The sky is a curious indigo and Julio walks Ludlow Street towards yet another evening of nothingness. The bum, the whore, the hipster, are all gathered together on a street where dreams collide with failure, hope collides with despair. It’s changing, little by little. One could see it in the storefronts, the renovated tenements, the younger faces. However some of the past still remains.
Across the street, the whore shivers, standing in a doorway, while the hipster makes his way into the bar, his green scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. He walks with an affected confidence, as if he knows who he is and where he is going. Julio doesn’t buy it. Just another transplant who recently moved into the neighborhood, full of piss and vinegar and delusions of his eventual stardom.
The bum, he laughs at it all, pushing his shopping cart up the street, it’s broken, lopsided wheels creaking along the broken pavement, his soda cans rattling with each careful step. He couldn’t care less about any of this shit and he don’t blame him. The bum has other things to be concerned about. All that exists around him is nothing but scenery, a backdrop to a film in which he isn’t even considered an extra. When it all goes away he’ll still be here, doing the same thing, still not giving a fuck about any of it.
The sky is a curious indigo and he waits in the shadows, trying to make sense of this life he was born into. As the sky turns from indigo to black, the whore still stands shivering in the doorway. His friends await him at the bar, probably already shit faced, already stalking their prey. Before going in he takes one last drag from his cigarette and looks around. He sees them through the window, sitting at their usual booth with their usual dour faces, trying to make at least one night worth something.
As Bukowski once observed, standing between them is their disappointment.
New York City, April 1997