the man who lived through it all

Sometimes I feel like an aging rooster who has survived every holiday cull. Now I'm insulted by the neglect of the chicken executioner because I'm too tough to eat. Several years back at a funeral of yet-another AIDS death a woman said to me, "You know you're the only one left." "Huh?" "All your friends are dead."

Thanks for reminding me, you bitch, but she was 99% right. Klaus, John Kemp, Howie Montauk, Cookie Mueller, most of the punks and gays who worked at Hurrah, a punk rock disco on West 62nd Street, were RIP. Their promise resides in the last of many bright young things from the 1970s but I'm more like a used 40-watt bulb after burning too bright during a futile pursuit of fame and fortune.

Can I move back to NYC? My tenement flat on East 10th Street rents for $2000, however I can re-create the goneness of New York in my head. Strangely I get these ancient smells and tastes backwatering from my body as if I were purging old poisons, each one animating a revival of another memory lost in the haze of good times/bad times. "Start spreading the news…I'm something today." NEW YORK NEW YORK, which was Sinatra's only #1 hit, but I can’t remember all the words. More 1970s New York

by Peter Nolan Smith (the hell with all the starfuckers & wannabes...you're the real thing baby)