Di Nic’s in Deep South Philly

As published at SubStack, 5/4/24:

[Di Nic’s in South Philly, 3/22/15]

The way we were:

3/22/15, with elaborations in 2024—I came in hoping to see Johnny, the gangster and meth dealer who had been locked up for 29 years. Three weeks earlier, I had said, “Are you Polish?”

Glaring, Johnny seethed, “I ought to kill you!”

Johnny is Sicilian. He has enlarged nuts plus other medical problems. Johnny admires the Irish, “They can outdrink you, outfuck you, outfight you. I wouldn’t fuck with the Irish.”

Today, I met another Johnny. This one’s 67 and sleeps on the living room floor for free at this lady’s house. They hadn’t known each other before.

Is it just pity? What is she getting out of it? If she doesn’t have to feed and clean after Johnny, she’s not losing anything but privacy. Maybe she’s had too much of it. Countless lives are filled with meaningless privacy. In her underwear or naked, she again watches TV alone on her flabby sofa. Its springs she can feel with her bony ass. If her sofa or ass had lungs, it would sigh along with her.  

To not get in her way, Johnny sits in Di Nic’s as much as possible. I bought him beer. After the second mug, Patty the bartender yelled at me.

“Can you believe she fuckin’ yelled at me for buying you beer?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. She’s just acting like a woman. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. My wife was like that.”

Johnny gets $500 a month in social securities. His divorce left him broke. For 30 years, Johnny worked for the phone company. He climbed poles. He was also a caddy, plus this and that.

Patty had two other reasons to be pissed off at me. As she was getting my beer, the cooler door fell on her toes and cracked a nail. It hurt so bad, she was sobbing and, frankly, most people would have gone home, if not sued the bar owner. Patty worked through it because she couldn’t afford to lose the day’s income. As she hobbled back and forth, her right sock turned red from the blood.

Hours later, she finally dabbed some vodka onto her messed up toes and changed socks. A customer had gone home to get some gauze. He had also bought for her three pairs of socks.

When some broad showed excessive concern for Patty’s toes, she snapped, “I’m tougher than you’ll ever be.” Indignant, the broad stormed out, but she’ll be back soon enough, I’m sure.

Lastly, Patty got angry because a customer had played some Sun Ra for me.

“What is this shit?!”

"Sun Ra. We were talking about Sun Ra, so I played some for him.”

Patty shot me murderous eyes. At Di Nic’s, they prefer Billie Joel, Elton John, Jim Croce, Sisters Sledge, Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, Beatles, Rolling Stones and Cat Stevens, etc.

Among Philadelphians, Sun Ra was even weirder than Father Divine. An alien from Saturn, Sun Ra led the Arkestra. His musicians lived in three houses in Strawberry Mansion. That’s also Coltrane’s neighborhood. I caught just one Arkestra concert, a few years before Sun Ra evaporated from this cosmos.

The man who played Sun Ra for me had a son at Evergreen College. He was delighted I had even heard of the Olympia, Washington college. His kid wanted to become a writer. I told him I had given a poetry reading there, and had twice been featured on its radio station. Evergreen’s most famous alumnus is Rachel Corrie. After she was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer, the US did nothing.

Born in Port Richmond, Patty pretends she’s a Kensington bitch. With its nodding zombies, skanky whores, gun and knife homicides and overdose galore, Kenzo is edgier. With her frizzy hair, tired eyes, dangling cigarette and solid, no nonsense boobies, Patty appears tough yet sexy enough.

Catching me sneaking a shot, Patty commanded, “Take a picture of my ass, and make sure it looks good.” Starvation, trauma, boredom, skin tint or just a clogged sacral chakra, so much goes into how you perceive eyes, lips, sibilants and butt cheeks, with or without jeans. Staring in the mirror, she fixed her bra and said to no one in particular, “I’ve got to make sure my nipples are lined up.”

Jews moved out of South Philly decades ago, then the better off Italians. To replace them, Mexicans, Chinese, Indonesians, Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laos now live in tight rowhouses that were austere enough when new. With their old ways, each wave of immigrants cheers up sidewalks. Sick of suburbs, yuppies and trust funded hipsters have also surged back. In boulangers and wine bars, they lounge along Passyunk below Dickinson.

Stepping outside, I could see the Melrose Diner. Around since 1956, its menu has evolved, so along old timey classics like corned beef hash, creamed chipped beef, Reuben sandwich and butter cream cake, there are stir fried chicken over rice, chicken quesadilla, lamb gyro and frappucino.

Chrome on diners pointed to a future with flying cars, robotic maids and three-day work week. At Melrose, its charming sign with a clock on a coffee cup belongs to that hopeful past.

In 1638, John Wilkins already imagined that, within his lifetime, man could explore space in a winged chariot. Such long distance travel without access to earthly food wouldn’t be a problem. Free from gravity, man wouldn’t need to eat. On the moon, earthlings would likely discover inhabitants. “How happy shall they be,” Wilkins said of the first to reach the moon.  

If there’s YouTube in heaven, Wilkins must check out that Apollo 11 Post Flight Press Conference. Triumphantly returned to earth, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were oddly morose.

Falling far short of Saturn, they had reasons to feel like losers, if not phonies. Sun Ra kicks ass.

 

[Maria and Marco in Di Nic’s on 3/30/15]

[Patty in Di Nic’s on 3/22/15]

[Erin at Fatso’s in South Philly on 5/27/18]

[Fatso’s on 6/3/18]

Grounded Art

As published at SubStack, 4/18/24:

Thomas Anshutz, The Ironworkers' Noontime, 1880

Sarah Stolfa was a bartender at McGlinchey’s. Photographing its regulars, she published a book that established her as an artist. Zoe Strauss was given a camera, so she photographed her neighbors in Pennsport, before foraying into Olde Richmond, East Kensington and Kensington, etc. Having no gallery, she taped her images onto the pillars of I-95 for her annual shows. In 2012, the Philadelphia Museum of Art staged Zoe Strauss: 10 Years. It then traveled to the International Center of Photography in NYC.

Even those paying close attention to American painting aren’t likely to recognize the name of Thomas Anshutz, but he inspired many regionalists who focused on ordinary subjects. Among his students at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts were Robert Henri, George Luks, John Sloan and Everett Shinn. These Philadelphians only made their name after relocating to NYC, however. Anshultz stayed put.

His most famous canvas is The Ironworkers’ Noontime. Debuting in 1880, it shocked viewers with its stark depiction of factory life. Still, the men are clean, muscular and even heroic. Real laborers were much more wretched. Thirty years later, workers at Bethlehem Steel went on strike for 108 days to demand one day off a week, a dressing room so they could go home in clean clothes and 15 or 20 minutes for lunch. Writing from the dark side of the moon, I can’t recall exactly their last request. I do have a corrido chronicling the recruitment of Mexicans to Bethlehem. Then, as now, immigrants were imported to keep wages down. A short excerpt:

Yo me voy pa' Pensilvania
Por no piscar algodón.
Adiós, Fort Worth y Dallas,
Por no de mucha importancia
Yo me voy pa' Pensilvania
Por no andar en la vagancia.
[...]
Cuando llegamos allá
Y del tren nos bajamos,
Preguntan las italianas,
¿De dónde vienen mexicanos?
Responden los mexicanos,
Los que ya saben “inglear,”
"Venimos en un engache
Del pueblo de Fort Worth."

[I’m going to Pennsylvania
But not for picking cotton.
Goodbye, Fort Worth and Dallas,
You’re not much to me now,
I’m going to Pennsylvania
To be a vagrant no more.
[...]
When we arrived there
And got off the train,
The Italian girls asked us,
“Where do you come from, Mexicans?”
The Mexicans reply,
Those who know how “to English,”
“We come out under contract
From the town of Forth Worth.”]

Although realist painting remains strong in Philly, that focus on society’s bottom half has mostly been lost. There are no Joey Cheesesteaks in Sidney Goodman, Edith Neff or Larry Day, etc. Bo Barlett painted a deerhunter with his woman, son and pickup truck, but their gazes are distrustful, if not confrontational. Bo ain’t with them, and neither is the viewer.

To advance, most men gleefully kiss asses. To avoid punishment, they sidestep taboos. By natural inclination, they gravitate towards the beautiful, young and sexy, so anything that hints of decay, squalor or death, they avoid. On their walls they hang, if anything, pictures of flowers and babes. Regarding natural inclinations, Aquinas lists just four: life preservation, procreation, sociability and knowledge. In 2024, we must revise the last to avoidance of knowledge. That’s the strongest urge of contemporary man. We’ve evolved a long way from your dark days, Tommaso d’Aquino! Some Greek even said, “All men by their nature, desire to know”!

Marooned on a savage continent, Americans struggled to accrue culture. With Walt Whitman, they miraculously surpassed Europe. In painting, they had native flashes of genius in the Hudson River School, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Edward Hopper and the Chicago Imagists, with their overblown Abstract Expressionists given an extra push by the CIA. Singer, Whistler, Eakins, Homer, Wood, Benton, Bellows, Johns, Salle, Harriman, Crumb, Pettibon and a few others are all interesting, with Warhol, Lichenstein, Haring, Scharf and Baldesari fine, enduring jokes. No, I have not forgotten fascinating weirdos like Henry Darger or Bill Traylor. There’s also Philip Guston, but he’s Canadian. In photography, America has produced the very best, but I won’t burden you with more names. Who cares, though, what outsiders think, least of all some sweating bum in Vung Tau with his coconut?

Most succinctly, Grant Wood defended the local, “Great art works from the inside out—individual, regional, national, universal—not vice versa. We shall never produce a great national art or a lasting universal art by starting out consciously to do so. We have to start by looking inside ourselves, selecting our most genuine emotions.” Unlike most others, Wood didn’t seek his fame in the city. After studying in Chicago and Paris, Wood returned to Iowa. Not content to be a rural artist, Wood dressed like a farmer. Recent scholarship has suggested Wood appeared as a rugged man of the soil to mud mask his gayness. So be it. Wood’s message stands.

In a better world, each neighborhood would have its cherished artists and writers, so local delights, anguishes, scandals and fantasies would be aimed at local eyes and ears, in the most localized idioms.

Sober, unflinching art is extremely rare. Wood’s Iowa is nearly always idealized and stylized, to the point of kitsch, but his American Gothic is an enigmatic masterpiece. So open to interpretations, it’s endlessly parodied. Long after America is gone, it will be scrutinized as an emblem of this most promising of societies so thoroughly screwed over.

Digging deep, Wood revealed his truest self in the charcoal Saturday Night Bath (1937) and the lithograph Sultry Night (1939). Though his family would rather these male nudes not exist, art is the means to step outside social conventions. After Degas’ death, his brother destroyed many of his erotic drawings.

As a dime store provincial with no manual dexterity, I take the easiest way out by photographing what’s right in front of me! Just two days ago, I snapped a sunbaked, shirtless man teaching bottles of water how to read. From Cóc Cóc Coffee, where I’m sitting right now, I can see that very spot. It’s all about orientation.

Whitman said, “If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.” Consider how vast Whitman was, everything is under your bootsoles, but you must look. We’ve been talking all along about living.

Bo Barlett, Young Life, 1994

Grant Wood, Spring in Town, 1941

Grant Wood, Farmer with Pigs and Corn, 1932

Grant Wood, Sultry Night, 1939

Drummer Magazine, circa 1985Drummer Magazine, circa 1985

Black Men Punching White Women is MAGA's Last Gasp, Says Jewish Maven

As published at SubStack, 4/10/24:

[Camden, 5/18/15]

On 3/31/24, I wrote, “In NYC, two blacks have just been arrested for punching white women they didn’t know. Since there’s a clear pattern, these attacks weren’t “random,” as characterized by the Jewjewed media, or unprovoked. These women’s whiteness incensed 30-year-old Mallik Miah and 40-year-old Skiboky Stora. Beyond their race, their ability to say no added to the insult.”

On 4/8/24, Salon published Amanda Marcotte’s “Men punching random women in NYC: A desperate last gasp of the male rage fueling MAGA.” Only three men had been arrested for these assaults, with the first two black. One, Stora, has identified himself as black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey’s great great or just great grandson. His ranting videos against “systemic racism” make clear he’s no Trump supporter. The third arrested appears Hispanic, as is one suspect, seen on surveillance videos. Even if they’re whites who recently moved to New Jack City from Iowa or Kansas, there’s no evidence they’re MAGA assholes. Still, Jewish Marcotte makes the immediate leap to charge toxic white men, for that’s meant by MAGA. Although there are also blacks, browns and yellows wearing those hats, the image pushed by the Jewjewed press is of a crazed redneck.

Marcotte became known in 2006 for leading an online lynch mob against three whites accused of raping a black woman, “For awhile, I had to listen to how the poor dear lacrosse players at Duke are being persecuted just because they held someone down and fucked her against her will—not rape, of course, because the charges have been thrown out. Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.”

That case was so egregiously prosecuted, District Attorney Mike Nifong was disbarred and even jailed for “violating ethics standards.” Though all charges were dropped, Marcotte never apologized. Since I’ve never had the pleasure of looking into Amanda’s eyes from just inches away, sitting in the next barstool, I must rely on photos to conclude she’s supremely smug and arrogant.

Marcotte’s thinking is also entirely predictable, “The Christian version of the virgin birth is generally interpreted as super-patriarchal, where god is viewed as so powerful he can impregnate without befouling himself by touching a woman, and women are nothing but vessels.”

Since when is Jesus’ virgin birth “generally interpreted as super-patriarchal”? I don’t remember seeing “superpatriarchal” in a sentence, but I don’t read Ms. Magazine or Salon. Men too eager to touch women are deemed toxic, but to abstain, as with priests, is to be stunted and abnormal. A sexually healthy God who respected a woman’s body would have had many steamy sessions with Mary, but only after securing an unequivocal yes before each penetration, and just from the side, mind you, to show perfect equality. Cupping is divine. Loyola Marymount in LA must hire Marcotte immediately as theology professor. Better yet, Pope Francis should appoint her an Honorary Cardinal. That’s how you move in the 21st Century and redress, to the tiniest degree, your Holocaust sin. With compound interest, that debt will never be repaid.

Blacks attacking strangers is a feature of American life. On 10/28/16, I wrote:

Over three days last week, at least 150 blacks attacked whites at random around Temple University. Victims were surrounded, punched and kicked. Wallets and phones were stolen. Rocks were thrown at passing cars. When cops showed up, one was knocked from her bike and a police horse was even punched twice in the muzzle.

This is not new. In 2014, five black girls, aged 17, 15, 15, 15 and 14, committed three separate attacks on random white people at Temple University. Struck across the face with a brick, a 19-year-old white student suffered a fractured jaw and nearly had her teeth knocked out. Her 15-year-old assailant, Zaria Estes, was given a 2 ½-6 year sentence.

Across America, gangs of blacks have beaten random people for decades, just for the sport of it. This cathartic recreation has been dubbed wilding, catch and wreck, knock out game or flash mob, and it can happen at parks, shopping malls, state fairs or even your living room.

There’s nothing racist about my noticing that. Millions have. Living in Philly, it’d be fatal to ignore this phenomenon. Unlike most non-black Philadelphians, I routinely strayed into black neighborhoods. I liked to down a few at Scotty’s or Sit on It in Point Breeze. Barmaids Rose and Cynthia were so sweet. Off Broadway in Camden felt cozy enough, if you could reach it without being shot or knifed. When Christopher DeGroot moved to Philly, I took him to Scotty’s. Getting frisked at the door was a novel experience for Chris. Inside, a woman refused to let me sit on an empty stool next to her. Touchy pussies don’t survive Philly. We only left early because it’s way too loud to talk.

Philadelphian Meek Mill took off by leasing his asshole. “You reach and I start drawin’, ’cause I know the art of war.” Drawn on, Meek knows it inside out. So raw, it’s still hurting. Since the most toxic masculinity is in Jewish produced rap, Amanda is mum. After getting Diddly to kushn his schmok, Clive Davis used his buggered nigga to degrade blacks and whites.

So corny, I think Blondie’s “Rapture” is the best rap ever. Wandering Southeast Asian streets, I’m not plugged into anything, much less hip hop. Still, Diddly’s unraveling made me think of Philly, so let’s end with a heartwarming portrait of a Philadelphian.

In 2014, I met a homeless guy wrapped in a ragged comforter, sitting against a fence not two blocks from Scotty’s. Twenty-four-years-old, Divane had been an R&B and rap singer, he said.

Not cute enough to be diddled by Diddly or Clive Davis, Divane could only unzip his rhymes at house parties, until a struck bullet took out a piece of his nasal bone.

“You look fine,” I said after examining his face. “I don’t see anything.”

“The doctors did a good job.”

“Was the shooter aiming at you?”

“It’s complicated. Someone had his penis punctured and so it had to happen that way.”

I didn’t expect none of this mystical shit. “I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”

“I ain’t gay. I like women, but someone had his penis punctured. It’s about integrity.”

“That’s all you have.”

“Correct, and once it’s lost, you’re gone!”

“You can get it back.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Life is long, dude, you can lose all kinds of shit, so if you lose your integrity, you can get it back.”

“No, you can’t.” Even more sagely, Divane added, “There was a lot of electricity in the air. It came through the television.”

Divane said he had also been a basketball player. I can ball, too. Yeah, right.

Rereading “Rapture,” I realize it’s mostly garbage, but that’s just American culture. At least it’s not Satanic sludge.

Looking up, I see a sunlit street in a mellow city by the ocean. Judging by its surface, it’s not fatally sick. At Cóc Cóc Coffee, a coconut with a straw sticking out of its trepanned hole is just a buck. I must have one more, then.

[Camden, 5/18/15]

[Philadelphia, 9/15/12]

[Off Broadway in Camden on 9/12/16]

[Point Breeze in Philadelphia on 3/15/15]

Our Least Known Mass Murderer

As published at SubStack, 4/5/24:

[Philadelphia, 9/10/12]

Note: When I wrote this 13 years ago, I was publishing regularly at Common Dreams and CounterPunch. When Common Dreams refused to run this, I realized something was fishy. Eventually, I’d learn there are taboos at all American “dissident” websites. Rediscovering this piece, I’ve appended a poem written about the same subject. It will be in my next self-published book, tentatively titled, Doomsday Diary.

1/24/11--For more than 30 years, Kermit Gosnell performed illegal abortions. Many of his clients were 6, 7 or even 8 months pregnant. If babies were born alive, as they often were, he killed them by snipping their necks. Puncturing uteruses, he left fetal bits and chunks inside women that caused sepsis and infections. He arrayed on a shelf jars of tiny feet. He'd give a woman labor-inducing drugs, then tell her to sit on a toilet to “precipitate” her baby into the shitter. Plopped into the water, a particularly large offspring was "swimming," according to a Gosnell aide, before being fished out to have its neck slit. Outside Gosnell’s clinic, there's a white metal silhouette of a man and woman swinging a child between them. “FAMILY PLANNING” is advertised.

Gosnell is a well-known figure in Powelton Village, where his clinic is located, and Mantua, where he has a mansion on a hill, overlooking the Schuylkill River. Before opening his “baby charnel house” abortion mill, Gosnell operated the Mantua Halfway House. Even as he collected millions in government funding to rehab drug addicts, he dealt methadone. He even hired a noted artist, Joe Tiberino, to paint an anti-drug mural on the building where he sold drugs. At the Powelton clinic, Gosnell also dispensed pills illegally. Prescriptions were pre-signed, to be handed out by a 15-year-old receptionist. Hey, if Queen Victoria could push opium, and the C.I.A. ferry tons of heroin here and there, why shouldn’t this small time doctor drop a few tablets onto needy hands?

Mantua, also known as “The Bottom,” is a crime and drug ridden neighborhood. It’s curious that Gosnell, a millionaire, would buy a house there, albeit a Victorian mansion. He decorated it with oil paintings, hired Polish maids. Tall, well-educated and exercised, Gosnell belongs to a family that’s been financially comfortable for generations. The power and prestige of the black elite were undercut by racial integration, however. Suddenly, your average black man could enter a white restaurant, put his money in a white bank, open his mouth to a white dentist. Gosnell survived this sea change by selling drugs to his fellow blacks and by aborting or killing black babies. When white women entered his clinic, they were led to a cleaner area and treated with more consideration. Quite candidly, he explained to his mixed race staff, “It’s the way of the world.”

Nearly half of all black pregnancies in America end in abortion. Whatever your politics, that should be an alarming statistic. (Worldwide, the highest rate of abortions belongs to my birth country, Vietnam.) A week before the Gosnell story broke, there was a news item about a Memphis high school where 90 girls were pregnant. High rates of abortions and teen pregnancies can only result in head and heart aches.

The sexual revolution coincided with better and more accessible methods of contraception, but as this sexual culture became all pervasive and entrenched, means for dealing with it responsibly have not always been available. Many poor women have no doctors, hence no birth control pills. Pregnant, they have inadequate or no prenatal care. Should they need an abortion, they must wait to come up with the cash. In Italy, home of the Catholic Church, where many nuns work in public hospitals and there’s a crucifix in every hospital room, abortions are performed for free. Why? Because they have universal healthcare.

Indicting Gosnell, the Philadelphia District Attorney stated, “Pennsylvania is not a third-world country. There were several oversight agencies that stumbled upon and should have shut down Kermit Gosnell long ago.” Casualties of his botched abortions also ended up regularly in local hospitals, yet only one doctor raised a red flag, which was ignored in any case. In short, plenty of people saw what was happening, but they were either too callous, cynical or bureaucratic to care.

If bad, corrupt and neglectful government and atrocious healthcare are signs of third-worldness, then much of the United States is already there. We’re number three! Our brand of Third World is unique, however. We have managed to become both over and under developed. Unlike teeming Third World shanty towns, our slums are desolate and nearly devoid of street activities. Even before dark, everyone is bolted, chained and padlocked inside, watching 500 channels. Poverty always means the pettiest commerce, peddling and hustling, selling stuff and service from home or on the sidewalk, but this unregulated trade exists much less in America. With the planet’s strictest zoning laws, we basically outlaw survival on the lowest rungs. You can’t just set up a two table restaurant in your kitchen, offer candies and sodas on your stoop, or walk around mumbling, “Cigarettes, cigarettes,” though our poorest do try.

Recently, I sat in a West Philly bar not far from Gosnell’s clinic. Within three hours, three men wandered in to sell incense, sheets of a Xeroxed, quite atrocious poem and (probably fake) Sex in the City perfume. In abject Chester just outside Philly, there are men hawking body oils, incense, clothing and nominal books on the same sidewalks Martin Luther King regularly strolled. This mode of survival will spread, so the government should leave these tenacious Americans alone. What it shouldn’t neglect to do is protect our most vulnerable—and you can’t be more helpless than just born infants.

Several days have passed since this story broke, yet there’s no uproar from the mainstream or even alternative media. This is the biggest mass murder in U.S. history. Within walking distance of downtown Philadelphia, and merely six blocks from UPenn, a $40,000 a year, Ivy League school, hundreds of babies were butchered as government officials looked the other way. With failure and depravity on so many levels, there has been no national mourning or soul searching. That in itself is a tragedy.

*

I did write a poem about this:

Anything Else?

In Philly, there was a man who pushed pills 
And performed late term terminations. 
Many were born into the toilet, to be 
Fished out and killed, scissored 
Through the neck. Over decades, 
This man killed countless. 
Those Who weren’t killed immediately 
Had a few minutes of life, but most 
Lived for merely seconds, spent 
Mostly in their first and last crapper.
 
Mere is French for mother. 
Mare means sea in Italian.  

I was dumped from one water 
Into another. I went from a tight 
Yet vast enough sea, my mother, 
Into a public ocean, the toilet. 
Lone boat in a shitty womb, I 
Learnt how to sculpt tampons, turds 
And toilet paper into SOS. Before 
I had my first milk, I experienced a 
Golden shower. Give it to me, mom! 
Because of some unfortunate fucking, 
I became inexorably flushable, if only 
I wasn’t already too big. I felt a pair 
Of firm hands rescuing me, thank god, 
But that was that. I stopped seeing.

[Philadelphia, 9/10/12]

[Philadelphia, 4/5/9]

[Philadelphia, 11/26/13]

[Philadelphia, 2/13/12. My friend, the poet and painter Jerome Robinson, was killed just a block away, at the Wheels of Soul clubhouse.]

Immigrant Fate

As published at SubStack, 3/28/24:

[At Friendly Lounge on 2/11/17, Vietnamese “Jack” in his James Dean jacket. In the background is Johnny AC, an air conditioner repairman.]

Note: The editor of the California based Việt Báo is the poet Trần Dạ Từ. He and his wife, Nhã Ca, were key literary figures in South Vietnam. Each Tet for four years, Trần Dạ Từ asked me to contribute a Vietnamese language article, so I wrote the below in 2014. The translation is as close, line by line, as I can make it. Bits of it may be a translation of a translation, since I’d converted English dialogues, thoughts or writing into Vietnamese, so now must trick them back into English. In tone and focus, my Viet writing can’t be all that different from my American grunting and jiving, but a linguistic switch always reveals some new aspects, if not an entirely alien character! How many have received such a shock at seeing or hearing, for the first time, their foreign spouse being his or her native self?

In 1998, I was in a van going from Nội Bài Airport to Hanoi. Sitting on the back row was a pale, thin woman who spoke with a Hue accent. Her blouse was buttoned to her throat. Her weak voice quavered, as if coming from some dark, windblown distance. Learning I had just arrived from the US, she asked, “Over there, do Vietnamese live together?”

“Anyone can live anywhere.”

“They don’t make us live apart?”

“There are Vietnamese neighborhoods in the US, but anyone can live anywhere.”

“How odd.”

American neighborhoods are also unlike Vietnamese ones, because houses tend to be detached, with everyone minding his own business. Due to this indifference, it doesn’t matter if you’re gay, a slut or if your kids are in a gang or addicted to drugs. Sometimes a stiff corpse can go unnoticed for a month. No one knows about the sex slaves you keep in your basement.

As an immigrant you must more or less assimilate, naturally, but some are so eager, they deny their Vietnamese roots. In Philadelphia, I witnessed a bizarre scene at a Viet eatery. Starting a conversation with the owner, an American war veteran said, “Back then I fought in Quang Tri and Khe Sanh.”

Chubby with squinty eyes, the owner just froze.

The old soldier continued, “You’ve heard of Khe Sanh?”

“No.”

“You’ve never heard of Khe Sanh! You must have heard of Quang Tri?”

“No.”

“You’ve never heard of Quang Tri either! So are you Vietnamese?”

“No, I’m Canadian.”

“You’re Canadian! You weren’t born in Vietnam?”

Looking annoyed, chubby with squinty eyes answered with that genuine Mekong Delta accent, “I emigrated from Canada to the US.”

Smiling, the old soldier turned around and left the banh mi joint.

Though rarer, there are those who become extreme Orientals in the Occident! In Saigon before 1975, Phước wore slacks and dress shirts like millions of other young men, but in Philly, he gradually became a sifu. With his hair long, moustache wispy and dressed in traditional Chinese clothing, Phước seems like a chopsocky character, but is in fact a master of Seven Mountains Spiritual Kung Fu, so whoever dares to be flippant, snarky or confrontational, Sifu Phước can, with a mere flick, make him hack up blood, fall backward and bounce straight to Sam Mountain! Thirty years ago, Phước opened a dojo. Performing katas everywhere, he’s won hundreds of prizes, so has filled his home with trophies.

Americans often mispronounce Phước as Fuck, but he just laughs it off. The spiritually cultivated mustn’t be petty. Who cares if it’s fuck you or phật du. (Phật is Buddha, so phật du means traveling Buddha.)

Overseas Vietnamese bring glory to the race. A few months ago, the Viet gang Born to Kill tortured, stabbed then tossed three dudes into Philly’s Schuylkill River. Thirty-one-year-old Huỳnh Vũ and 28-year-old Huỳnh Việt were well dead, but Vương Thành survived, thanks to his ancestors’ intercession, despite being stabbed dozens of times. (In the Vietnamese, I use fuck lành for phước lành. Phước means luck, so he’s fucking lucky. Wordplays are impossible to translate.) The main suspect, Lê Minh Tâm, has still not been caught. “Born to Kill” was a slogan used by American soldiers during the Vietnam War.

The more destitute, uneducated and adrift are more likely to become thugs. The US has roughly 33,000 gangs with 1.4 million tattooed scarfaces. I have never sold drugs, committed armed robbery, extorted or trafficked in, ah, intercourses, but when I was fumbling around at night 20 years ago, some black guy almost fiscally liberated me. Though waving a hammer, he refrained from chopping, so my skull wasn’t cracked open. Though buzzed, I was sober enough to raise my voice so someone could call the cops. At court, the mugger said he had to carry a hammer for self defense, since he had been jumped by Asian gangsters! As proof, he pointed to some ancient scar on his face. Thankfully, the judge, also black, didn’t buy this. Done, the cop, black also, thanked me, “You gave a clear statement. We’ve caught him seven or eight times, but this is his first conviction.”

Seen from Vietnam, the US is just California and Vegas, so bright lights and festive streets. Plus, returning Viets are boastful and extravagant. Since only those with cash can fly back and forth, people don’t see poor Viet Kieus. There are many in Philly. They live in troubled and dangerous neighborhoods, such as Kensington. Here, they don’t do nails but cut hair, at only $5, cheapest in the city. Their customers are whites, Latinos and blacks.

American poverty is much different from Vietnamese destitution. In the US, you’ll always have something to stuff into your mouth no matter how poor you are. Each evening in Kensington, more than 350 people eat at Saint Francis soup kitchen. After 5PM, you can see they lined up outside the gate. Slovenly and stinky or neatly dressed, they’re the homeless, old, young and mothers pushing babies in strollers. In the US, everyone’s biggest worry is paying for housing each month. Unable to handle this, roughly 1.5 million must sleep outdoors or inside a tent or car for at least a few days each year. Each American city has hundreds if not thousands of people sprawled on sidewalks. Sometimes they claim an entire neighborhood, such as the Tenderloin in San Francisco, or Skid Row in Los Angeles.

There aren’t many homeless among Vietnamese-Americans. Perhaps we’re more flexible, meaning more willing to live in tight quarters, all bunched up, anything to not freeze on sidewalks. Many Viets are also adept at cheating the system, so they would dodge taxes while collecting welfare. In November of 2014, there were news of a Viet who hoodwinked everyone. Mrs. Sandy Nguyen collected donations for her son’s fake cancer. Receiving $25,000, this broad spent $16,000 on a family trip to Disneyland. Found out, Nguyen was jailed for three months.

In 1995, a 28-year-old Vietnamese homeless made headlines when he killed Thích Hạnh Mãn, a monk at Bodhi Temple, just a ten-minute walk from me. Escaping Vietnam alone, Nguyễn Ngọc Lân joined a gang in California before drifting to Philly. Though many worshippers felt uneasy around Lân, the monk gave him shelter. Thích Hạnh Mãn often preached, “To open the temple door is to close the prison gate.” To thank this monk, Lân stabbed his head, face, neck and body about 40 times. Done, he turned himself in. Lân claimed the monk had raped his sister, except Nguyễn Mai wasn’t his sister, and she hadn’t been raped by anyone. Plus, 18-year-old Mai had no inappropriate relationship with the 43-year-old monk. In court, Lân’s public defender insisted he was insane, since he had grown up in a menacing and chaotic environment, without anyone to guide or protect him, but the government argued Lân was sane enough. He ended up with a life sentence.

In Kensington, Vietnamese just duck inside their homes after work. Loitering, you might get hit by a stray bullet! In 2010, I met Tùng. Escaping in 1982, he spent a year at an Indonesian refugee camp before landing in Louisiana. Tùng worked at an offshore oil rig, so three weeks out there, then a week on land. Twenty-seven men surely got sick looking at each other. After each shift, they fished. Since they could pig out for free, and had no chance to spend, Tùng managed to save quite a bit, but unfortunately his company went under, so he drifted to Seattle, Spokane, Kansas City then Philly. In Kensington, Tùng sweated at a steel plant for 13 years until this, too, went tits up. Now, he does odd jobs at a private school. Three of his kids actually study there. One has just graduated. Tùng declared, “They only go to school then straight home. This neighborhood is super scary!” His oldest was an outstanding student so got eigh-year scholarships from four universities. She’s at UPenn. Her tuition alone would have been $48,000! On top of that, there’s the cost of books, housing and food.

Kensington’s hottest merchandises are heroin and, at night, skanky prostitutes. Way back, it was an Irish neighborhood. Their gang had a cute practice, the Kensington Mouthwash. After forcing an unfortunate to bite the curb while lying face down, a thug stomps on his head. “A Kensington Mouthwash” is when his teeth and blood squirt out. Every so often, I head to Kensington, not to care for my teeth but knock down a few beers. On Christmas Eve, I dropped in Jack’s.

Vietnamese booze at tables among friends, with food served usually. Americans prefer to knock them down at the bar, with each man on his high stool, so no table is needed. Though this way of drinking may seem lonely, it also gives strangers chances to chat. Next to me was a 57-year-old Dominican, Pedro. He philosophized, “There are chihuahuas, greyhounds, German shepherds and bulldogs, but everyone is a dog, you understand, so we must unite!”

After a few more mugs, he further offered, “There’s a head, two hands, two feet, a body and an asshole, but everyone wants to be a head, no one wants to be an asshole, so they throw the asshole into a river. Backstroking, like this, the asshole was also yelled at, 'Fuck you, asshole!' When they needed to take a shit, they were fucked, because where’s the asshole? You can be an asshole, I can be asshole, but everyone has a job to do, get it?”

When I said I was 51, Pedro shouted, “Congratulations!” Bill the bartender jumped in, “You congratulate him for being 51?!”

“Yes, because not everyone can live that long!”

“How old are you?” I asked Bill.

“52.”

“I congratulate you also!” Pedro roared, then turned to me, “The other day, I said hello to these young guys on the street, but they just gave me this look, like they wanted to kill me! One guy said, 'What are you looking at?' I just looked down and walked away. In this neighborhood, you can get shot for no reason, just like that!”

Just hours before Christmas, the bar was reasonably merry. A sock seller stopped at each patron to hawk a bit. Another peddling pirated movies was chased away. Behind the bar were all these lottery tickets with Christmas images in lurid colors. The cheapest was a dollar, the most expensive 20 bucks. I saw all these people buying then scratching, but no one won anything. Suddenly, several people barged into the bar to give each drunk a plastic bag printed with crucifixes in blue, red, purple and yellow. Inside was a packet of instant noodles, a bag of potato chips, a bag of peanuts, a bag of faintly cheese flavored crackers, a bunch of the cheapest candies, two Christmas cards and five proselytizing booklets

At Christmas in Saigon, people spill onto streets to stroll around Notre Dame Cathedral. For our first US Christmas in 1975, my father drove my brother and I into downtown Tacoma. Excited, we thought it would be super festive, but found it desolate. Christmas in the US is a day for cozy family gatherings, not a public fair. Driving around, my father noticed a hitchhiker, so picked him and drove him to his house, at least three miles away. After saying thank you, he just shuffled away. “We drove him so far but he didn’t even invite us into his house!” my dad complained. In Vietnam, people drag new acquaintances home to yak or eat, but in the US, there are friends of many decades who would only meet at public places, like a bar.

Just like that, I’ve been away from Vietnam nearly 40 years, though as an adult, I did come home to live for 2 ½ years. A few months ago, I met an American Vietnam vet in Kennewick, Washington. He said, “Since I was in Vietnam, Vietnam will always be a part of me.” Living in the US for 35 years altogether, I’ve clearly become an American, but in moments like this, when I’m blathering, entertaining and cracking bad jokes in my mother tongue, I can pretend I haven’t been uprooted by history, like too many on this earth, including those who have never left Vietnam. Having lost nearly everything, we must shake or laugh it off, because that’s all there is, all there is.

[Pedro at Jack’s in Philadelphia on 12/24/14]

[Phyllis (left) and friend at Jack’s on 12/24/14]

[at Jack’s in Philadephia on 1/20/14]

[Philadelphia, 3/31/14]

Those Laboring Days

As published at SubStack, 3/26/24:

[Old Philadelphia Bar on 7/9/17]

Note: This piece from 12/26/12 should have been in my last self-published book, Lost America, but I had forgotten all about it. I don’t remember much of what I’ve written.

In the 1980's and 90's, even a klutz like me could find work as a manual laborer. I painted houses, washed windows, cleaned apartments and offices. At my first house painting job, I propped a ladder upside down against the wall, don't laugh, but wasn't let go. Once I was so hungover, I had to climb down five or six times to throw up, and still wasn't fired. My boss, Joe LeBlanc, just laughed it off. He even paid me a full day's wage and told me to go home. When times were good, everyone made out OK and was more generous. They drank more, tipped bartenders more. After work, we often ducked into The Office, a skanky strip joint and certainly no “gentlemen’s club,” before heading to McGlinchey's for Rolling Rock and Jameson. At The Office, a black chick grinned, "I've heard you Chinese guys can have sex, like, a hundred times in a row?" I didn't have the heart to disabuse her of that invigorating and lovely notion.

Joe was a Canadian who had gone South to join the US Army. He fought in Vietnam, was dishonorably discharged, then just ended up living here, illegally. Days removed from the war zone, Joe shot at an Oakland street light. "Why?" I asked. "I don't know. I was just fucked up." A gun freak, Joe was erecting a dome dwelling in an all-white Kentucky county. He gave me an open invitation to come try his large assortment of assault rifles, but shit, man, I didn't want Joe to have some nasty flashback. Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Seeing me with an AK-47 in the middle of them woods, Joe might just dispatch me to Uncle Ho!

Like us all, Joe had his rough spots, but he was a very good man. He treated his grunt well and was willing to hire goofs or even fuckups. When work was scarce during winter, Joe lent me money, in envelopes stuffed through my mail slot, and twice he even said, “Forget about it,” when I tried to pay him back. Joe hired an old guy because he knew grandpa was hurting. Laura was rather large, so he had her paint first floor windows. Climbing a ladder, she would surely break it or her jiggly self.

Joe employed a guy so slow, he's nicknamed "Smooth." It's like seeing Marcel Marceau with a piece of sand paper. An alchemist, Smooth was committed to a unique cocktail of pharmaceuticals, so he died standing at the sink before age 30.

Tony had served 13 months for drug dealing. Going from Philly to Miami each month, Tone and his brother would take an Amtrak, but business got so good, they decided to buy a muscle car to make chicks drool. At some stupid traffic stop, they got busted. Pride comes before the prison loving.

Tony said prettier dudes in jail risked having their assholes slit with a razor, to make them slipperier. I incorporated this detail into a short story in my Fake House. Tony died at 35.

Anyone willing to be boss to such a lame roster is OK in my book, but like I said, times were good then. Everyone could find work.

I also knew Tumi, a German drifter who traveled strictly by Greyhound. Stiff and sticky, he could ride the bus for three days in a row. When not in Philly or rain dancing in North Dakota, Tumi was often in Santa Monica, where he slept on the beach. When broke, Tumi would stand in front of any paint store. Before too long, some contractor would hire him. Tumi needed just enough for his daily all-you-can-eat buffet, then beer in the evening. Born Ludwig, he became Tumi because he was somehow Muslim. Taking himself very seriously, Tumi often imparted bits of wisdom. "An olive, my friend, has as much protein as a steak." "A bone must take so long to make. So long!" Joe also hired Tumi.

Now, Joe wasn't running a charity, but a regular business. We didn't loaf and do drugs on the job. We actually worked our asses off, when we weren't vomitting from another hangover. Joe hired us because there was actually a shortage of labor, at least for shut-up-and-just-suck-it-up work. Now, you'll need a college degree to park cars or serve latte. Soon we'll have PhD's chirping, "Original recipe or spicy, Sir?" Or, "Would you like a Holiday Mint McFlurry with that?" Recent majors in Postmodern Linked Verse Deconstruction will be pole dancing. Trawling for tips, they'll ask, "I've heard you Chinese guys can have sex, like, a hundred times in a row?" To eat, you must flatter even those you can't stand.

It wasn't all Rolling Rock, scrapple and American cheese. Down to pennies, I’d run to Lee Goldston, whom I drank with regularly at McGlinchey’s. Lee dubbed himself President of the Associated Philadelphia International Company, APIC, but all it was was Lee with a bucket, squeegee, Joy dish washing detergent and some scrunched up newspaper. As a window washer, Lee was typically paid $5 per store, but much more for a 7-11 or church. Although these were his hustles, Lee always gave me half of the day’s take. Twenty bucks could keep me high on eggs, ground beef and cabbage for days. Once, I washed windows after appearing at a community college as a guest poet. Wouldn't it have been a hoot had admiring students seen me vigorously wiping water before it could freeze on a window pane? “Yo, isn’t that the poet who came to our class yesterday?!”

Last week, I popped into McGlinchey's just before noon to find it nearly empty. If lowlifes can't swill pissy beer for lunch, you know the economy is nosediving. "Where's everybody, Ronnie?" I asked the owner.

"Well, you're here!"

"But this ain't right, Ronnie. Where's everybody?!"

"I think people's drinking habits have changed, that's all."

"You sure it ain't the economy?"

"No, no. People just don't drink as much as they used to. Before, you never had people come into a bar and not drink, but now you do."

"What do you mean not drink? You can't come in here and not drink!"

"Well, you might have a table of four people, and one or maybe even two might not drink at all."

"That's ridiculous!"

"Or people will just buy beer from a store, then drink at their apartments. That way, they can also smoke."

"Oh, come on, Ronnie, people have always smoked weed!"

"I guess you're right. Maybe it does have something to do with the economy."

Of course, the economy is imploding. One of Ronnie's bartenders, Alia, told me that business was down by about a third. Many regulars who had come in daily, she now saw maybe once a month. Alia herself was cutting back, by eating out less. There was nothing positive about this economic mess.

For some business owners, it may be too painful to admit the obvious. They will latch onto "recovery" even as they sink and their neighbors go belly up. As Center City's dumpiest dive, McGlinchey's may be resilient. When swanky pubs go bust, their clientele, now not so flushed yet still parched, will drift over to settle into cushionless booths or onto ratty, leaning stools. "What's the beer special today? What's the cheapest you have on tap?"

[Erin in South Philly’s Fatso on 5/27/18]

[Philadelphia, 5/27/10]

[Philadelphia, 5/27/13]

[Philadelphia, 5/27/10]

Give Us This Day Our Three Ounces of Spaghetti

As published at SubStack, 2/7/24:

[Philadelphia, 11/12/11]

My next Amazon self-published book is shaping up. Its working title is Stressed, Blighted and Circumscribed Lives. Below is another chapter. We’re in Philadelphia in June of 2013:

John is 46 but looks two decades younger, with not a single white hair or whisker. His grungy style is also an age retardant, he thinks. If all goes well, he’ll be one wrinkly, mottled and perhaps amputated Kurt Corbain inside his cardboard coffin.

His mom was a registered nurse, then secretary at a garage. His dad sold car parts and, in the evening, drove a mail truck from Philly to Harrisburg. “I’m not doing as well as my parents, but I’m not trying as hard either,” John confided as we sat in McGlinchey’s. This late afternoon, it’s still quiet. Only intermittently were we interrupted by a jukebox regurgitating tiresome tunes. On four televisions, golf balls sailed or skated around cups.

I had come in after recording a segment for Press TV at a nearby studio. Seeing me in suit and tie, the bar owner, Shelley, grinned, “Coming from church?”

On Iranian television, I had assumed a grave, knowing face to talk about how China will try to muscle the US away from the Western Pacific, and of its scheme to supplant the US dollar, first by trading with nations in their own currencies, then by having a gold-backed Yuan.  

I pointed out how China is intertwining itself with Europe via increasing rail links and commerce. Already, freights can travel by land from Holland or Belgium to the Middle Kingdom. Unlike America, China has a long term economic vision. Losing his bite, Uncle Sam won’t growl much longer.

Underemployed and malnourished, John is a pioneer of sort in this deep dive towards destitution. His survival strategies may serve you well as inspiration and tips.

Three days a week, John scrubs and mops at this lowlife bar. Twice a day, he also goes to Shelley’s house to walk the dog. At his massa’s residence, John can relax a bit on an actual couch to stare at a TV with more than two channels.

“Yo, John, how much do you make a week?”

“Ah, I don’t want to tell you, but most of what I make goes towards rent.”

“I can’t see how you make enough to eat!”

“I don’t eat that much. I drink beer, and I get my beer here for free. This is also food, you know.”

“How much do they give you?”

 “Two pints.”

“Two pints! That’s not enough! How can you stop at two pints? Once I’ve had two pints, I must drink more. Why won’t they give you four pints, at least?”

“Maybe you can say something to Shelley about that. You can be my lawyer!”

“Yeah, I’ll say something to Shelley. Cheap motherfucker! But you haven’t explained how you manage to eat on almost no money? How do you eat?!”

“I already told you, man, I don’t eat that much. I haven’t eaten in days! Actually, yesterday, I had three ounces of spaghetti.”

“You count your ounces?!”

“I know because on the package, it said six ounces.”

“Frozen shit?”

“No, man, I don’t even have a fridge. It’s this moist, microwavable shit.”

“OK, OK, but how do you stop eating at three ounces? Why didn’t you eat the whole damn thing if you were that hungry?”

“I don’t need to eat that much. Look at your beer. Can you knock that down in one shot?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“But I can’t do that. My stomach wouldn’t be able to handle it. I don’t need to eat or drink that much. Some weeks, I only spend five bucks on food.”

“That’s ridiculous! What do you buy for five bucks?”

“You can always buy rice. Rice is cheap.”

“You’re right, rice is cheap, especially when you buy a huge bag, but do you ever shoplift, you know, like shove a can of tuna down your pants?”

“No, I have never done that.”

Writing about someone, I must make sure to get everything right, but with John, I need not fret as much, because he doesn’t know how to use a computer. A man who can barely eat is not going to pay for wifi. There, too, John’s ahead of the curve.

In 2014, how can any American under 50 living in a major city not know how to use a computer? Even cave dwelling hermits spend at least 16 hours a day staring at internet porn.

“What’s up with you, John?”

“Ah, man, I just can’t figure it out, but I don’t miss it. Who cares. I don’t have any tattoos either,” and he showed me his untinted arms. Nodding towards a waitress sitting nearby, bent over her laptop, John continued, “Once she spent twenty minutes trying to teach me the computer, but I couldn’t figure it out.”

“She can’t get off the computer, and you can’t get on!”

After his two pint allotment, John slunk out of the bar. From Shelley, I found out he lives at the Parker Spruce, a residential hellhole that charges $250 a week, plus an extra 10 bucks for a microwave. A crappy TV would have cost $10 more. His bathroom, he shares with another tenant.

Just to visit a Parker Spruce resident, you must pay six bucks at the desk, though condoms are free, courtesy of the city’s health department. After a ride in the musty elevator, you enter a moldy hallway redolent of urine and Clorox. Taking the stairs, you might step over a dime bag or two. Whole families take refuge here, not just hurting singles, drug addicts and whores. A McGlinchey’s bartender, Bernadette, lived here for seven years. Though pets are banned, you can hear a caged canary as you walk past this door, for example, and inside this cell is a black cat.

At the end of each hallway, windows have bars to prevent jumpers from diving, permanently, into their final hell. Don’t lose heart, though. If you go straight to the roof of this 12-story building, where the view is indeed spectacular and the air fresh, nothing will stop you from flying for a second or two before splashing onto the adjacent row house’s tar roof, which must be fixed every few years, after yet another corpse is removed.

Before Shelley hired John as dogwalker, he employed Casey. She also dwelled at the Parker Spruce. In her dresser were bread, peanut butter, jam and pop tarts. In winters, cans of Bud Ice could be kept cool in a plastic bag hanging out her window.

 “So you trust John, huh?” I asked Shelley. “He doesn’t steal like Casey?”

“You know about that too!” Shelley smiled. “Casey only stole small things from me. I went to her place once and saw all these little things that looked very familiar, like salt and pepper shakers I used to own. Everywhere I looked, there were little things I used to own.”

“Yeah, and she stole from me! I was talking to Casey at Frank’s one night. It was her birthday, so I bought her a couple of beers, but when I went to the bathroom, she stole one of my camera lenses. It’s very expensive, you know, more than 500 bucks, but then Casey returned it, because she felt bad, I guess. When I called Frank’s the next day, Sheila said, ‘Hey, we found your camera lens!’ I knew it had to be Casey because I never took the lens out of my bag.”

“It was Casey.”

It’s not too bad yet. Most sidewalk sleepers aren’t violently stripped of shoes, belt, jacket or a reasonably nice pair of jeans. In Berkeley, I did meet a white haired man who had been robbed by another homeless four times. His coat and shoes, he managed to recover in nearby trash cans, “but the photos of my wife and children are gone.” As we talked, a young woman gave him some leftover from a restaurant meal. “But I can’t eat it,” he lamented, “I don’t have any teeth.”

“You can eat it,” she smiled. “It’s only rice.”

Without fork or spoon, he had to scoop the brown rice with the carry out container’s plastic top.

I never hinted to Casey I knew she had stolen from me, but after that incidence, I kept my distance. Adopted, Casey has never been able to find her Puerto Rican birth mother. On each of her sneakers is scrawled “ESPERANZA.” Casey has worked as a cook and waitress, including at McGlinchey’s. Last time I saw her, Casey announced she was getting married, so I waved at her bride, a mirthful, squeezable lady standing across Broad Street. They had found an apartment in Point Breeze. Idyllic sounding, it’s another Philly free fire zone, though slowly gentrifying. It did spawn the Heath Brothers.

Seeing me chatting with Casey once, some bald, middle-aged dude advised, “You shouldn’t talk to her. She’s ugly. You make yourself look bad by talking to such an ugly woman.”

That hideous bit I actually expanded into a monologue, played by a fine actor, for WHYY TV. Anyway, this guy looked like shit himself. Ugly and uglier, we’ll slog forward.

The current waitress at McGlinchey’s is only 23 and genuinely pretty, so why not meet her?

“I never went to college, because I don’t like school, and I also can’t afford it.”

“But you said you’re into languages?”

“Yeah, I studied French for five years, and the other day, when I met some French students, I could speak to them, maybe because I was drunk,” she grinned, “and I can pronounce Russian words. I read Camus’ The Stranger five times in English, but when I finally read it in French, it was so much better.”

“You read it in French from beginning to end?”

“Almost.”

She also knows scraps of Sanskrit and Japanese, which have proven useful at SugarHouse, Philly’s very first casino. Playing roulette, she has won up to $100 while chanting “sa ta na ma.” She thought it meant, “all one none sum,” though it’s actually, “birth, life, death, rebirth.” Sometimes she mumbled “nam myoho renge kyo.” On full moons, people win more at casinos, she said. Perhaps this Pisces should also use a Magic Marker to scrawl “HOPE” onto her sneakers.

For the trapped, mapless or clueless, magic incantations are as good as any. Give us this day our three ounces, at least, and lead us not onto the no-fly list, not that we can afford even a Greyhound ticket.

In 2010, I witnessed a religious procession at San Francisco’s Civic Center. Mostly Filipinos, they carried this banner, “Praying the Rosary for America… As human efforts fail to solve America’s key problems, we turn to God, through His Holy Mother, asking for His urgent help.”

[Casey’s room at the Parker Spruce Hotel on 4/8/09]

[McGlinchey’s bartender Alia Burton on 5/14/09]

[Philadelphia, 5/29/12]

[Philadelphia, 6/25/18]

My next book will be about lives briefly glimpsed

As published at SubStack, 2/6/24:

[Philadelphia’s Kensington on 7/25/15]

It has no title yet. I’m still sorting out what to include. The piece below is newly composed from old notes. It’s 2015 in Bentley’s Place, a lovely Philly dump I used to frequent. It has died.

Another Evening in Kensington’s Bentley’s Place

Last night, I took the L to Kensington. Even locals avoid that fearful and wretched neighborhood. Though the home of that fairy tale beef carcass banging palooka, it’s actually swarming with a lurching, nodding or slumped army of zombies. I doubt there’s one intact muscle in that waste land of devastated bodies.

I had to go to Bentley’s Place to give a printout of my last Postcard to the bartender. She’s mentioned in it. Half Japanese, Melissa has a round, smiling face with the most soothing eyes.

Plopped into that Boschian nightmare was this Melissa reigned oasis where I could space out. When some hustler wandered in to sell CDs, a DVD player and calendars, Melissa bought a KISS one for $1. Told she could take another for free, Melissa chose “Awkward Family Photos.”

The guy was a 47-year-old South Philadelphian. J gets by going from bar to bar in the crappiest neighborhoods. He also does construction and, in the past, washed windows, something I've also done. When I asked where he got his stuff, J said he dumpster dived.

“But what about the DVD player? You didn't find that in no dumpster!”

“Hey, man, you're asking me too many questions. In South Philly, we know how to take care of people like you! Ever heard of omerta?”

“Hey, man, I'm just curious. Maybe I want to do what you do.”

“You’ll have to figure it out yourself. Do I ask you how your teeth got that way?”

“I was born this way.”

“So I'm born this way too.”

“That was a low blow, talking about my teeth. Fuck you!”

“My teeth ain’t perfect either,” and he opened his mouth to show a bunch of missing molars on his lower left jaw.

“Yeah, but your missing teeth are hidden. Fuck you!”

J confessed, “I’m just barely getting by. Some days I even have to ask, like, ‘Can you spare a buck so I can have something to eat?’ But I’m still here, and you’re still here, right?”

After J left, I turned to Melissa, “J said he got his shit from dumpster diving.”

“My dick!” she snorted while making a jerking motion. “He steals them.”

“I ask stupid questions because I want to hear people say it. I don’t assume nothing, and you know what? People tend to tell me everything. People have told me they’ve killed someone. I hear all kinds of shit.”

“Working in bars, I hear all kinds of shit too. The other day, a guy told me he lets another guy suck his dick because a mouth is a mouth. Can you believe that?! A mouth is a mouth!”

“That's pretty funny. He should just spread peanut butter on his dick and let a dog lick it.”

“Did I tell you that story?!”

“What story?”

“The peanut butter and dog story. Remember I told you I had dated a cop? I broke up with him when I saw him spread peanut butter on his dick for the dog to lick. I was like, what the fuck? I was walking downstairs when I saw it.”

“Did you think it was funny?” I should have asked her if it was a dachshund, Rottweiler or Saint Bernard? Details always matter.

“No! I didn’t know what to think. I still don’t. It was like I was looking at this animal! Now I know why he always wanted the dog in the house when we had sex. The guy’s married now. I wonder if he still does that.”

“It was like a threesome with a dog!”

“Something like that.”

Even those closest to us, we know next to nothing. As Joyce says in “The Dead,” “While he had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another.” Reread that story.

“Isn’t it weird as hell, Melissa, that I brought that up when it actually happened to you?”

“Yeah, it is very odd.”

“I mean, the coincidence. Somebody told me about it once, but I’ve never talked about it. It's not something I think about.”

“It’s still on my mind, because it was so weird.”

“Maybe I read your mind,” I smiled.

Melissa is studying to be a medical assistant. Raised Catholic, Melissa only goes to church these days “when somebody dies.” She just got back from two weeks in California. Her sister is a Marine stationed in San Diego.

Though so close to Mexico, she never hopped over to Tijuana because “it’s too dangerous.”

Actually, Kensington is much more deady than Tijuana. Unlike the Mexican city, it’s also desolate and squalid. Melissa may not get another chance to see a foreign country.

This evening, 53-year-old Ernest also popped in. This Puerto Rico native was a chemical mixer for Estee Lauder in Bristol, PA, but yesterday was his last after 19 years. They’re giving a decent severance package.

“I’ll get $125,000 right away, plus two years’ unemployment, so it will add up to $175,000.”

“You’re like the richest guy in this bar!”

“I know.”

Ernest has a house in Kensington, plus one and some land in Puerto Rico. He doesn’t care to sit around doing nothing, however, so is applying to be a custodian at the Visitation Roman Catholic Church and School.

“It’s a great school! I know a teacher there. The kids are very respectful. Many of them are Dominican, but they have all kinds of kids there.”

“I talked to a nun on the phone. I’ll come in for an interview on Tuesday.”

Divorced, Ernest has two grown kids and a younger girlfriend, “I don't want them too young. A 20-year-old woman doesn’t know anything. She has to be at least 30.”

Hearing his dad rave about Spain, Ernest wants to visit that country, but he has never even been to Europe.

When I told Ernest my name, he said it means “good looking man” in Spanish. Even if Linh Dinh sounds like Lindo, that doesn’t mean I’m the Vietnamese Alex Garcia. It’s irrelevant the viewer’s state of intoxication or madness, and the best lighting won’t help.

The handyman at Visitation is a Vietnamese immigrant, by the way. After escaping Vietnam by boat in 1981, Tung spent a year in an Indonesian refugee camp. Settling in Louisiana, he found work on a Gulf of Mexico oil rig.

Though the pay wasn’t great, Tung could still save, since the 27 men on that rig weren’t even allowed to get trashed. Work done, they fished.

After his company sank, Tung drifted to Spokane, Seattle and Kansas City, before hobbling into Philly. Here, he labored at a steel processing plant for 13 years, before it, too, shut down.

All four of his children have attended or are at the Visitation School. His oldest has been offered full, eight-year scholarships to four colleges, including Temple and UPenn. After school, Tung’s kids are kept at home, since this is, after all, deadly Kensington.

Last year, some guy was hacked to death with machetes just across the street from Bentley’s. At this lovely bar, if a regular doesn’t show up for more than two  weeks or so, it’s naturally assumed he’s dead, most likely from an overdose. To many here, an abrupt, relatively painless exit doesn’t sound too bad.

[Melissa in Bentley’s Place on 12/24/14]

[Ryan in Bentley’s Place on 2/28/15]

[Emily Diefendorf’s class at Visitation School in Kensington on 11/3/13]

[Kensington, 5/25/16]