In the Gutter, February '72

I don't know how I got home that night. As I recall, I hardly felt the cold at all. I was never dizzy, but my feet moved as if frozen blocks ... My head hurt when I awoke. It didn't hurt that night though ... No, not until they knocked me out. He did. And robbed me. She did. Two of them, maybe more. I wouldn't know. The woman came up to me all of a sudden. She was was just right there in my face with her tits, her story, her breath ... A favor her request; money his demand. Never saw the bloke, but he missed on his first swing. Not entirely: the blackjack caught the scruff of my neck, took me down a peg. More to his level, I reckon, 'cause his next blow was true.

A horse pissing a Hudson-like current by your head is a rude awakening, but no less than I deserved. I cried then. Not 'cause I lost all I earned, or from the pain, but because I'd come to a place I never thought I'd stray. In fact, I kept such a clear eye on it--stepping as far as I could manage from its slippery slope--that I thought I'd be well far from it for the rest of my days. But I guess I was short-sighted. All roads led there eventually. And the truth of that stung like the cold wind. And the tears came. I was my father's son: Aedan, son of Seamus--son of shame.

I vomited on the steps of the tenement. It burned my throat. The wages of an hour's labor spent and spewed just like that. The lump above my ear was tender and nearly throbbed. My jaw clicked and clacked. It hasn't closed right since.

The night was a dark cloak wrapped tight on the streets. In the building that darkness would be smothering: with windows few, and the walls coated in black grime inches thick--years of scum, the residue of lives spent in this inescapable squalor.