Dimpled Sidewalks

He met her in the afternoon. He had crossed the street to avoid the shade and to lounge on the black iron stoops of one of the galleries like a pink lizard. His jeans were so big that when he stood his heels dug into the cusps of the fabric and the crack of his white ass peeked out behind like a little magoo. A little dark crack in the middle of a big, fleshy, white, ass. Despicable. Really. He was pleased, however, when he saw just such a portrait in one of the gallery windows. He tried to go in but the guard could tell he wasn’t about to pay the thousands of dollars for this art, this other person’s big, white, butt, so the guard, a big black man in a nice dark blue suit, a man who probably took the 1/9 from the Bronx every day to work with these people who were so rich that they didn’t need to be racist, asked him, quite politely, really, almost sympathetically, really, to leave. He admired this man, envied the artist, and hated the gallery. Maybe it was the other way around. Maybe he didn’t give a damn about the man but was proud that he might have compassion for a black man. And maybe, he didn’t give a damn about the artist, except that it brought him closer to art. Maybe he really envied the gallery.  So, he lay back down on the sidewalk, pulling on his jeans as he did.

It was hot, the smells of a city emitting like a fat man’s fart, from the soft pancake of asphalt, from the corse lay of stone, layed one on top of the other, upward, gray, red, brown, little signs reaching down to little people, signs for the Bistro Deluxe or the Hammer Stain Heart, telling them where they were, flying above it was hard, flying above it was impossible, in this heat, a heat that brought one closer to the street, beating down like the firm hands of God, on the swollen sweating temple of a man, a young man, at very least. He couldn’t see the sun. The buildings were just too tall. Even in SoHo.

He’d rather lay about on the black metal dimples of a SoHo sidewalk than move around the neighborhood, pulling up his pants. Why were his pants big? The answer is complicated, as most things, but it does give some light on why it was so astounding that he met her.

Dorian LaGuardia

Circa 1997, NYC. Part of “Plastic Ruby Apples,” a book about life in NYC. Write me for more.