Instant Karma Nearly Got Me, Part II

I Pulled into Nazareth,
was feelin' about half past dead;
I just need some place where I can lay my head.
"Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?"
He just grinned and shook my hand,
"No!", was all he said.

XXxxxxxxxxxX- From The Weight, by The Band

The East Village. Turbulent and raw throughout its history, teeming with every known ethnic group in the world (and probably a few that hadn't been discovered yet), once the home of the Abstract Expressionist painters, then the center of the Pop Art universe and home of the Warhol Factory workers - not to mention its legendary status as magnetic north for both the beats and the hippies. Bill de Kooning's studio was just a few blocks down from mine on 10th Street a few years earlier; Yoko Ono had once waited tables at my favorite haunt, the Paradox, down on 4th Street, the first macrobiotic restaurant in the country. Egg creams, bagels, art, music, poetry, free love - what more could a young bohemian want?

The artists and writers who once lived and worked in this neighborhood had actually caused the intellectual and artistic center of gravity to shift from Paris to New York in the late 40s and early 50s, finally coming to rest somewhere near 10th and A, I believe; though, for some reason the money remained uptown. In the ensuing years - that is to say, the 60s - things began to fall apart; the center could not hold. Even during the brief slice of eternity that I was walking those famous streets, it was clear that it was becoming more of a carnival sideshow, a nightmarish affair, complete with freaks and dancing clowns.

The original dream of the Hippie Nation - all lightness of being, tripping naked through the forests and flowers of our minds - had fallen under the spell of a cosmic eclipse of the sun; one so slow and gradual that you didn't notice that the light had changed. By the time the decade ended, we were left with nothing but bad drugs, street hustlers, pimps, junkies, thieves, gangsters and old fashioned run-of-the-mill killers. Oh, mama, can this really be the end, to be stuck inside manhattan with them kozmic blues again?

Still, an occasional ray of light would make it through. Standing, thumbing through records on St. Marks Place, when the jubilant sound of Creedence Clearwater's Proud Mary burst through the speakers for the first time, everyone in the store breaking into a spontaneous dance party, boogie'n right on through the entire album; when it was over we're falling over laughing, like a bunch of little kids. Or walking down 10th Street on a sunny winter's morning with Dylan's brand new album, Nashville Skyline, in my hands, his smiling face staring up at me from the cover. This made a deep impression on me at the time; I felt a need to hang onto it, somehow, like one of the holy cards my grandmother always kept in her purse. It was a comforting sign. The sorcerer was smiling.

Other moments. Climbing into a VW bus one afternoon with some fellow travelers, one of them an ex-girlfriend who had just started going out with Richie Havens, and had somehow gotten the word to head up to the Catskills to 'drop in' at Jimi's farm. Talk about a buzz! Are you experienced? Yeah, baby! Comin' ta getcha!

Unfortunately, Jimi wasn't there, he was off on tour somewhere. His 'hideaway' was just an ordinary farmhouse surrounded by miles of rolling hills, with just a few pieces of furniture, the dining room filled with musical instruments. Nothin' left to do but jam through most of the night, as freaks of every stripe and color came and went. No, we ain't gonna work on Jimi's farm no more... It was a circus at the edge of the world, an unforgettable circus; one which I can barely remember.

One summer night, feeling kind of trippy, I went to see The Incredible String Band at the Fillmore East. Their haunting sound of strings, flutes, pipes and voices managed to conjure up a fair number of wood nymphs, fawns, satyrs, and for one brief, shining moment brought us all together 'round the Cosmic Campfire in the middle of the Magic Forest. But it couldn't seem to penetrate the fog rolling ominously through the streets just outside the door. Which one was the real dream? It was getting harder and harder to tell.

Early the next morning, as I slid into the front seat of my cab and rolled out of the garage on 32nd Street to meet the city, still waking up, the fawns and nymphs were all but invisible, and the satyrs, grown stone cold, glared down at me from the odd building or two. No matter. One steaming cup of java, cream and sugar, and reality kicks right back in. And that ain't always a good thing, I was beginning to learn.

Though it was common knowledge among new york cabbies that there was more money to be made after midnight, I had been running mostly day shifts in the wake of a series of high-profile robberies, one resulting in the death of a fellow cabdriver just weeks earlier. In those days, there was no protective barrier between the cabbie and his passenger, which meant that anyone sitting in the back seat was virtually alone with you on a floating island, and had the strategic advantage of being seated behind you. All you had was a face in the mirror. This, while weaving in and out of some of hell's finest traffic, at what might be judged by some folks to be, well, some pretty goddam crazy speeds.

In light of all this, I calculated that even though the money didn't flow quite so freely in the daylight, the bullets probably didn't either, so at least I'd get to keep my earnings and possibly even live long enough to spend them; and besides, I could always make up the difference in hustle. I liked to live dangerously, but usually not for money. Didn't interest me. I completed this house of cards by telling myself I always did my best painting at night anyway - a nice move, actually, since I hadn't finished a painting in almost a year.

As the crime wave grew worse, most cab companies still didn't consider it cost-effective to install the shields. We were like sitting ducks. We began taking our own protective measures, like checking out each fare carefully before stopping to pick them up; if we didn't like the way they looked, they weren't going for a ride. Sorry, pal; altruism can be hazardous to my health. Some stashed billy clubs in the front seat; others, it is said, were packing heat. Me, I just dragged along my trusty portable radio, music being my first line of defense in any crisis.

Now, having already been robbed twice in the past month or so, and having learned at my mother's knee that bad luck comes in threes - kind of a package deal - I was on edge, to say the least. It made me very fussy about who got into my cab. But at this one intersection, 24th Street, I think, before you could say There's no place like home, there was this guy, sitting in the back seat, staring at me in the mirror with eyes as big as ping pong balls. I knew it was bad from the minute he jumped in. He was a junkie, and he was strung out like a clothesline.

Where ya headed, my friend?, I ask, driving slowly away from the intersection. After a few seconds of silence, he says, 'I've got a gun aimed right at the back of your head, motherfucker, and if you make one move, I'll splatter your brains all over the roof of your cab. Take me to Harlem.' I was left with no choice but to drive onward, into the valley of death. This was going to be a long, long ride; and that's if I was lucky.

It seemed to take an hour to get to Harlem. I could see him in the mirror, sweating and twitching, and caught an occasional glimpse of the gun, a small snubnose deal. I tried talking to him the way you might try to talk someone down from a bad trip, but he was somewhere else, high on adrenaline and running low on junk. I was actually more afraid I might die as a victim of one of his twitches than out of any intention on his part to kill me. I knew he just wanted a fix.

We finally reach Harlem without a sound from the backseat, and when we get there, he tells me to turn around and drive back downtown. That's when I started to sweat. This didn't make any sense. If he wanted to rob me, I could have pulled over anywhere and given him the money. I told him he could have the goddam cab if he wanted it. Now we were headed back downtown. What was going on here?

I began to try to figure out some way of derailing this thing before somebody got hurt. Truth be told, I was thinking mainly about me. I thought of trying to signal a police car with my lights, making hand signs out the side window, or even crashing the cab into a streetlight and jumping out onto the pavement. In the end, it seemed none of these options would work, and could get me killed. I had no choice but to go along for the ride, wherever the hell it might take me.

Finally, somewhere around midtown, he seemed to have made his decision. 'Take me to Grand Central', he says. 'Yessir. You got it.' I weave my way around to the side of the station, the morning sidewalk already standing room-only, and pull up to the curb. He wants everything in the cash box and everything in my wallet. 'Take it, man, it's all yours.'

'Now I'm going to get out and stand on the sidewalk with this gun in my coat pocket, and it's gonna be aimed right at the back of your head until you drive to the corner and make the turn. Don't make any funny moves, 'cause I'll be standing right here till you disappear.'

As I drove away, I looked in the rear view mirror; he had already melted into the crowd. I was alive. I had dodged the final bullet. By any cosmic reckoning, I had taken everything this city could throw at me, and had lived to tell the tale. I had no way of knowing at the time that the story was just beginning.

To be continued....