The first look stunned me; two gang bangers in full street regalia walking slowly toward me through the piles of rotting paper and sensible shoes of a publishing company. These two men were large, covered in muscle, tatts and scars. They held their shoulders in a way I had not seen in midtown; thrown back with a chest rising out and up. Lions had entered the savannah and the hooved animals were nervous and confused. How could a business engaged in HIGH CULTURE let such people in? What purpose could these men possibly have in the land of sweater sets and pencils? The black security guards did not want to let them in.
I was enthralled. They were here to tell me about a book they wrote, a book imagining the lives of their victims. They told me about the violence of their days, how they wanted to live for their children, how they had laid down their arms and wanted to help others not make the same mistakes. They wanted to interrupt circles of revenge and violence because they’d been inside the beast and knew how it worked and what it did to human beings. These two men had such power they instinctively knew how to save themselves.
Jay, the one with scars on his face, had piercing black eyes and giant rings on every finger, diamonds that flashed in the yellow fluorescence of yet another run-down meeting room in another boxy low ceiled building in New York City. I kept expecting the walls to blow outward from the sheer force of these two. I asked him if I could see his rings and, without hesitation, he slid them off his hands and passed them over. In that gesture, I saw the long crisscrossing lines on his arm and asked him about it.
“I used to be a cutter,” he said matter-of-factly.
Electricity ran up and down my spine. I realized I hadn’t received an honest answer from anyone in so long that this man had dazzled me by just being himself. He told me a story about Shadow, his cat, and the love they had for each other. A gangbanger worried about the quality of food he fed to a cat? Every notion I had ever thought about the term “criminal” had been flipped upside down.
In that one hour-long meeting, a magic door opened. Two gangbangers who had decided they wanted to rise from the game and live met one shut-down hugely entitled woman and slowly convinced her to live as well. Joined together, we began to work on our calling; hanging out together, writing books, and making films from time to time. I believe they were surprised by how much I loved them and needed them; they were a gift in my tiny “executive’s” life of another lunch, another fake smile, another bloodless deal negotiated.
Looking back, that meeting has taken on big meaning in my head. I understand now how Eros can enter with such magnificence that it is impossible to turn away. This was my Pompeii, an erupting volcano of heat and movement and wonder and threat. This was my call back to life with all its blood and guts and sorrow and hardship and ecstatic joy; an office couldn’t hide me now. I was out in the street with Jay and Dashaun, watching them watch girls and laughing like fools. In Saks, we bought leather jackets after convincing the clerk we had lots of real money, and then went down to the Pink Poodle to buy sex toys for their Mrs. We ordered cheeseburgers and sat in cafés writing. Nobody could figure out why we were together and that made us want to be together even more.
My beloved comrades. I think of our friendship as one of the diamonds of my life. It was so naturally formed, so beautiful, so real, I can always reach out and touch it in my mind. Jay. Dashaun. Powerful. Laughing. Glowing. Glowering. Completely in touch with what is real. They have to be, you see, because on the street, if you lose track of reality, you’re dead. That’s the deal.
Both my friends spent a bit of time in prison; Jay, of course, loved his time there. He immediately cued into the other inmates and became a kind of lay minister to the men, listening and advising as he always does. He is a leader, a titan, a great beating heart walking the earth and making it better wherever he goes.
I feel pain whenever I think of my friends in a cage. I also think about this, one of the most beautiful poems in this or any other language.
The Panther
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly–. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell