Hypogeous Tractatus 8
I was in effect a well-to-do street kid. Dad was selling Warhols and Picasso’s and we lived in a Tudor townhouse on a quiet Queens street- rather a lane, yet the entirety of my social life would play out on turf made sacred by graffiti art, places known to the profane as “bad” neighborhoods. This was a time before crack cocaine so in most cases the drug trade hadn’t expanded to include children, and without a dime in their pocket a good percentage of my peers had devoted themselves to creativity for kicks. Our graffiti underworld bordered on the realm bustling with little break dancers, rappers and DJs. Those first park jams I would attend in the back of Gil’s project, officiated by the Du Brothers and DJ War Ski were glimpses of paradise. My parents always spoke longingly of the bygone era of Be-Bop, Beat Poetry and Abstract Expressionism and now I found myself immersed in a vital new wave. Slapping hands with a wider circle of street luminaries I first met my most important collaborator, my future best friend Chama, who was just a little bad ass kid then, Harlem royalty visiting the LES, but it would be some years before that kid in the sharp two-tone denim outfit I met walking to the party would blossom into a proper friendship.
One day Gil and I brought a bunch of neighborhood kids to the Bridge tunnels with us. We had just begun hitting the insides when a group of older kids, who had already grown to the definitive proportions of manhood, descended on us with knives drawn and demanded our paint, money and sneakers. The guys in my group sat down routinely and began to unlace their shoes, making rabbit ears of their pants pockets, without protest. I didn’t feel like sitting down, except when the big Puerto Rican guy in the sheepskin coat placed the blade of the kitchen knife close enough to my eyes to appreciate its sharpness, but once I sat down popped up again. If I couldn’t muster up any threat to counterbalance our predicament, I also didn’t want to sit there like a sandwich on a plate. I ended up handing over the dollar or two and change at knifepoint but refused on principle to take off my sneakers.
Our guys didn’t enjoy walking back to the hood in their socks, and Gil and I lost our following as ringleaders. That day the ante was raised if I was ever going to take myself seriously in the Culture. For one thing, I couldn’t be running around with dojas who matched the least show of force with blind compliance. And if this was going to be a get down or lay down operation I shouldn’t be risking my life for some bullshit tags on the BMTs when everyone knew the real action was happening on the 2s and 5s, and the 1 train was coming on strong as a burner line too, with a new generation of writers of Broadway coming on strong. But I didn’t know anybody up top.