food; things around. I tried to live in a collective on Avenue B
and I was supposed to have a bed and we were going to cook
and all but that was where the junkies kept rolling on top o f me
because the collective would never tell anyone they couldn’t
sleep there and I never was there early enough so there wasn’t
someone asleep where I thought was mine. I never did really
sleep very well, it’s sort o f a lie to say I could sleep with junkies
rolling over on top o f me, a little bravado on m y part, except I
fell o ff to sleep, or some state o f less awake, and then it’d
happen. Y ou are always awake a little. I lived in a living room
o f a woman for peace who lived with her brother. He slept in
the living room, she slept in the bedroom, but she put me in
the living room with him. He breathed heavy and stayed up
watching me and I had to move out because she said he
couldn’t sleep. I stayed anywhere I could for as long as I could
but it w asn’t too long usually. I slept on benches and in
doorways. D oorw ays can be like palaces in the cold, in the
dark, when it’s wet; doorways are strong; you feel sheltered,
like in the arms o f God, unless the wind changes and comes
right at you and drives through you; then you wake up already
shivering, sleep pulling you down because you want to believe
you are only dreaming the wind is driving through you, but
you started to shake unconscious and the cold permeates your
body before you can bring your mind to facing it. Y ou can’t
find any place in N ew Y ork that doesn’t have me in it. I’m
stuck in the dark, m y remembrance, a shadow, a shade, an
old, dark scar that keeps tearing, dark edges ripping, dark
blood spilling out, there’s a piece left o f me, faded, pasted onto
every night, the girl who wanted peace. Later I found out it
was Needle Park or Bed-Stuy or there were whores there or it
was some kind o f sociological phenomenon and someone had
made a documentary showing the real shit, some intrepid
filmmaker, some hero. It never happened. N o one ever
showed the real shit because it isn’t photogenic, it doesn’t
stand still, people just live it, they don’t know it or conceptualize it or pose for it or pretend it and you don’t get to do it over i f you make a mistake. Y ou just get nailed. Fucked or hit
or hurt or ripped o ff or poisoned with bad shit or yo u ’re just
dead; there’s no art to it. There’s more o f me stuck in that old
night than anywhere. Y o u don’t just remember it; it remem
bers you; Andrea, it says, I know you. Y ou do enough in it and
it takes you with it and I’m there in it, every night on every
street. When the dark comes, I come, every night, on every
street, until N ew Y ork is gone; I’m alive there in the dark
rubbing up against anything flesh-and-blood, not a poor,
homeless girl but a brazen girl-for-peace, hungry, tired,
waiting for you, to rub up against you, take what you have,
