Heroism
I’m thinking today of Juan. He, with the coffeebean eyes and the Hostess chocolate cupcake, slapping my face. In 1975 on West 14 Street, you saved my life with that chocolate cupcake.
You could’ve panicked. You could’ve done a thousand things. Could have thrown the body out the window; dumped me in the stairwell. Left me to die. Nobody would’ve cared about a junkie who lived in a room in Hell’s Kitchen, and had no phone, no car, no future–already dead anyway, it seemed.
Instead, you, Juan–with the coffeebean eyes, saved me, feeding me that damn chocolate cupcake. You know, the kind we both liked so much. Cupcakes and Twinkies and YooHoos–did? we ever eat any real food?
I awoke from my dusty opiate sleep, and we sat together into the night, watching the black and white T.V.. Each in our own world, but together. You asked for nothing for saving my life. For refusing to let me die. For giving a future to my still unconceived son.
So when they ask me, “Have you been saved,” I smile a secret smile. And I think: Yes. I have been saved, by a Newyorican junkie with a chocolate Hostess cupcake and a solid gold heart.