The Home Corner

He purposefully and continuously seeks this corner on which to set up his magazine tables, so he can attract business and attention from north, south, east and westbound pedestrians in the Village. They stop to buy his trash-picked magazines for two or three bucks and throw their condescending faces forward toward the rest of their day never giving his life a second thought. They never think about how he would have to sleep on this same corner, or hire a placeholder, in order to save his spot for the next day. He knew this to be true.

He looks at them in tailored black and white and sweat-free city clothes, business casual, strolling in slingbacks and loafers away from his table thinking these people can even transform garbage and that’s how I make my way everyday.

He calls out to the women “My goodness, your beautiful! You looks just like one of these women in this here French Elle, but I sure don’t think they have anythin’ on you. Come take a look here. Go on! Take a look!” and the women purse their lips and lower their eyelids halfway in judgment of the situation and the jolt to the impracticality of their path being interrupted. They never quickly step forward to accept his compliments. He doesn’t take this as an affront to his blackness. The women are simply being New Yorkers and they are still inferior to him, because he really knows how to take care of himself. They usually end up buying the magazine. He knows they want it, they just didn’t know it until he showed them.

At the newsstand stand across the street, some of these imported magazines and catalogues could cost between fifteen and twenty-five dollars, but if his customers can wait until he found them in the bundled recycle piles in the street far below nine-hundred thousand dollar lofts, then they can have them for three or five. One rich, white person’s trash is another entrepreneurial black man’s food, shelter, clothing and freedom from the restrictions he might encounter in dealing with the bureaucracy of the social welfare system. There are too many drug addicts and alcoholics in the same profession. They give him a bad name with their shady dealings and unwashed bodies and pissing right on the sides of buildings, because the restaurants won’t let them use their restrooms. He doesn’t have that problem, because everyone in the Chinese restaurant on the opposite corner knows he’s a respectable man and he frequently plays Mah Jong with the restaurant owner on slow days on the corner of his table. Mr. Feng sits on a milk crate just off to the side so as not to block any customers’ views of the merchandise and Mr. Feng will watch the magazine table while he uses the men’s room at the back of the red silk lanterned and peanut oil smelling room. In this way, he does not have to hire a table watcher, so he can run three blocks north and two blocks east just to take a dump in a rimless and feces-covered toilet surrounded by wads of soiled newspaper and fast food wrappers.

The places are marked on the sidewalk where a table can be placed and the “public character” and the magazine stock must be so many feet from storefronts, so as not to impede the pedestrian’s progress in achieving their lofty goals and midday pursuits. Making eye contact and smiling is the only way he can get their attention and get their money. Necessity dictates than when this potential customer is a man, he must smile in an ingratiating and friendly manner as if to say we’re all men here and we’re all buddies. He might start this off with “Hey there, Guy! That cigar smells great! You mind showin’ me what brand it is in this here Cigar Aficionado? If it’s not in this one, it might be in November’s issue here. They gets all the brands in this issue ... 'cause of Christmas” and the men will step up confidently and reply, “I’m glad you asked me, because … ” and they begin to instruct him on the pleasures of being a man with expendable income. All he is really learning is how to make the sale and all he is achieving is utter and complete ownership of his individual freedom to act and do as he pleases.

Yet, last night he had slept in a hotel because it was cold outside and his placeholder let his tables and stock get confiscated by the police, because his placeholder had taken the half of the nightly fee that he had already paid the placeholder and bought a rock that the placeholder smoked in the park far from the corner. Karl Watts had jumped at the chance to get a table on his corner and now he eyed it from a bad spot, mid-block and across the street. He wanted his corner back. He felt very homeless.