The sun and the dirt mixed up with their sweat and the booze.
The ruddy dust from the streets, the mud in the parks where they sleep, sunk deep in the lines in their foreheads, jammed up under their fingernails. The bums love it like it’s their own skin. These streets are dirty, but they’re home, and they’re beautiful to me. People ask me why I spend so much time on the streets. Grand Street 1. Excerpt from the unpublished autobiography of Mazie Phillips-Gordon Then this morning I dug you out of the closet and dusted you off. We shook, but then we still kept holding hands, and it made me feel young again under my skin, like I was a piece of ice melting in the sun. He slid his hand through the slot of the cage before he left. I wanted a hundred more of them but the doc says no. That cigarette was perched on his lips like it was part of his flesh. You’re the queen, so tell the story of your kingdom. I said: Everyone’s welcome at the Venice Theater, even the snobs. Counting the change I’d already counted, just so he’d get the hint.įannie said: I’m sorry I brought him here. And this guy, with his suit and his hair and his eyes, he wants me to forget their names. If he can’t see why they’re worth talking about, then what kind of story would he want me to tell? Ten years of my life I’ve been helping those bums, I couldn’t ignore them. It’s the bums that have the real story.Īnd he said: No, the bums are interesting because of you. It must be so easy to think you know the truth.
It must be so easy to have all the answers already. He’s twenty-five if a day, but it didn’t matter, he carried himself like he’d known everything about life since birth. He was real slick, tan, a Mediterranean fella in a bespoke suit. I’ll hand this one a few points for his looks.
She likes these young boys around, and I guess I can’t blame her. She was watching the both of us, or maybe it was only him. I said: Who cares about my life? I just sit in this ticket booth all day.Īnd he said: Plenty of people care, you run these streets.įannie stood back, quiet, unlike usual. He wanted me to write a book about my life. Then the fella told me he was there on a mission and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. We smoked for a minute, shooting the breeze. All of these things I’m not supposed to be having and there I was, having them. He gave me a cigarette, the first one I’ve had in weeks. First she handed me a beer then she had me shake his hand. Fannie brought one of her fancy friends down to the theater last night.
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