YEAR TWENTY SEVEN: No one crosses satan's anvil.

The gypsy spank caravan set up camp in Hell's Kitchen. Brief swiss cheese plot backtracking. Scott's lease on the stinkpit in Greenpoint had expired, and he pulled up stakes. He took pity on me since the recent burglary during year twenty five of The Ages Of Spanky had obliterated my entire relocation fund, and let me crash on yet another floor in his new apartment on Maiden Lane in the Financial District of Manhattan. Fucking horrible part of town to live in. Wallstreet traderbeasts and lawyer weasels jammed that hood up tight. Maybe three months of gradually escalating on Scott's readily raw nerves, a reprieve appeared.

A homie from St. Louis had moved to NYC the previous year and was living with this chick in Hell's Kitchen. Spumky. From the coarse carpet of the Maiden Lane studio apartment I was describing the urgent need to get off Scott's tip, I hear Spumky turn his head from the phone receiver and shout "hey, Tracy, you wanna move out?".

So during the twenty sixth year I carted my stuff into Hell's Kitchen.

Spumky. Not his actual name, but I think it befits his character. Once again, I have described this freak from my past in a previous entry. He was gifted with the power to say the exact wrong thing to any woman he slept with. Witnessing the last remnants of the messy breakup with Tracy, I heard him answer a question on why he wasn't attracted to her physique. "It's like there is no distiction between parts...", with a open palm torso scanning gesture "...your body is just shouldertitstomachassthighs."

Surprisingly, for being someone I hung with, he was a major pothead. Go figure. He had this three foot day-glo translucent green bong. Green Lantern Bicycle Corps would make a weekly visit to Spanky and Spumky crib central. Excellent service, knowledgeable staff, sweet varietals of Amsterdamski seedlings. Favorites were Seaweed, White Widow, Purple Haze and Blueberry. It was mad expensive and mad potent. Spend all night giggling, and playing MarioKart while listening to Crystal Method and Fatboy Slim.

He also had a dingo like dog, Baby. Baby was about as retarded as mutts come. She had no learning curve on injesting substances that would make her ill. Back in St. Louis when she was still a youngster, she ate a whole pound of Spumky's weed. Found her wigging out in the corner of a closet. She loved snacking on garbage. Course she needed the proper dining surface to dine on, namely our futons. He threw out a moldy chicken carcass, and she snarfed the whole thing. Food poisoning was never a lesson she took to heart.

After a bender consisting mostly of neon sugary shots, Spumky passed out on his mattress, shoes and all still on. Managed to puke in his sleep. Woke to find he was mostly licked clean. Nasty hound.

We had this Croatian mock super for the building, John. He was never officially a staff member of the slimelords that owned the building, but for slightly cheaper rent they allowed him to man the post. Crotchety demented old fuck whose body funk reeked of kerosene. He would rummage through closed garbage bags to find evidence of behavior that he could haphazardly reprimand tenants for in a heavily accented confused logic flow chart reasoning. He loved halting your progress on the sidewalk to yell at you for some imagined crime.

I would strongly focus on fantasies of blissfully ignoring his pained cries for help after falling in the railroad ditch next to the building. He was always clumsily clamoring around the side of the building, which had no gaurd or protection from the twenty foot drop into the tracks below that spawned from Penn Station.

It seems I always entered NYC neighborhoods just as they are on the brink of becoming fashionable. Ninth Avenue became another victim of hipster economics. Granted some tasty restaurants and worthy conveniences like an arty video shop opened up and made the hood more liveable. Just all these merchants and udder suckers of cool usually taint the nice flavor of the streets.

Like all spanky residents in NYC, they are not bound to last. I was most happy to leave Hell's Kitchen near the end of my stint. Having to traverse through Times Square and other musical theater spew to get to anywhere decent was enough to spoil my attitude of the place. Also, I never saw Daredevil blindly and deftly running along the rooftops, and for that I felt quite snubbed as a faithful comicbook geek.