Free City Kid by Nelson George

condition, like he knew that one day they’d be worth real money. The man had copies of early editions of his favorites, which he kept in plastic bags. My collection was never that choice or well maintained, partly due to having to squeeze them in a closet crammed with my sister’s and my toys and clothes. But, to be honest, while I loved the comics (and all my other stuff), neatness never counted much to me.
    On the weekends, when we didn’t have our heads in comic books, we went looking for fun outside the neighborhood. Together the four of us, along with whoever else had carfare, would hop the train at Rockaway Avenue and ride to the Deuce (aka, Forty Deuce, aka Times Square, aka Forty-second Street), to the strip of theaters between Seventh and Eighth avenues, an hour-plus ride, where we’d compare notes on fly-ass Soul Train dancers and relate the latest tale of a mother being mugged on a stairwell. The deeper into Manhattan the “iron horse” rode (our nickname for the subway), the fewer black faces came aboard. Four loud, boisterous black boys drew anxious glances and steely glares from other riders.
    We’d emerge from the subterranean station into Forty-second Street’s urban blightscape: the tawdry glow of crumbling old theaters; noisy-clanging-beeping pinball arcades; greasy luncheonettes; and cheap-looking hookers. But that didn’t faze us, ’cause we had an appointment to meet with the kings of Forty-second Street. Their names loomed large on the marquees of the Harris, the Selwyn, the Amsterdam, and the other movie houses of the Deuce. After paying $3.50 we’d pay homage to the only black superheroes we knew (outside of the Black Panther): Richard “Shaft” Roundtree, Fred “the Hammer” Williamson, Jim “Slaughter” Brown, Jim “Black Belt” Kelly, and, of course, the queen, Pam “Coffy” Grier.
    From the sticky floors of the orchestra or a smelly balcony, we spent the afternoon cheering car chases, ogling busty women in distress, and savoring dialogue laced with “fools,” “suckas,” and “muthafuckas.” In their multicolored bell-bottoms and two-toned platform shoes, they wore threads that freed them to live as large and insolently as we all dreamed of being one day.
    Underscoring the cursing and the revenge-fixated plots were the chicken scratch of guitars, the percolating polyrhythms of congas and bongos, and the wailing of soul singers about “a bad brother” ready to “take down the man.” Sometimes, when the movie was really bad (as in “not good”) and the scent of cheeba induced a contact high, I’d close my eyes and let the great soundtracks of that era fill me up. After the credits rolled, it was back onto the Deuce for hot dogs at Nedick’s on the corner of Forty-second and Seventh Avenue (where Shaft ate) before we boarded the train back to Brooklyn. On the way home we’d reenact our favorite scenes, quote choice dialogue, and hope we’d have enough money for carfare and another movie next Saturday.
    This mix of comics and blaxploitation movies (later augmented by Bruce Lee and kung fu flicks) was, along with sports, the fuel for our daydreams. Perhaps because Dan and I were the least athletically gifted of the quartet, we ended up extending our fantasy lives longer than Junior and Gary. I remember we had an ongoing game in which we were astronauts in outer space who encountered a beautiful Russian cosmonaut on a regular basis. I’ve forgotten her name now, but she was our space-age love interest for a couple of summers.
    As we grew older I stayed closer to Dan than I did to Junior and Gary. I still have these great pictures of us at Junior’s in downtown Brooklyn, munching pickles in our good suits the day we graduated from P.S. 189. But we went to different junior high schools, and grew apart bit by bit. Moreover, Dan, perhaps because he was