My school was across town, and being an 11 year old kid in NYC on that daily commute was a clear canvas ready for layers and colors. I used to try different routes, different buses, just to get others vibes. Sometimes I would get off at a wrong stop, or take a wrong bus, and hop off casually, faking my fear. 

You see, only a few blocks from my house, were the streets that began Spanish Harlem, and my skinny sneakers were not fit to walk on those hot coals. People were weird, bums and hookers would mess with you, and taller kids with mustaches would measure you up and down, looking for goodies to jump you for. 

So I was only allowed to cross the park at 86th, or 79th, the more downtown, the safer. One day I walked a few blocks up with a friend, and decided to take the cross-town bus at 92nd. Since he would be heading up into harlem, I got off on Columbus, and had few blocks to go solo on. As I was walking over to Broadway, I went through a street that looked like it was safe. It wasn’t very busy, but it smelled good, and the red brick buildings gave it a warm tone. As I am about halfway on the block, I see a guy standing on the corner, smoking a cigarette, apparently waiting. He seems nervous, and he makes me nervous. 

My instinct tells me to go. At this age I am more scared of kids than of grown-ups. So I keep going on my way. As I take a few steps forward, there is a car that is parked, and there is a strange looking man inside. He rolls the window down, and looks straight at me. His stare was so strong it made me stumble my steps, but I hurried up. 

As I approach the nervous dude on the corner, I see he is approached by a car, with 2 other guys. They look like hollywood movie drug dealers. The car is pimped, they got glistening gold and rocks blinding my sight, and the hip-hop bass makes the ground shake. They are talking to the guy on the corner, smiling and bragging, and I am standing on the corner, so close I can smell them. 

The light says don’t walk. I do what it says. On the side of my eye, I can see whats going on. It’s a drug deal. They are exchanging money for drugs, and not even being so discreet about it. Apparently neither am I, cause the nervous dude gives me a look that let’s me know he knows I am looking at him, and I get nervous like him and try to move out of his sight. I start singing Double Talking Jive to myself, waiting for that light that takes an eternity. 

When all of a sudden, and very fast, so fast I only felt a wind, that guy from the car from before, is right behind me, and whispers to me an assertive message. 

“Watch out kid”. I give him a look, and the light flashes walk, and I do it, and behind me, for those guys on the corner, all hell breaks loose. 2 cop cars close them in, the nervous dude tries to run, and the weird guy from the car chases him down beating his head to the ground. The 2 guys in the car get out with their hands behind their heads. 

It was scary yet amazing, it was a huge bust, with undercover cops, and I was almost in the very middle of it. 

I got home and didn’t tell my mother about that story. I didn’t tell anyone. I wasn’t supposed to be walking on those streets anyway. 

Movie at Moma

Grandmother on mother's side was pretty cool. Her NYC lifestyle was far out. 

She was a pretty radical sustainable living advocate, and this was in the 80's. Most of her wardrobe was bought from the homeless guy on the corner. A lot of her hip decor was stuff she found on the streets, all kinds of stuff from Eames chairs, to fancy art. She would customize everything from cushions to curtains, she folded and compressed her garbage, dried and re-used her paper towels, and would spend a lot of time complaining if you did not follow her strict environmental policies. 

She was not poor, but frugal. She knew how to be elegant, but was never over the top. Saving money on all this rubbish allowed her some extra cash to spend on the stuff she liked. We had constant calls from charity associations, asking for Mrs. Stern if she would be making her donation that year. We would get stickers and posters and postcards from many of theses charities, World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, Wolves of New England, the list went on. 

Grandma would occasionally donate to cultural institutions, PBS Channel 13, her favorite network, got so much money from her, the Juliard School, always gave us tickets to concerts, the Metropolitan Museum and The Museum of Modern Art, also collected nice checks from my gram's. 

There were benefits, aside from her peace of mind. Good seats, invites, catalogs, and a VIP feeling. 

So the Moma was having a screening of short films, for which some reason Grandma was interested, and had tickets. She took me, her 9 year old grandson, along for the ride. No Ninja Turtles or Charles In Charge for me that afternoon, I was in for some life changing culture. 

The first 2 movies were boring and adult themed. Made me get up and wander off to a drinking fountain and made me analyze and entertain myself with that water mechanism for at least 40 minutes. Bored again, I head back to my seat, as a I reach for Grandma's thin skin hands. The next movie comes up, and as boring as it was, I gave it a try. 

It was the story of two girls who had gotten a new apartment, and were living a dreamy romantic honeymoon lifestyle. It began with the two girls contemplating the wonderful view of their huge loft. The next day, they are eating sushi made by a private kimono wearing oriental chef. Another day, and they have an array of candy spread out on the floor, and binge and laughing like two teens. After a few events I can't recall, one of the girls decides to have a swing set installed in the living room, facing the window. They swing and have fun, and the experience of that great view, is even more exciting. 

Soon, after some disagreement, one of the girls leaves, and next thing we see, is an empty swing, swinging,   

The camera pans over the swing, and out onto the balcony, and tilts down from the skyline, zooming with a soft racked focus down to the streets. There, surrounded by blood and people, the body of the girl that was on the swing. 

The movie ends and lights go on. 

"Wasn't that wonderful?" - grandma says. 

Holding hands and facing nudity

Somewhere in the mid-80's, the decade and the streets of New York City, I was walking holding some adults hand, near my grandma's house in the upper west side. 

Summer was blazing. Loving Spoonful summer in the city hot. I would wear a very small Adidas running shorts and no shirt, and would usually get home half smothered in ice-cream, pretzel salt, and a/c drops. It was nice. 

I was about 7 or 8, somewhere in that tooth range. I can remember my tongue navigating the spare parking in my mouth. 

Don't know what we did, but I know what we saw. 

Approaching a corner Burger King, a commotion began to arise. 2 NYPD cars, lights flashing in broad daylight, blocking the road. People began to be pushed to leave the area. You could hear murmur, and tension in the air. 

The adult hand held on tight to mine, as we found ourselves right in the middle of this ordeal. Hard to explain, hard to define, and like most little kids' memory, lacking in narrative fluidity, but full of subconscious detail. 

Big fat lady, holding the arm of a kid, maybe 4 years old, crying, trying to keep hold of his blue tricycle. Cops slowly move in, from both sides, as she spins in panic, holding that kid tighter, making him scream louder. 

Cops shout from left, she spins abruptly and her skirt kicks up and down like a lambada skirt, showing each time, more flesh. 

         My hand is sweaty, I try to free it from this adult protection hand, which does not want to release. It's ok, I say.  And the minute I am loose, my hearted races up a beat. I face this situation alone, I could be that kid being twisted by a big scary lady at gunpoint. It was a surreal and bizarre scene, almost like some bad taste contemporary dance routine. 

 She yells some Spanish cursing. 

    - Hijo de puta. 

 Cops give her specific orders. 

    - Let go of the kid and get on the ground. 

She gestures with the kid flying around as if he was a blue stuffed bunny. The kid drops his tricycle, as the woman makes him her little human shield. 

The cops move in closer, and she suddenly pivots left, scared by a voice behind her. And now, a moment that lasts an eternity, her short, light fabric, yellow tone skirt, kicks up and has a momentum of suspension, enough of a momentum, that I am able to catch a clear and thorough look, not a glimpse, a real look, at the most memorable fact of this situation, the woman was not wearing any panties. 

         I think this was the first time I ever saw a woman naked. 

My first memories

I was born in 1980, in a cold day of July, in the city of Curitiba, in the south of Brazil. 
I must have been one. At most, a one year old baby. Wearing a diaper, crawling, runny nose booger picking baby, but I can remember. Its not one those remember because of a picture, or from having heard it so many times. I actually remember. 

Not in full retrospective detail, no dates, times, scents or sensations even, but just pictures and sights of things going on around me, somewhere still stuck forever. 

I remember our house was yellow, a polluted busy street shade darker than our car, and we had a big guava tree, with black ants going up and down it like an ant freeway, and sometimes our maid would go out and pick a few guava for juice, which I don't remember ever drinking.   

Toys would fly over this grey concrete wall that separated our house form the neighbor. 

I had an invisible friend who would fling toys back and forth with me, like some cartoon I once saw about kids who did that at the Berlin Wall. Don’t remember the kid, but I know we stopped playing because one time I threw a toy, that never got thrown back. 

I remember waking up in the middle of the night, screaming and crying, holding on the bars of my crib, and looking at my older brother kick off his blanket and lament to the air, saying "I can't take this baby anymore." 

We had a rectangular outdoor plastic pool, which was dominated by a big frog. It feels like that pool was always there, with that frog swimming along the edge in straight angles. That pool was dirty, almost like a pond. Don't remember ever being in it. 
I don't remember playing with our dog, but we had one. A skinny mutt we called Lili. 
The only thing I remember about Lili, is the day she died. 
I know there was some kind of fuss going on. We were about to go out, and people were excited. Later I would find out this was to go to see the brand new and first ever shopping mall that had recently opened, which was built on a lot that used to be a steel and iron mill that made the sewer top for the city, ironically. 
So anyway, there was usually some caution when opening the gate. Lili was territorial, and would occasionally barge out and bark away other dogs or people.  
Exactly as I remember it, and not fact checked with other witnesses, but maybe somehow true, is that across our busy street, went prancing like a king, a very charming dog, kind of like a Lassie type breed, and with a classy poise that made him stand out from the usual garbage can tumbling flea bags that used to cross our driveway. 
Now I don't remember exactly, but I did see, the exact moment that those two dogs locked eyes, and as if in slow motion, that charming long haired pure breed dog let out a bark.
Next thing I hear are tires and horns, screaming and yelling. 
The sight I see next, is one to never forget. A baby as I was, oblivious to tragedy, not yet aware of death, I see death for the first time, as I look into Lili's eyes. She was being held tight in the chubby arms of our maid, a thin stream of blood rolls down her tongue, she leans her head back and looks at me, and she takes her last breath. 
According to my mother, after that, while Lili got buried, she took us all out to a fancy ice-cream place, to help ease the pain, but I can't remember that at all.