Oldcastle’s Journal, Mar. 22nd.

11:05PM.  Wound on my foot looks unpleasant, swollen.  Insect bite, or whatever it is, kept me from hitting the street last night.  Could kick myself.  Tonight, the plan is to check out S&D, a local bar that Zach used to work at.  Mingle, make contact.  Try to be of help to people who don’t realize they need help.  At the station, meet up with Zach and a couple short-termers he brought along.

Once hand-stamped and through the doors, the cacophony engulfs us.  We waft through the miasma of smoke, making out shapes of tables in the back.  There are a couple guys in plaid shirts idling their time and we hit it off.  One of them, Ken, seems interested in our blonde friend, but doesn’t seem to know his chances are tenuous.

At the front, where the soundtrack is stuck on “tribal caterwauling”, the hunting grounds are whatever space is to be had between tables for gyrations, set up according to the local ordinance.  The guys mostly gawk awkwardly around at the edge of the herd, or, steaming with desire, find some girl in loincloth to rub up against.  Between the strobing lights, you can see the hollowness in the girl’s eyes.  Their bodies want to crash, but caught up in the surge, they push on, convincing themselves they enjoy this routine.

1:10AM.  Talk with two or three other folks as the night wears on.  It’s dicey.  Two girls at the next table seem worn out and I saddle over to try things out.  They’re slow to warm up.  Figure I’m there on the prowl like everyone else.  Offer to get them some energy drinks and come back with two Red Bulls.  It’s an exercise in practice.  One of the girls tells me I have a nice smile, so of course I’m unable to smile for the rest of the time.  Ken spends most of the time slumped over in the corner.

2:30AM.  Find Zach and his friends talking with a group hanging out outside the club.  They’re an assorted bunch.  Look promising.  But I got stuff in the morning and have to be heading on.  I walk with Ken as he looks for a taxi.  We cross the footbridge over the street and meet a super-sized Aussie with a prominent midsection and rat-scraggle of a beard.  Steve, as he’s called, greets us in friendly, but edgy way of drunkards, holding out a bottle for us.  I pass until he turns to Ken, who has a sip.  He’s told to drink it all, but Ken demures.  “Drink it down or I’ll throw you off this **** bridge,” he breathes, reaching to grab Ken’s jacket.  I move in and tell Steve hands off.  Then he shrugs and laughs, says he was only joking.  Good.  I was about make a joke of my own involving the Zima bottle and the bridge of his nose.  I make a friendly “see you around” (sunovagun) and walk Ken across the street, apologizing for fat-heads like that.  Ken nervously laughs it off.  Guess he’ll remember this night.

Oldcastle’s Journal, March 9th

11PM.  Can hear the street calling.  Feeling a little nauseous and try to get in some more sleep.  Should watch the crap I eat.

2:38AM.  Eventually get out of bed and heed the call.

See some of the regulars, but for whatever reason don’t engage much.  The line is the same even if I don’t know some of the languages.  Maybe Chinese?

3:32AM.  Street corner waiting for light to change.  Guy stumbles up to ask where I am from.  Says he’s Brazilian, or American, or Canadian, then Brazilian again.  Barely coherent.  Blasted out of his mind.  I can get pieces.  Sounds like he came back from a gay bar.  Has no friends here.  Was sight-seeing for the week.  Supposed to fly back in the morning at nine.  Problem though.  Depending on price, airport is two and a half to four hours by bullet train.  Train station is fifteen minutes away by cab, but doesn’t open until six or so.  Don’t know the timetable.  There are other, quicker ways, but I didn’t bring my pocket wi-fi with me.  Nor would he follow the transfers.

Brain hurts.  Numbers not my forte.  Flashbacks to math class.  Must fight to focus, return to reality.  Try to explain the time problem, but he’s headstrong.  I’d let him sleep at my place, but the landlady would throw a conniption fit.  There’s a 24-hr coffee shop I know or a media café where he could spend the night indoors, but he insists on a cab to the station.  And then what?

He doesn’t speak the language, so I interpret for the driver.  Suppose the Good Samaritan or a Boy Scout would have seen him to the station and then waited for the morning train.  Hurm.  All muddled up.  Don’t know what to do.  Give him my contact card.  Don’t see how to help him much more.  Also, have work in the morning.  He has enough cash on him.  I wish him Godspeed and see the cab off.

On way back home, it hits me.  Wonder what hotel was he staying at last week.  And where his luggage was.  Hurm.

Oldcastle’s Journal, March 8th

12:41AM.  Streets are quiet.  Nothing much on the police scanner.  Leaving the train station, get a text from CK.  I tell him to take it easy and rest up since he is still nursing a cold.  I’m not doing much better.  At noon had lunch to make acquaintances with another fellow traveler.  Rest of day is a blur.  It’s after midnight getting home.  I stop by my place just long enough to pour a glass before venturing out into the demimonde.

Near my apartment are two subway stations, ten minutes in either direction.  The one to the west is the central line, but it means going through Togano, running the Samaria gauntlet of pimps and pushers.  Most people avoid it.  It’s a menagerie of midnighters, johns, touts, the syndicate, the cops, the bully pulpiteers, the homeless, and rescue rangers like me.  All of us sharing the same track.

The girls are lined up tonight.  On every corner they’re waiting.  I think I see Aiko near her spot, but I’m not sure.

In front of me a girl, maybe seventeen or eighteen, with a short skirt pinching the top of her thighs.  Knee socks bunched around her ankles.  She’s trying to look much younger.  Might as well be wearing pigtails. Can’t see her face.  On her phone.  She’s about to cross the street, but an oncoming taxi blares its horn.

See a few grizzled fellows here and there huddling in the corners of buildings, but I don’t recognize many faces tonight.  One though, I’ve seen him the past few days.  The first time he almost seemed to follow CK and me, snarling and flailing his arms against some unseen presence.  Yesterday he was on the pavement, lying there wild-eyed.  Tonight I pass him arguing with a garbage can.

Then there’s the syndicate on the sidelines.  Try to avoid.  By their reckoning, I’m no threat unless I slow down their girls with idle chit-chat.  Some of them stand out.  Brute violence carved into their face  I see one now.  Possible Snakehead.  Among their kind, especially creative in the kind of depravity they can think up to inflict.

At the end of the night, around 5 or 6, the girls will be dead on their feet.  Numb and running off fumes.  Some nights, coffee and some grub are too good an offer to turn down.  Other times, they rear back defensively, scoffing in a false bravado.  Like a stray animal taken in, sometimes biting my hand out of reflex.

2:03AM.  To read Orwell, the life of a backcountry tramp hitching the rails and getting tossed in the clink might seem downright romantic.  Suppose it’s because I have a home to return to, a warm bed.  Food in the fridge.  Even a heavy coat a Korean guy in my building gave me.

I gerrymander my way past the slums and tenements and near to where even the dilapidated buildings grow spare and trail off into back lots and old railroad lines.  “And further still at an unearthly height, a luminary clock against the sky…”

The Colorado Kid, he’s got his wife and kids.  Ramone too.  Texas Jack Vermillion got hitched to a nice broad a couple years ago.  Me, I got this view here.

I look out on her.  My city.  Can almost feel like one could find some symmetry to her jagged edges.

I’ve been to Manhattan once.  Queens, Harlem, Brooklyn, and the rest.  Drove by in a hurry.  Seemed to be no end to the skyscrapers and the shadows they cast.  No shortage of colorful characters either.  Luke, Daniel, Colleen, Matt, Frank… Ketch, Marc, Felicia, Jessica… Ty and Tandy, Dwayne and Dakota…

Not to mention the capes.  I’m surprised they don’t trip over each other, all bunched up in the same back alleys, caught up in the same tired dialectic.

Word on the street is the Soldier was sighted not far from my grounds.  Maybe on his way to some G.I. Joe charity event.  Hurm.  Nice to know he is somewhere nearby, watching from the rooftops.  Rogers is different.  He inspires.  Wonder what he’d say if he saw me making the rounds hanging out with some at-risk runaway over some cheap coffee and runny eggs.  I think about it all the way back to my apartment.

Oldcastle’s Journal, Feb. 14th.

Holiday for the lonely hearts.  Strangely, there’s plenty of snowfall, almost unheard of in this city.  May have to buy a heavier jacket.

11:10AM.  Meet with Ramone and Zach at the train station south of the zoo.  Straight off, we’re approached by an old man, straggly wisps of a beard, worn out shoes.  He’s quick and intelligent, despite appearances, and eager to chat.  He’s lived abroad for years.  We don’t have time for a coffee, but exchange phone numbers to meet our new friend again.

Snow is getting slushy outside.  A sense of the forlorn and rejected is a fine white powder that blankets the people.  A warm and pleasant drowsiness takes them.  That’s their hope.  The morning after, returning to their hovels and high-rises, they sleep and slumber and try to forget.  Stardust and snowflakes.  But the track marks are still on their arms, and when the effects wear off, they’re left with a wretched loneliness inside.

It’s an old neighborhood.  The kind where the walls are everywhere, though no one can see them. The original place burned down.  They moved it down here.  As far as red light districts go, this is the fortress, a hundred and twenty brothels.  The mayor serves as a legal advisor to the area.  As we walk the streets, we stay alert to any following us.  There’s two different gangs controlling these businesses, about three hundred members strong going by the police reports.

As we pass the windows, it’s difficult to know where to look.  Maintaining a sort of respectful, yet cordial distance from the merchandise.  Hurm.  Well, it’s a scouting mission.  Zone recon.  The girls sit stoically in the cold, heat fans blazing around them, as the window-shoppers survey.  Some are in uniform, others in their delicates.  They are young and beautiful.  One would never tell by seeing them outside the wall what kind of persona they put on each day.

Mind is reeling.  “Turning and turning in the widening gyre…”  We get lunch at a shifty little café and exchange notes.  Our small team is ramshackle.  Makeshift.  Determined.  Formidable.  Like the Blue Blaze Irregulars.  The word will spread.  Makes my blood beat hot.  Surely some revelation is at hand.

11:15PM.  It stopped snowing.  Now a light rain outside.  Meet with the Colorado Kid about scoping out Doyamacho and Toganocho.  He’s a seeker, but a good hand.  Got a good eye for what’s what as well.  Lucky to have him with me.  I brief him and give some heads up about what to expect.

12:30AM.  Head out on and find some local referral guides.  There’s a fetid stench in these kind of catering businesses, another part of this predatory system, but CK and I play our cards well.  They’re friendly enough and give us information.

After we take our leave, we come across some girls with sandwich boards.  Younger girls mostly.  Once I loosen things up, CK is a natural.  They are surprised and eagerly take our Valentine gift bags, happy to talk to people that are not there with money in hand.  Chocolate, handwritten note, and contact info is inside.  Me and my heart of gold.  In all, we chat up with nine or ten folks around the neighborhood.  Most of them ladies bar workers.  Others are in deep.  Wonder if they’re using their real names.

2:03AM. Pass a drunk slouched by a building.  He waves away our help.  Others that walk this hour are in their own world, conversing with themselves.  The mentally disturbed.  The spirit-oppressed.  It’s still drizzling.  We’re ready to head in.  Not much choice - tomorrow is an early day.

Oldcastle's Journal, Jan. 28th

Oldcastle's Journal

Jan. 28th.
Most of the usual crowd over at the Kiwi's. Near 11, we call it a night. The city is quiet, uneventful. A little colder coming back. I usually try to avoid taking the train, but tonight no choice. Strangers forced close to each other. I feel their eyes on me. I glance back at one. The passenger shifts in the seat uneasily. Someone coughs up a fit. The devil's weed. I sit with LJ and discuss the nature of damnation. We agree to disagree.

11:27PM. Come across someone's keys on the street. Someone probably dropped them in their alcoholic stupor. LJ mentions something about the moral imperative. I agree and head to the nearest police box. No one there. Typical. Across the street some girls standing around next to the menus. After some time, one of the older ones crosses over, cautiously. It makes me think of a wounded stray looking for some food.

Her voice is weak and cracked, but there's something else behind her tone, almost maternal. I decline her solicitation, citing my creed. Brief but cordial religious discussion ensues. Language skills rusty. I fumble for the words. In the end, she asks my business and I explain about the keys and she - Aiko, I learn - compliments me on my Good Samaritan deed. Hurm. We decide it best to leave them on the desk in the police box. I bid her a goodnight and take my leave. She won't be returning home until late. It doesn't occur to me until later to offer her my spare hand-warmer.