Slippers

Photo by avechenri on Unsplash

The East Village had a uniform, and the West Village had a uniform. If you started the night dressed in a crisp white shirt at Waverly & Waverly on the west side, sipping a martini and listening to Jerry Scott croon at the piano, you’d never end it a mile across town at The Bar, where the bartender’s nipple rings glowed in the light of everyone’s cigarettes. There was no middle ground. Doc Martens on the east side, loafers on the west. Buzz cut or messy east, blow-dried west. Bowie east, Sondheim west.

Of course, there were some brave enough to cross over. A few westerners stood proud in their pristine Lacostes on the butt-strewn floors of the barebones east, exotic, scented, unapproached. One or two from the east wore their thrift-store shirts and ripped jeans and sang along lustily in the melodic west. “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!”

I didn’t belong to either side, but I frequented both, back and forth. I did well. I met a man here, another one there, then moved on.

I didn’t bother trying to fit in. I didn’t carry a bag with a change of clothes. I didn’t flatten my blown-out hair on the way east or buff my Docs on the way west. No, there was one simple piece in my wardrobe. My smile.

I wore my smile like a beacon, like the lady in New York harbor. Come to me, you poor men, you tired men. Exhausted by the virus, terrified of AIDS. Yearn no more. Breathe with me. Be free with me.

Was my smile genuine? I can’t say. All I know is, I didn’t fit in, and I needed to help. I could smile, and I found my smile in drugs. So many drugs. I smiled as I walked from east to west, sometimes uptown, more than once across the river; those needy men were everywhere. I wore whatever shirt I wanted, however I wanted. And on every street I walked I found men eager to bask in a smile.

That was then. Now, worn out, I smile infrequently. Never, actually. People on the street tell me I should smile. My sister asks, remember how your smile was our umbrella? But I prefer the mist now. All those years, west to east and back again I met men who saw my smile and for a moment forgot dress codes, forgot being sick, forgot dying. My drugged smiles served them but eventually, like that statue in the harbor, I reached a limit and I knew it was time to dim my torch.

Now, solitary, I walk back and forth in my comfortable slippers on my worn carpet, wondering, where’s my smile?

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This story was prompted in July 2025 by mary g, in her weekly what now?