Weird Long Beard

In fourth grade, I was playing C.Y.O. basketball in a small gym on a weekday night. My coach's daughter Cindy, who was my age, was hanging upside down on the chin-up bar when her shirt fell over her head. Of course she wasn't wearing a bra, she didn't have boobs then, but after she corrected herself, her face was flush with embarrassment. That moment began a life-long obsession I had with her. One so bad I played the bass clarinet in band to sit near the flutists and be closer to her. One so bad I dropped out of the honors program to increase my chances of getting into one of her classes.

In eighth grade, I made the school basketball team, which was significant because Cindy played volleyball and we shared the same bus home after practice. I used to make her laugh and when I was scolded and moved to the front of the bus for "causing a ruckus," she came up and sat beside me. I had her all to myself for that one fleeting moment.

Don't get me wrong, I was obsess…

Back when I was a janitor at the junior high school under the Manhattan Bridge, my morning routine involved sweeping the perimeter of the building. As it was a big job, I split it up with Willy, who worked the overnight shift.

Willy wore a beat-up blue cap, an olive-drab army jacket, and kept a .38 revolver tucked in his jeans. I asked him why he carried a gun and he said, "Shit, in this town, you never know."

We would start at the main entrance, across from the highly-surveiled beauty salon, which Willy believed was a front for the Chinese mob. He'd go one way and I the other.

The yard was filled with ancient Chinese people performing tai chi every morning. They were waiting for their grandchildren to go to school, so they could go home and rest, sharing the very same bed.

One morning the tranquility was broken by a desperate crack whore, who told me she would suck my dick for ten bucks. She was no more than a skeleton with paint on its bones and she had sores around h…