Guns and cowards.

I have never held a real handgun in my life. It's never occurred to me that having one might make me safer. i can't imagine how that math works. i have always had the opinion that the very existence of guns in the city is what kills people. from stray bullets, to kids finding loaded guns, to people losing it and blasting other people for no good reason. it has always seemed so cowardly to me and the only people that really need guns, are soldiers and drug dealers. drug dealers need them because they have to kill their competition, which doesn't actually seem all that bad in the bigger picture.

but when i think about how i have operated as a young adult, the amount of times when i could have been shot, it's amazing that i maintained the higher road coming up in the 80's. i was always in some kind of altercation of one kind or the other and the thought never crossed my head how often i was within feet of a loaded weapon during a conflict. i always assumed that the more bad ass a person was the less likely they would resort to the easy way out. i don't know, i think i am a bit Spartan when it comes to conflict. i would fight in the shade if i had to.

let me quickly go through a brief history of my experiences with Guns and the cowards behind them. first off, i grew up in an apartment that face the back of the building, and looked out at 87th street off of Columbus. back then, it was a rough street. the kind of street that you could expect to get chased on at my age. you could assume it actually. it was a street that quite often erupted into sudden violence. i remember being startled out of sleep very often from the loud pops of gunfire. and sometimes it was 6-8 rapid shots, you know, somebody unloading on somebody else. if you heard rapid shots like that, you could almost expect cops to show up at your door the next day asking if you heard something and when. it usually meant somebody had been murdered.

but i was lucky enough to only see it happen once, up on 137th street. it was twilight and i was with some friends walking to a spot to write graffiti in a very bad area. there was a guy just standing in a doorway, looked like a dealer or something. i didn't really pay any attention to him until another guy walked buy, and all of a sudden, turned to the first guy and raised his arm and popped him right in the face. it was insane to see. the guy with the gun just kept on walking away. it was dark so i never saw anything except his silhouette, but i could tell he was calm. the other guy just folded backwards like a lawn chair. we made like sheep and got the flock out of there.

as for me coming close to getting hit. well one time when i lived in the village and had a bedroom right on the sidewalk of 11th street and 4th street i was woken up one night to very loud gunshots right by my window. for a second i thought the gun, or fire crackers, as they sound like, were INSIDE my room. i rolled out of my bed quickly and hit the ground with a thud. there was a bunch of yelling and the sound of footsteps running by. I stayed under the bed until there were no more sounds besides the hum of the city.

the next morning i found out that there had been a full-on police shootout with armed robbers and the bullet holes were right above my window and several in the tree right in front of the window. the tree probably caught the bullets that were headed in my direction. there was some dried blood splattered on the sidewalk. that was also the very spot were a good friend of mine who was walking to his place down the block got held up at gun point. in full view of me watching tv inside.

then another time, i was at a loft party downtown, out on a fire escape with some friends. we were watching a very exciting fight that had broken out on the street in front of the building. there were guys kicking this one guy under a parked car and several other mini fights raging in various places from the sidewalk to the middle of the street. then all of a sudden one of these idiots decides he's been punched one too many times and whips out a gun. he does, what might have seemed like the smart thing, by shooting into the air to get people running. only we were right above this guy, so his gun was aimed right at us. i saw the sparks lick out of the barrel and there was the very audible TINK TINK of the bullets hitting the metal hatching of the fire escape right at our feet. we ran inside as our curiosity quickly changed to panic.

another close call was when i was writing graffitti one night with a friend, Spy-D. We were on 10th avenue and 57th street. a pretty large intersection and it was about 4 A.M. so it was basically a large empty corner except for two DT looking cars. we called any Caprice Classic that was unmarked a DT car, because it was usually driven by Detectives. well, as we were crossing the street in front of these two cars, out of nowhere four guys wearing dark blue windbreakers with D.E.A. printed on them jumped out of the car in back and started popping off shots at the front car in rapid succession. 3 guys jumped out of the front car and started firing back. it was straight out of a movie. Spy-D and i were stunned for a brief second as we figured out what was happening right next to us. we ended up runnning for our lives and diving behind a parked van. as soon as the gunshots became less constant we just high tailed it east on 57th and never looked back. i have no idea how close the bullets came, but i am sure it was TOO close. By the way, R.I.P. Spy-D.

and there are some other moments, like in Mexico city a few times i had to duck when a gunfight unexpectedly broke out or ran past me. of course, international incidents get filed under another header as they don't really affect the way i have chosen to live unarmed in America.

but back to NYC, once me and my friends got pulled over on the upper east side. i was sitting in the back passenger side seat munching on a slice of Ray's pizza. i didn't have anything illegal on me, which back then was actually quite rare. so i was relatively relaxed and was expecting maybe a ticket for the driver, Zar, at the worst. i hear a loud tap on the window right next to my ear and look to the right. I was looking down the barrel of a .38 special. literally i could see the light get darker in the shaft, and i could clearly see the heads of the bullets in the loaded magazine. i realized that if this spastic guy's finger twitched for any reason, i would die a very gory death right in the middle of the nicest neighborhood i knew at the timw. the cop told me to step out slowly with my hands up. i complied. he made me throw my pizza on the ground. i could tell i was facing a small (mentally), scared, and stupid person. the fact that the decision to end my life was in his hands was earth shattering to me.

the cops ended up realizing that we weren't the guys they were looking for and the just walked away without even apologizing.

So despite all of this proximity to these killing devices, these one button and lights out machines, these coward enablers, i have never for one second considering having one of my own. life is just too short for that stupid shit.