yorktown

terrified of this opening when it comes on the screen. my parents sitting on the bed, my mom knitting and my dad sipping from a st. pauli girl bottle. me sitting in the chair we bought out on 270 at ethan allen and so quickly became stained and withered. i always wondered why we even bothered to buy it; it was meant for a wood-floored sitting room in some suburban house, not the 2nd floor carpeted, cramped bedroom in a townhouse in the middle of the city. me slumped playing my game boy and not really paying attention and the light in that room is very yellow from the bulbs lined up above the mirror, what they call a "vanity mirror" but aren't all mirrors related to vanity?

night time then was pretty unexplained to me. i don't think i was fascinated with it per se; i understood it was a time that i wasn't allowed to see too much of. i also knew it was the time when the opposite element of life was roaming about. day was the environment of my friends, running between the buildings, the neighbors hanging out on the stoops and chatting, the cars driving by in a hurry. the night was empty streets and alleys and sidewalks chilled in ghostly white streetlight. cars drove by slowly and menacing, bass blaring or just gliding by silently. figures darted between buildings and claps of gunfire erupted from distant blocks every once in a while. you get used to them and sleep through it. occasionally, though, an errant shout or slammed door will rouse you from sleep. it wasn't until later that you have to sleep on the floor because once a bullet goes through one of the second-floor windows, your parents will never cease to worry from that point on.

people tell you stories, they float around the neighborhood. the cop in 2270 that walks around the buildings late at night with his gun drawn, don't even run into him coming around a corner at 2am. the crawfords had their shit broken into while they slept, the cops are standing around in the alley between 17 and 18 pouring plaster into a boot-print. bruce blew his brains out now the entire park circle is full of cop cars, cops are hugging each other and brenda (she went to high school with him) is standing by the mailboxes crying and staring at them going in and out of his house. two weeks later chris and that kid from baltimore and his sister who lived here for like two weeks while his mom was readjusting to single life were walking through the alley by bruce's in the middle of the night. it was fall and there were leaves everywhere and we knew we shouldn't have snuck out. we didn't even have anywhere to go or anything to do. certainly wouldn't brave it to the boulevard to hit the store for a soda. just walking around in the dark between streetlights and talking. came upon the alley and there in a pile of dead leaves was the yellow police tape they'd strung around the poles in front of bruce's. it terrified us and we split, running off in four directions. i couldn't sleep well for quite a while.

finding a bunch of 9mm shells in the curb on bedford and bringing them to school the next day to show my friends. that's when the hippie teacher molly realized that i wasn't really faking the whole "i don't live around this part of town" act. what a stupid bitch, this was before dre, who would have bragged about that kind of thing? she made a point to never speak to me after that unless she had to. whatevs.

wow i grew up in a shithole. not gonna take the machine back there.