Free Waterfront Journals by David Wojnarowicz

brick wall and there were some boards laying on the ground. I propped them against the wall and hid behind them. I left a little crack between them so I could see if the police came down the alley looking for me. After about twenty minutes I remembered my subway pass in my wallet so I got up and hid it under some other boards further away in the alley, then I crawled behind the boards again and sat there not moving until it got dark. I kept thinking the police would come any minute. When it got late I crawled out and started walking back through the courtyard trying doors on the opposite side. I finally found one building that had been burned out and I could walk through it to the front but there were iron bars over the window and an iron door that had a chain wrapped around the bars with a padlock on it … I thought I was gonna go nuts … I could see people pass by on the street and I could hear the traffic but I couldn’t get out. I went back into the courtyard and turned to the side of the building to try other doors when I saw a light on in a basement apartment. I peeked inside and there was a guy in there sitting in a chair and he was naked and talking on the phone. He was really handsome and I started getting excited. I wanted to knock on the window but I didn’t know if he would call the police thinking I was a burglar so after a while I went back into the burned-out building and checked all the window bars to see if there wasn’t some way to kick them out. Then suddenly I saw that the padlock on the chain wasn’t snapped shut so I quick undid it and opened the iron door and stepped up onto the sidewalk. I walked real slow to the corner and as soon as I turned it I started running … I ran from the Eighties all the way down to the Village where I lived …

A Kid on the Piers near the West Side Highway
    NEW YORK CITY
    He’s got me down on my knees and I can’t focus on anything I have no time to understand the position of my body or the direction of my face I see a pair of legs in rough corduroy and the color of the pants is brown and surrounded by dark shadows and there’s a sense of other people here and yet I can’t hear them breathe or their feet move or anything and his hand suddenly comes up against the back of my head and he’s got his fingers locked in my hair and he’s shoving my face forward and twisting my head almost gentle but very violent behind the gentleness and I only got half a breath in my lungs the smell of piss on the floorboards and this heavy bulge in his pants getting harder and harder as my face is forced against the front of his pants the zipper tearing my lips I feel them getting fat and bruised and all the while he’s stroking my face and tightening his fingers around the locks of my hair and I can’t focus my eyes my head being pushed and pulled and twisted and caressed and it’s as if I got no hands I know I got hands I had hands a half hour ago I remember lighting a cigarette with them and I remember how warm the flame of the match was when I lifted it towards his face and my knees are hurting real bad from the stone floor hurting because they banged on the floor when he dragged me down the cellar stairs I remember a door in the darkness and the breath of his dog as it licked at my hands when I reached out to stop my headlong descent its tongue licking at my fingers and my face slams down and there’s this electric blam inside my head and it’s like my eyes suddenly opened on one huge bright sun and then went black with the switch thrown down and I’m shocked and there’s pressure on my face on my forehead and something cold and wet and his arms come swinging down he’s lifting me up saying looking for me? and he buries his face and I feel his saliva running down into the curve of my neck and my arms are hanging loose and my head is way back and I can see a ceiling and a dim bulb tossing back and forth