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Last week I was taking it easy, lounging on my bed and reading a book when my husband Jordan came in. Our conversation went as follows:
Jordan: "What did you say?"
Bre: "I didn't say anything."
Jordan: "Yeah, you did. You said something and then I said 'what?' and then you said 'nothing!'"
Bre: "No, I've been sitting here reading, I haven't said a thing."
“Do you need help?” Eve asked the restaurant manager, her dark-blue eyes glowing with hope that bordered on desperation.
The Ellis Island refugees and the new millennium off-the-Boeings immigrants had one thing in common. They came looking for work. Exploring the labyrinths of New York streets they knocked on the doors of stores and restaurants asking the same question over and over again, in broken English. “Do you need help?” Half the minimum wage would do.
“No,” the manager answered with the same reply. His eyes traveled up and down Eve’s body. “And we have a sign in the window that says so. If you could read English.”
First film, first award. Jeremy and Jesse Ververka, two brothers who produced and directed "China: The Rebirth of an Empire", won the FAN award for best documentary at the first annual Astoria-Long Island City Film Festival last week. The festival, which ran from Oct 22-24th, had a successful launch. Film lovers turned out to see documentaries, feature films, short films, and super short films. There were also script readings and panel discuss
My lips are thin. My eyes are blue.
"Mama, what should I do with my life?" I ask my mother, the teacher.
My mom says, "Do anything, but don't be a teacher."
"Really?"
"Be a hooker. Don't be a teacher."
"O.K."
She says, "Don't get married. Have kids, but don't get married."
My hands are small. My breasts are large.
When I tell people I used to be homeless I always get attacked with questions. The most popular is “what was the worst part?”. The answer? There are no bathrooms. If you have to take a crap you have to search high and low for a place that doesn't care that you'll never buy something from them.
You probably don't realize how good you have it until you have to frantically search for a public bathroom at three in the morning. Those bathrooms were a treasure cove. The best part is that after you did your thing you could use the sink to take a "whores bath", basically a sponge bath using the tiny amount of soap in the dispenser. You could also wash your change of clothes (which were kept secure in your backpack of course). All this was made even more interesting because I have OCD and being clean is the most important thing in the world to me.
After people get bored of the standard homeless questions I always get this one: what do you remember most about being homeless? This is also easy to answer. I remember the day I scammed a scammer.
"Gran'pa Baltazar, tell us a story! Gran'pa Baltazar tell us a story!" the little ones nagged shrilly, tugging on the old man's tunic.
"Well, alright, my little pigeons, gather around" old Baltazar eyed the small fry affectionately. His four little grand children, all daughter's stock, nestled excitedly at his feet by the fire in the Great Hall.
"What story would you like to hear, my little fishes?"
They move pretty quickly, considering they're dead.
"Blood-sucking bastards," the Captain growls, shouldering his assault rifle.
The gun barks three times. The sound that follows shortly after can only be best described as a watermelon being smashed by a baseball bat.
The Captain lowers his rifle and smiles proudly. Even after all that we've gone through, he still manages to find joy in the simple things.
"Took off the top half of his head," he muses.
He booked a one-way flight to the Neon City. He told his old lady he might not be back. There were no guarantees, he said. He had a reservation at the Gold Bullion hotel, and it was as plush as they came, downtown. After he checked in, he found the craps pit, and got over on a $5 pass line bet. Twice more he laid odds with the shooter, and twice more the shooter made point. It’d been fifteen minutes since he walked through the double doors, and he was already ahead. He thought about calling her; he looked at his cell phone, only one bar, so he collapsed it, and shoved it back into his pocket.
He spied a girl at the bar, and she warmed his mug with a smile. He was dressed to kill, and so it figured. He made his way to the bar, and struck up a conversation. She was in room 328, and asked him if he’d join her for a drink at ten.
“Look at this!” I told Ebony, my best friend, who sat next to me in the Tipperary Pub, the Irish-themed bar of the Parsippany Sheraton. I was here for the Deadly Ink writers’ conference and Ebony and Lucy were here for moral support. “I think it’s my death threat. Oh, I’m so excited!”
Ebony took the envelope I gave her, pulled out the note and read it aloud.
“I’ve done the deed. You won’t be disappointed. Have the money before the luncheon or you’ll never be hungry again.”
She put down the paper and gave me a look. “You are excited about your own death threat?”
Ebony had full lips, big brown eyes and a voluptuous mop of African hair that propagated equally in all directions. She wore about five dozen bracelets and golden lipstick. I wore old t-shirts and ragged jeans. Jewelry and make-up were always an afterthought.
“Just think about it,” I said. “What an idea for a story!”
Lucy, my other best friend, inched over to see the paper. She had just got off duty and still wore her cop uniform and the twenty pounds of stuff that came with it. That’s why I was so calm and nonchalant. It was easy feeling invincible when your best friend’s a cop. Lucy was six feet tall and loved martial arts and extreme sports.
“Eyes, black eyes that carve hollow secrets into your skull, empty experiences that grey not only your hair but fill in the wrinkles of your skin. You are a white wash canvas lost inside a storage basements cranny,” thought Yoma.
Yoma had travelled nowhere exotic. He had spent the majority of his 65 years exploring nothing but the inner workings of his own banal life. “I will see the world,” he whispered. This hushed prayer had been heard by friends, lovers, children, grandchildren and strangers for as long as Yoma could remember, he whispered “I am a million pieces of rock spread across every pixel of blue sky.” Yoma often spoke in this manner. Weaving Kerouac phrases that could leave a person frustrated with wonder. As a young boy a brick wall could suddenly become the peak of Everest, his mutt of a dog a faithful donkey and the air that floated amidst his left ear his knowledable Sherpa. As a man, the brick wall melted from Everest to a steel prison where he wrote lascivious theatrical pieces along side the Marquis De Sade and other men of great evil abilities. But as time went on, the brick wall froze into, well, a brick wall. The day Yoma stopped seeing flowers in the stars is the day Yoma meant it when he said, “I will see the world.”
There it was in front of him. Arthur stared into the darkness at the pair of glowing eyes that stared back at him. He clutched the heavy wooden chair as if it were a shield, frozen in place. Were it not for the spot lights on the stage behind him, Arthur would be in darkness with only the flashlight in his back pocket to guide him.
What the hell is this thing? He thought. In the moonless early morning, Arthur could see almost nothing outside the little circle of light emanating from the stage behind him. It was one of those portable ones that had been brought in by truck the day before.
He slowly backed away from the beast in the darkness. For a moment he thought it might eat him right there on the spot, this whatever it was. It let out a low growl. Arthur jumped, dropping his chair. The beast began to inch toward the light.
I am a symbol.
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Their running made a breeze out of the standstill air. One by one, they would give chase. The others fled in whatever direction they could, attempting to escape in a torrent of running feet, exhausted breath and scared laughter. Eventually one would become two, two became three and so on until the one had become the many. Those who knew them may have said days like these were a glimpse at what they would become. But to the boys in the grey-striped shirts, it was just a game. Always just a game.
The area in which they played seemed almost tailor made for them: a bright blue sky hanging over a small expanse of green grass; an old wooden shed with a flower garden off to the side. Sometimes they would wonder about that old wooden shed that no one ever seemed to use, that clipped green grass they’d never seen anybody cut. But thoughts like those always got pushed to the back of their mind. This place was theirs, an escape from their nightly incarcerations. This place was perfect…save for the dark wood.
Look at him. He is so buff. When he wears his black Storm Trooper suit it drives me crazy. I would bite his butt right here if I could. But it always pisses him off whenever I get affectionate around the troops. And he can be such a bitch when he gets angry. He says he has an image to uphold. He needs to demand respect. God, please! What did he think he demanded last night? Respect! He demanded total respect from me, but I sure as hell got no respect from him. He was such an animal. And it wasn’t just physical; he uses The Force during our little trysts, and let me tell you, that’s something else altogether. I’m still sore as hell and not at all sure I can sit on this damn scooter all day after what he did to me last night. At least he was home early. I guess I should be thankful he was not running around with one of his little numbers.
