There were some johns that were cool, though, & regulars who switched between the higher end girls of Victor Imperiale, the streetwalkers of small-time pimps, & the free hookers. 1 was a fat guy named Norman. I recall little of him except that 1 time he had a heart attack when he was doing it with a black hooker. After that we never saw him that much. It was said that he had started going to church, taking his weak heart as some divine prophecy. Go figure! Another john was named Ziggy! No, he was no relation to my Ziggy. His real name was Sigmund Dreyer. He was related to Beckenschmidt the shoe repairman from Forest Avenue- but how I do not recall. This 2nd Ziggy was about 20 years old & suffered from a disease that made him fucked up & gimpy. Because of that he could not get laid by ‘regular’ girls. But, he was sweet, & a favorite of many of the hookers, as he would lavish them with jewels & perfumes. Apparently, he had a trust fund or something, & was a regular for many years, long after I moved away from Ridgewood. His claim to fame, though, had been when- a few years earlier- he had appeared on the Jerry Lewis telethon & tried to sing a song with Jerry. He had failed, but his failure had so captured the nation’s heart that that year he appeared had been a record year of donations. It had been his patheticness that had gained him fleeting acceptance in a world that usually looked askance at him. But, now, he was accepted into our world- if but for a goodly price. Another of the johns was Maranatha- he was some guy who came from Morocco, or some place like that. He spoke some Arab language & wore 1 of those little fezes that I had seen men from the local lodges wear. He had once been arrested by the cop I knew who had shaken down old Tony the Bretzel Man from the corner of Forest & Myrtle Avenues. After his arrest Maranatha suddenly could not see out of 1 of his eyes anymore. He had been in an accident while at the 104th Precinct!
Of the many other johns who passed through my youth there are only 2 others that I can recall with anything remotely resembling clarity. They were both named John- or so they claimed. The 1st was a middle-aged Italian guy who claimed his name was ‘John Doe’. He was well known as a man who had ambitions. He was also very condescending to the girls & kids from the street. Ziggy- my Ziggy- hated him & on several occasions snuck in to the room where he was banging a girl, & lifted big bills from his wallet. Years later I would encounter this phony man again. I was in my early 20s & working on the political campaign of a woman running for statewide office. This man had worked himself up to become the head of a political party that opposed her. What was really funny was that in these times- the 1980s of Ronald Reagan- ‘John Doe’ was all of a sudden championing ‘family values’- even as he had partook of drugs & prostitutes on a regular basis in his younger days! When I had mentioned this fact to my candidate’s election committee they were happy- until they found out there was no way to get proof of it, & we would be accused of mudslinging, etc. It was thought such a charge would backfire.
The other John that was a john was named John Brown- just like the executed Abolitionist. & just like his namesake he ended up dying for his greatest passion. Except that this latter-day John Brown’s passion was prostitutes, & he suffered from many diseases for that passion. 1 day this nondescript light-skinned black man was just found dead after having done the deed. When the scared shitless girl got out of the shower & found his naked corpse she called Victor Imperiale’s head goon & a couple of them, with gloves, carefully dressed this John Brown, carried his body out to a dumpster, & placed it inside. His death happened in winter so the stink would be minimal. Besides, there were no wounds & if discovered it would be assumed he was a junky who OD’d or a homeless guy who died of exposure after crawling into a dumpster to get out of the cold. The next morning John Brown’s body began a journey that would later be followed by Juan’s nameless son & Joe the mailman’s daughter’s shit.
Unlike his namesake, this John Brown would not inspire me. The original John Brown, however, stuck in my mind when I 1st heard of him in my history books at school. I also was struck by the idea that there are things greater than that we see. I had heard tell of the old philosopher Plato, who believed that all human life- in fact, all that we thought of as real- was not. It was just the shadows of a far greater world, cast by its position between an unknown light & the cave walls upon which we led our unknowingly substanceless existences. From this I ruminated of the palpable void that hides behind that which shines. It was long before I had even a single idea, but 1 day put all- or at least some- my thoughts down in a poem:
JOHN BROWN IN PLATO’S CAVE
I have failed
the night.
Swinging in the breeze
my memory stinks
worse than my corpse.
I have failed
the day.
Golgotha was a place
fixed red on a map
lost to time.
I have failed
the race.
My kind still snicker
at the dark side
of my kind.
I have failed
the world.
My darkness unfolds
through the glow
of unseen fire.
I have failed
my self.
In my fix of my place
I surrender to none
but mine anger.
And yet, and still
I have failed
the fire.
& fire was all that awaited the newer John Brown. It also beckoned Juan’s dead infant son & the shit of Joe the mailman’s retarded grownup daughter. They all ended up somewhere in 1 of the many landfills that made up Staten Island. There mounds of waste from the city mingled with the remnants of animals that walked the earth long before it thought of man. A mastodon tusk crushed under a broken old 78 record that a man who had serenaded his dead wife with had loved until her death caused him- in a fury- to smash its mocking tunes against the wall. Joe the mailman’s daughter’s shit coloring the ivory center of an antique grandfather’s clock face whose owner was not conscious of the craftsmanship & value that it had, & who stupidly broke the piece into shards, just to ease its hauling away. Acting as a shroud for Juan’s & Daisy’s child would be reams of ruled spiral notebook papers which would soak up the rest of the dead infant’s uncongealed blood, & wipe out the pencil drawings of monsters similar to those that stalked Daisy in her dreams for weeks after the death, when she & Juan would go their separate ways over the result of their loss. A beer can & a Pepsi Cola bottle would mingle with the other unidentified & unmissed objects of a city moving forward, powered by the heat & miasma of those very things which had no names or tears in the past.
In summer days young boys would venture to places like this & play games of War or King Of The Hill, & toss & throw each other onto & into sharp objects, leaving microscopic pieces of themselves behind, as well. Overhead the clouds made of pigeons & seagulls would slowly cover all with their white burning shit. At night the dump workers would come with machines & move mounds of debris into holes. Other mounds would just be piled into giant bins & burned. Transubstantiation rises from flame & feces. The dead become the light by which others see.
That other John Brown learnt this. This is why he knew Douglass was right not to come to Harper’s Ferry, even though he did not know it at the time. It was only by the fuel of his own body that the nation he loved, & fought for, & killed for, would ever understand the wickedness of its ways. People are like bees or ants, he thought. There always needed to be some light or lure to get them to move. But once moving there was nothing that could stop the mass until its goals had been accomplished. & as John Brown fell through the gallows’ floor he sensed his fall was merely the thing that was needed for a new world to rise. He had made a choice- his choice- when he left Douglass, & what happened after his choice was not his alone.
I, too, fell through things until I hit the bottom. I, too, had discovered choice 1 day when Ziggy tossed me from the top of a rock heap as we played King Of The Hill. As I held my scraped elbow I saw a whirl of ants emerge from the small pebbled exit my body had smashed. Their industrial fury was a marvel. From a hole not far away another stream of blackness marched. Several bright green caterpillars who were in the way became mere food due to my accidental destruction of the ants’ domain. As I watched, Ziggy & Georgey withdrew from my world as my eyes seemed as far above the ants’ world as if I were flying high above Bushwick. The sky was all white & the sun a hole- an absence merely- even as it gave off light. There seemed to be a purpose to things- my fall, the ants’ home being destroyed, the journey of shit & deadness. But then I noticed this was an illusion. I saw the ants for what they were:
WHERE IGNORANT ARMIES CLASH
Under the winged tantrums of the sun-lovers
they drove, over the forests made detritus,
discordant, and brutal. Each formical slave
fixes its destiny to collective right.
Onward they mill in a blinded willingness,
worn simplified to an ignorance of time,
made null, the colonies revivifying
themselves on an evolutionary love
beyond logic. Impediments rise to fall
before the darkling blinks. Two millionfold ones
which run their worlds, and have a million years, fight,
stored up in their insistent genetic haul,
destroying all that merely flee or succumb,
are what lift their endless beings through the night.
I saw that the ants were like humanity. Stuck in their antness, what appeared to be teamwork was not a choice. They were bonded by things that their tiny egos & thoughts could not confront. But humans were different; they could be different. Yet, so many of us chose not to be so. So many of us got rid of the things we valued most- whether children or their image- I could not help but remember the movie I had seen when I was even younger. It was about apes that ruled a planet where humans were treated like animals & could not speak. Yet, the apes, too, chose to act more human than they had any right. Near the end of the film the 1 human that could speak, & whom most of the apes hated, had led a party to a cave where they found a human doll- 1 that could speak. The human asked the incredulous head ape if an ape would have ever made a human doll that could talk? The shadows reared up against the wall of that cave & what was left was neither human nor ape- but the absence of both in a world 1 destroyed & the other refused. Which crime, which race of being, was worse I could not then tell. But as I thought of such things I was still too young. Like John Wilkes Booth, I had no choice, & some instinct in me said kick- & I did. 100s of ants went flying, were maimed or killed. But still they kept coming until they are here.
