recommended, but I’ve never had a problem).

3) The subway/bus combo takes somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-3 plus hours (especially at that time of night) vs. 45-50 minutes on the LIRR.

Still, I’m cheap, and perilously close to being broke (I still have my wallet. I can feel it against my right ass cheek in my back pocket), so it didn’t seem like that much of a trade off to me.

So, anyway, I get off the bus, and instead of heading straight home, I decide to head towards Rite-Aid for some junk food. Rite-Aid is a drug store that also sells all sorts of other crap. Stores like this are opening all over the country, it seems, usually within blocks of each other, and I can’t quite understand why this is. Tonight/this morning, I don’t complain, because I suspect that this Right-Aid isn’t open 24 hours. Could be wrong, but if not there happens to be a Walgreen’s just two or three blocks down, and I know for sure that they’re open 24 hours a day.

I cut through a parking lot to get there. It’s really like, two or three parking lots, all empty at the moment save for a hand full of cars, one sleeping homeless dude, and three wanna-be tough-guy high school (maybe a little older) aged kids walking in my general direction. The parking lot is a short-cut to the strip mall that contains Rite-Aid, about a block away, and across the street, where my soda and chips await. This part of the lot covers the backs of shops that line one side of Main Street; Nakasaki’s, a Chinese-Jamaican restaurant (not as strange as it sounds), a hair salon or two, a small Caribbean market, book store, a bagel breakfast shop, etc. All the way down we have a bank and a few other small businesses also on the same side of Main. On the other end, we have the Asian supermarket, V&T. Very strange for a village that’s mostly African-American and Hispanic. Then again, there’s a chapter of the Polish National Club not too far from here, a reminder of this community’s previous inhabitants, I guess, or maybe some sort of bizarre Polish joke. The Asian market faces the far side of the parking lot, with it’s back facing South Franklin Street. This building has hosted at least one other supermarket, previously. I think it was Waldbaums.

So, I’m on my way to feed my craving for crap, and these three kids are going wherever they’re going, and I notice they’re headed directly towards me. It’s not that there was anything unusually threatening about them. I mean, everyone around here walks with a bit of “macho” in their step, right? Even some of the ladies. No. It was that, despite this huge ass space, this almost completely vacant parking lot, these three knuckleheads decide they’ve got to disrupt the path that *I’m* taking, to get where they’re going. These little hood rat bastards, couldn’t walk at a different angle and avoid me completely. No. Somehow these three punks have discerned that the course I was taking was somehow a thing of value, and that they would take it from me by making me go around them, by altering my path.

At the risk of sounding crazy (and who gives a shit if I am?), it seems this sort of non-sense is happening to me all the time. While I looked forward to the barely consumable goods I’d set my heart upon, I dreaded the process I normally go through to obtain them, especially at this time of night. I walk into a Walgreen’s, Seven-Eleven, or some other convenience store at some god forsaken hour and notice how quiet the joint is. There’s one cashier and he has no idea what to do with himself, he’s so bored. I browse through the aisles, looking at all sorts of candies, or nuts, chips and beverages. I make my selection. By then, I’d been in the store maybe fifteen minutes at the most. I head to the register, and there are five people ahead of me. I usually see one or two rush to the end of the line before I get there! This type of thing infuriates me, and it happens all the time!!!! There are more examples I’ll share with you later, if I remember.

The kids are a mere few feet from me now. They’re laughing among themselves, no doubt over something stupid. They seem to be oblivious to the iceberg in their path. I have no intention of giving way, but perhaps a small bit of courtesy is called for.

“Excuse me.”

Nothing changes except we continue to draw closer to one another, and a hint of rage exposes itself, uncharacteristically, I might add. Or perhaps not.

Somehow we manage not to collide head on. Instead, my left arm brushes against the shoulder of the young man in the center. This insignificant little action is not complete before the hint of rage releases a shade of my devil inside.

“Out’a my way.”

Everything stops. It seemed that even my heart ceased to function as there was no longer that rhythm deep within that reminded me of my own existence.

The laughter had become silence. The conversation, which had been about nothing in particular, had become nothing specifically. All eyes were on me, except those of the homeless dude who slept next to a tree, on an island of grass and concrete in the center of the parking lot.

Not a moment had elapsed when the fellow whom I’d lightly brushed and addressed as a lowly peasant, thus articulated his dismay;

“Nigga, what???”

The hint, which had become a shade, instantly became a manifestation, and I became not merely enraged or be-deviled, but an arrogant, angry god of storms who found himself raining blows of thunder and lightning mercilessly upon this mere mortal.

“OUT…

“OF…

“MY…

“GOT

“DAMN

“WAY..,

“YOU..

“STUPID..,

“LITTLE..,

“PIECE OF SHIT!!!!”

Something grabbed me. I think I might’a been drooling at that point. Maybe that came later. I’m not entirely sure. The guy who was not on the ground in a fetal position and was not the one holding me back, started to work me over a bit. I saw a couple of those punches, but soon all I could see were intervals of blackness, punctuated by flashes of stark whiteness. Before I realized it, I was no longer standing. I looked up at three shadows, and probably said something not completely coherent;

“Fug awww yu bishes!!!”

There were some sharp pains in my stomach followed by echo-y laughter and then, the sound of trains. In between the laughter and the sound of locomotives, I may’ve lost consciousness for a short period. I didn’t time myself, though. Who knows?

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