Throughout the last two years Sharif and I had worked together on various projects for Ole Yellah. The German restauranteur has her ways. She expect things to be done perfectly even if no one has done them before. Even she.

Sharif and I do our best. Our best is not perfection. Ole Yellah likes to raise her voice. We can deal with it in short doses.

Sharif and I live on Clinton Hill a block apart.

Outside of work we run into each other often and he introduces his friends from the ‘hood.

None of them remember my name, because all white people look the same.

Randy is a bum on Myrtle Avenue. He and his wife had once owned a brownstone apartment in Fort Greene. She regularly threw him out for his alcoholic abusive treatment, but always welcome her drunk husband back.

Several years ago the wife told Randy that she had an offer for the apartment.

$1 million.

His share was half and he said sell it.

$500,000 should have lasted 10-20 years.

Randy blew his money on drugs, drink, and stupidity in less than two years.

Randy now camps on the sidewalk in front of an Italian restaurant.

It had been home for almost a month.

“He’s lived everywhere in the ‘hood. Under the BQE, in shelters or the park. Anywhere close to crack. That old white man will sleep anywhere, if you can call a drug coma sleep.” Sharif was no stranger to sleeping in strange places, but the ex-gunman has had an apartment on Flushing Avenue for over ten years. “Randy’s fucked up, but this neighborhood ain’t no stranger to fucked-up.”

A week ago a Rasta friend ran into Sharif and said, “I can’t believe it, but I seen your boy. That old white man was sleepin’ on the sidewalk.”

“No way. He got a crib for free for a long time.”

“Well, I seen him. Swear it.”
Sharif thought it over and said, “Shit, that ain’t my boy, That’s Randy. He’s a crackhead. My man only a drinker.”

The old coke fiend hadn’t touched anything since he was released from Rahway and called me.

We had a good laugh about his friend thinking I was randy.

Ole Yellah laughed even harder. She had known Randy and his wife before he lost everything.

I couldn’t see the similarity, but Ole Yellah’s husband said, “There is something.”

Risteard had a point. Not much of one, however we call still joke about Randy II and I’ve never said a word about sleeping on the Manhattan Bridge stumbling home from the 169 bar. My refuge was a work space with a wall of steel I-beams. I was wearing a tan tropical suit. The night wasn’t cold and I wrapped myself in a plastic sheet. No one bothered me and I woke near the dawn and walked the rest of the way to Clinton Hill.

A man of the street.

Anyone can be one, but there was only one Randy adn I wasn’t him.