New York Tales>Act Four-Trendsville USA

i'd always known growing up that new york was a trend-setting city. them & los angeles, london & paris too. whether it was jazz, poetry, literature, fashion, clothing, you name it, these four towns have it all going on, as opposed to where i live, well, it's going on, but we seem to take our lessons & learning abilities from those who have started anew.

now granted, we do have times when our city is suddenly the hottest place to be at for music & theater, but that seems to come & go and spurts. new york has all those cool buildings like the empire state building where king kong fell to his death, the pan american building, where no one fell to their death at least not that i know of, the guggenheim designed by frank lloyd wright that my good friend twitchy has bugged me to death to go and see while i am in new york for only two days (a weekend) & wall street where money dies everyday.

death i suppose doesn't have a hard time making itself known in new york, it happens here too, way too often, but i digress. trends die just as hard in new york as they do here, but for some of us, me, in particular, some of the things i saw in new york my first time out haven't died just yet.

some of my firsts in new york were, well for a start, homeless people. i remember walking along times square and seeing homeless people for the first time. in particular, a man whose feet where as black as coal. that has stuck with me for nearly 22 years.

the next first i saw was when i went to grand central station one day & a man asked me if i could watch "his telephone booth" for him. he kept talking loudly as if he were talking to someone while he rushed across the station to get something & then came back to thank me. i suppose we have the late great failure of a president ronald reagan to thank for men like him. sad but true.

another first i experienced while out there was ummmm, loneliness, not by me, but of other men & women, for that matter. i stayed in the 92nd street ymca when i was visiting/touring around new york & when i first pulled in & set my clothes down in my room & unpacked, i met a young black woman who for a purchase of a pack of cigarettes & a chicken dinner, became my unoffical guide around town. i think she must have known i was an easy target & i realized it early enough to tell her nicely that i could find my way on my own. she wasn't pleased.

the other time, same ymca, mid week, was a man who exchanged pleasantries with me in the common area shower. we spoke for a bit & i told him that i needed directions to the u.n. building. he was friendly enough, after toweling off & told me to stop by his room so he could give me directions. he was staring at me while i was showering & even though i make too big a deal of it in public, i wondered why he stared at me so hard.

little did i know what was waiting for me once i knocked on this man's door & he let me in. i remember what i was wearing that day. a pair of blue jeans & a white dead kennedys holiday in cambodia tee shirt. he came up behind me & locked the door. i didn't think much of it, if only for a brief second or so, when he told me how nice my eyes looked & started to give me directions. as i wrote them down, he suddenly got up from his chair & came over and stroked my chest through my tee shirt & told me how nice i felt. his actions made alarm bells go off in my head. i felt very uneasy & i told him so. luckily for me, he stopped. he apologized & told me he didn't mean to startle me & that if i ever felt like talking, i could stop by his room & talk, no funny business.

that was something else i learned that day. mistrust. inside i felt just awful & cried.