The funny thing is whether it happened like you remember it happening or if your head changes it all, gets the people and action messed around. I’d talk to the other fellahs, but they’d think I was trying to punk out, see, and make like it was more than it was. Simple. We was getting back at him for trying to come on to me. You know, like I was some goddamn bitch. He probably wanted all of us, not just me, although we got him really scared by then, turning pale and twitching his eyes like he couldn’t believe it was really happening to him out there alone at 4:30 in the morning in October. Wasn’t he smiling at us? I remember his lips curling up, then down, his mouth moving like he was eating up the beer stink and smoke until he gagged. He acted weak, hungry, drugged up worse than the rest of us, but almost like getting fucked in the ass was an end to it. The hunger, I mean. I could tell he was hungry. We all could.

That night wasn’t the first time I seen him. In fact, I seen him several times and knew where he lived. Sometimes I seen him go toward the docks and meat-packing houses. Why? Drink, maybe. There are a few bars around there where I’ve never been. He could have been one of the guys, you know, going after a six-pack at the corner grocery. He wore track sneaks—real Adidas—and jeans and a plaid flannel shirt opened from the neck on down. That day you could feel the season change right in the air, so I thought it was funny seeing the open V of his chest like that. The morning chill had cooled off what was left of Indian summer, but it was too early for leather jackets and thick collars. I thought he was one of the guys ’cause he didn’t swish like them over at Sheridan Square that got makeup on or their hair too neatly trimmed around the neck. This guy walked like a regular fellah. Someone you’d want to talk to, or chase pussy or get shit-faced on Budweiser with, like we do most nights. Yeah, I seen him. Lots of times. Sometimes he didn’t even know I was seeing him. Not until the day I was gonna meet Cuddles after his job when he actually came up close to me. It was near Cuddles’ meat-packing house up by the docks and burned-out piers where Little West 12th Street runs into traffic on the downtown detour from the closed-up West Side Highway.