Cyber Field Of Dreams

Fairy tales can come true if you’re young at heart. 

“CRACK WHORE,” the kids shouted in a summer school in New York, New York. They burst into gleeful laugher when they saw my mouth drop to the floor.  Rewind the hours to my ex-girlfriend, who found a gig teaching playwriting to children. She started out nice and calm before doing her screaming version of Janis Joplin’s A Piece Of My Heart.  “You have to come down here!” I can’t control them! I’ll give you my paycheck!” she wailed over the phone. After a night of deep thinking by the East River and drinking beer to get to the bottom of it all, what my head needed was the drilling screams of a little girl having her ponytails pulled by a little macho Puerto Rican, the next heavyweight of the world. Please help me was the last thing she said before the line went dead. Actually, I hung up.

Good luck in the next life, sister.

I went back to sleep. Seconds later, got up, yawned, washed face, stared mirror down like boy in crowded fable who pointed out king has no clothes, put on boots and staggered out into bright sunlight glad not be a vampire. Minutes later, I pushed the door of the classroom with one hand like a Clint Eastwood type about to get into a barroom brawl with bikers tattooed with ill intent. The kids froze in their mayhem and smiled back. “Line up against the wall and stick your hand out. When I slap you five say who you are,” I said on the first day of Book Camp. They giggled when I bolted down the aisle to fast for them to say anything but the first half of their names. Who am I?

I’m not Spider Man breaking his back on Broadway.

For a game in improvisation, I looked for three volunteers in a sea of hands waving wildly like the wings of birds over breadcrumbs on golden sands. I assured everyone would get a chance at role-playing. For the time being, they selected the characters for the two boys and a girl standing in front of the blue board: cop, Crack dealer and Crack whore. Then they came up with a scene of the cop looking for his bribe from the dealer who was looking for his money from the whore. When I was a kid, I would have summed it up like a Loony Tunes cartoon: angry bulldog chases sneaky alley cat chases scared mouse jumping into the sewer with cheese.  That day of kids keeping it real, it was South Park in The South Bronx, a farce applauded with great enthusiasm. After that, it was a chorus line of “Me! Me! Me! Pick ME!” Three young faces got the same old audience favorite request of Crack Whore!

All right! Enough! Sit down.

Why do you pick the same scene again, I asked, upset like a mind-blind self-righteous adult about to swat them with a copy of Better Homes and Gardens. They looked at me in silence until a kid with a scar on his face stood up in the back. “Because it’s all we see out there,” he said, pointing to the window.

They saw the look of vulnerability flash across my shocked face.

 I didn’t know what to say until I saw a little girl lowering her head in depression. “We’re going to do a scene from Star Trek,” I said with sudden inspiration trying to save the day. The kid with the scar became captain of The U.S.S Enterprise, a little African-American girl became communications officer and “You’re an alien appearing out of nowhere in space,” I said to a little kid I hoisted up on his desk. “You see the alien. What do you do?” The kids burst out laughing when ‘Captain Kirk’ yelled “FIRE!” In my bit as a Vulcan science officer, I advised the captain to open up a hailing frequency. “What do you want, alien?” he asked the kid who was biting his nails and rolling his eyes around the classroom. “I don’t know,” he responded with hands up in the air. “FIRE!” the captain yelled to the delight of his crew. I sighed and shook my head with a smile. I tried to do my best. “How many of you would like to see Danny come back again?” asked my ex-girlfriend. The class exploded in cheers. I went M.I.A.

 Missing In Academia.

I was still haunted by Alvin Rivera who was in a Daily News list of children killed by illegal guns. An inhuman drug dealer used him as a body shield against the bullets of another murderous drug dealer. They killed me in the awful sight that shattered eardrums or so the sudden silence made it seem on the mean streets of flashing cop cars, ambulances and screams in Spanish of Jesus help us. The cops let me through just in time to see one of Alvin’s arms fall limp from a gurney.  ‘Judgment Day’ came for a child who never lived his life. So many memories of how he stood in front of the building like a kid waiting for his dad to return. How his face lit up when saw me return from The City of Angels still soaked in Californian sunlight. After hugging his good fortune, he helped bring my luggage upstairs. Some people believe Alvin still lives in the everlasting memory of Almighty God. As I write this, U2 sings have you come to play Jesus?

Have you come to raise the dead?

Looking back at part of the past is like staring into the eyes of the mythological Medusa: I turn to stone, crumble into the dust to dust of my own 9/11, the birthday of the woman some other me loved.  I wanted to escape from Planet South Bronx through higher education and recreate myself into the better angel of my nature. On the first day of school, my mouth dropped when our class was given the assignment to create a tour book for our hometowns. Yeah. There’s no avoiding destiny. I’m the prisoner of my childhood wish to be anything but a reluctant hero.

What’s to see in our town but the dreams of children?

In my dorm room, I popped a tape into a cassette player to play the theme from Mission: Impossible. If you are caught or captured, the secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions. Good luck, Dan. I threw imaginary head shots on my drawing table until they began to develop into the faces of Al Pacino, Colin Powell, Bobby Bonilla and so many more that went on to enhance the country if not the world. Since some humans considered our town a wretched hive of scum and villainy like in Star Wars, I was going to draw tourists to The American Spirit by putting The South Bronx on police line-ups and demonstrate an advertising technique called GOTCHA!  Since our town is the only one connected to the mainland, I can line-up everyone.

Think of me as a special agent of The Department of Poetic Justice.

Then someone took a shot at my head and it was lights out in 1993 weeks after the first attack on America. In a moment of time-lapsed reporting, I opened my eyes under six feet of cold water at the recreational center of Saint Mary’s Park, the former estate of Gouverneur Morris, The Founding Father who wrote the words We, The People.  With some loss of memory, I got out of the healing pool and walked down a hallway painted with super heroes. Among them, there is one of a martial arts instructor who was killed with a bullet when he tried to protect his neighborhood from drug dealers. Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy, wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald who, once upon a time, lived in The Bronx just like Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain.

In spite of working with Win95/98 in the time of XP, I want to wake up from a coma on the shores of the future. “Don’t leave us! We want you to be our teacher, “pleaded a kid artist at the recreational center. He held me in place with a hug after I exhibited the visions of The Art Team on The Yankee Stadium train station during the baseball strike of the 1990s. I got to the MTA to play ball using The Art For Transit program until they put the brakes on the project just before Opening Day.  We were benched.

Call this chapter The Bronx Identity.

Sequels called The Bronx Supremacy and The Bronx Ultimatum will follow. I’m going to hit hem so hard with big ideas they’ll wish they never had brains! I’m locked and loaded with information from this Phantom Zone called The Net. No more waiting for Super Man. My abilities are now rapidly regenerating. Soon it will be within my powers to make suffer those responsible for crimes against humanity and the planet before I grant them quick disintegrations.
FURTHERMORE. I …”Danny!” shouted my nieces and nephew from the waters of the French Riviera of The Bronx on a beautifully futuristic day. “Come on! Get in!” Very well, children!

But I’ll still destroy the world on May 31. No, wait. 

I  have to do laundry on that day.

It’s always something.

This has been another draft of history.