The Hardest Thing

old lady, and before even I realized what she was doing she lifted the shopping trolley by its handle, swung it off the sidewalk and through the air to connect with Blondie’s head. Cans of soup and stew rolled out on the street, coming to a halt where
Blondie was now sprawling, blood welling up from a cut on his temple.
    Shit. This was all I needed. Grandma was cackling like a hen, dancing around in her worn-out canvas sneakers, tie-dyed skirts billowing out from her legs. Blondie sprang to his feet and pulled his fist back.
    Enough. I grabbed his wrist, spun him around on his feet like a ballet dancer, and pushed his arm so far up his back it was just half an inch away from dislocating his shoulder. The breath huffed out of him, and he wriggled for a moment like a fish on a line. “That’s enough now,” I said, and loosened my grip enough to let him catch his breath. “Time for good little boys to go home.”
    Now something happened which I hadn’t anticipated, which I should have seen coming, and if I hadn’t been sidetracked by thoughts of a more pleasant version of this encounter I could have avoided. This kind of lapse in a combat situation costs lives; here, on East 9th Street on a shitty downtown Friday night, it only cost me my job.
    Blondie used every last drop of anger and defiance to spin back on the balls of his feet, ducking under my arm as if we were jiving together, and worked up enough momentum to pull his wrist free from my grip. He was fast, I’ll give him that—fast enough to take a kickboxer’s stance and whip his right leg up in what should have been a very effective roundhouse kick.
    But I was faster. I parried his shin with my forearm, moved around and pushed him in the direction his body was already going. Instead of hitting me, he suddenly found himself flying through the air, landing on the
street yet again, this time with his leg twisted painfully beneath him and nothing to break his fall. His face whacked straight down onto the concrete.
    His girlfriend screamed as if she’d just witnessed a murder, and his friends, four little runts jacked up on beer and bravado, jumped on me. They were easy—one down, two down, the final two grabbed by the collars and squealing as I lifted them off the floor—and all hell breaking loose in the line.
    And that’s when the manager came out, and called the cops.
    I won’t bore you with details of the “interview” in his office—my half-assed attempt to say I was only doing my job—and my exit, minus employment, wondering what the fuck I was going to do next. My tiny one-room apartment up on 109th Street wasn’t exactly the Ritz Hotel, but it cost about the same.
    I left by the emergency exit and had a brief fantasy about blocking the doors and setting a fire—it’s so easy to kill hundreds of people, if you know how—and moved on. Another goon in black polyester slacks was out front, another ex-jarhead with scars and muscles and a head full of bad memories. Guys like me are easy to replace.

    Great—unemployed, and if I didn’t do something about it pretty quick, homeless. Time to read the job ads, pick up the phone and get hustling. So what did I do? I went to a bar. I wanted to get wasted and I wanted to get laid, in that order. I can’t remember the last time I had sex sober. Actually I can, and the pain of that memory is one of the reasons I drink.

    I’m probably the last man in New York City—hell, in the U.S., probably in the Western world—who still goes out to a bar to find sex. Everyone else is using PCs or smartphones or whatever the hell else, pressing the right buttons to get it delivered straight to their door. Not me; that stuff didn’t exist when I joined the marines at the age of 21, and after that everything was provided for me. The world changed—and when I was discharged I felt like Rip Van Winkle, unable to find my way around. I can plan and execute an attack on a terrorist training camp in the deep desert, I can practice ten different flavors of martial arts to lethal standard, but I can barely make a phone call, let alone find someone to suck my dick. So instead of heading home I hit the Downtown Diner, a run-down joint near Union Square where I’d got lucky in the past. It hasn’t really been a diner for a long time—if you ask for something to eat, it’s always “off tonight”—but they serve beer and spirits and the lights are low, and there are usually a few guys like me—horny and lonely