Powerhouse
A
Novella
By
Letty Livingston
Chapter 1
It was warm for a November night, Peter was thinking as he left the Grassroots Tavern. He let the door swing behind him and walked out into the ever-surging buzz of St. Mark’s place. “Ah! The East Village, New York City. Man, do I love this place.” he said as his eyes adjusted to the light outside of the dark bar.
Peter loved living in Manhattan. Having grown up in the Bronx, it was always a fantasy. Now having lived in his dream city for just over three years, the first two he spent apartment hopping with various women around the city, a beautician on the upper west side, a performance artist/dominatrix down in the village, a Spanish stock broker up in Harlem, the list went on and on…
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“Man do I love this place.” Peter said again, arms spread wide, face up toward the small boxed-in piece of sky one can see from his vantage point in the city. Slowly spinning, taking in the strange yet familiar fetor of this his most favorite street in the whole of Manhattan.
St. Mark’s Place had a strange calming effect on Peter. Actually, Sixth Street between Second and Third Avenues was the world renowned St. Mark’s Place. Admittedly, it is not as well known as; Central Park, Time Square, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, or even Washington Square Park; alas Peter knew his spot was famous around the world to certain “types” of people.
St. Mark’s Place, where the grungiest of grunge kids will hang. The super skateboard kids, most of who being spoiled little Long Island brats who squat in the East Village’s burnt-out buildings for the summer. You have the dopers, the vegan/veggie heads, the Hare Krishnas, purple and pink haired punks all decked out in their leather, spikes and chains, and we all know how long punk has been dead.
This was where the real city street-folk hung-out. It was a tight little neighborhood, the East Village; St. Mark’s being the central meeting point. Everybody knew everyone, where they were going, what they were doing at that particular moment. At night when the streetlights went on, as the earth turned away from the sun and darkness reclaimed the city, swarms of curious spectators would flock to this one small street, tourists from around the world. What had they heard? Was it the freakish stores, selling everything from tee shirts that said “I got shot in N.Y.C.”, with the customary yellow smiley-face with a gunshot hole at about the middle of the forehead, or possibly the fact that in every store one could purchase S&M gear, or maybe that there was always the whisper of drugs for sale in the air. “Smoke, smoke, mushrooms, acid, dust, Special-K, X.” Anything the mind needed to escape, available to the passing tourists.
Peter didn’t know what the big attraction was for all the people but he knew why he loved this one street so much. Here he felt normal, almost superior, here. He could sit down and talk to any one of these run-down street-cats, and probably did from one time to another. All these people were just hanging-on in this sub-social peacefulness — outcasts. Peter saw himself in their shoes and was amazed at how he was able to fit in to society so well, yet at the same time could relate to these street people.
