Rat Bohemia (2 page)

Strangely, this relationship—between a high mortality rate caused by governmental and familial neglect, and the material process of gentrification—is rarely acknowledged. Instead, gentrification is blamed on the gay people who lived, not on those who
caused their deaths. There is a dominant story about gay white men coming into poor ethnic neighborhoods and serving as economic “shock troops,” buying up and rehabbing property, bringing in elite businesses, and thereby driving out indigenous communities, causing homelessness and cultural erasure.

While the racism of gay white men and their willingness to displace poor communities in order to create their own enclaves is a historical fact, gentrification was a deliberate policy decision made by the coalition made up of New York City planners and real estate interests. That the creation of economically independent gay communities was seen as the “cause” of gentrification is an illusion. This theory implies that poor ethnic people were not gay and did not have their own gay communities. It pits “gays” as white and upper-class, against ethnic and racial minorities who are by implication “straight,” which of course is false and misleading. However, what I think it does show is that heterosexual dominance within every community does not aid or facilitate gay visibility or autonomy. So that it is only gay people who were able to access enough money to separate, in some way, from their communities of origin, who were able to create visibly gay-friendly housing and commerce, and achieve political power in a city driven by real estate development.

But more importantly, the deliberate implementation of pro-gentrification policies by the City was itself invisible to the average New Yorker, whereas the presence of openly gay men rehabbing neighborhoods was extremely visible. If the City's policy had been to build a lot of quality low-income housing, help indigenous communities rehab their own neighborhoods instead of being evicted, and create supportive environments for gay people in every community, then the context for the movement of gay white men into
low-income neighborhoods would have had a dramatically difference outcome. Of course, this doesn't take away from the class arrogance and racism that has always existed within the broad culture of white males, gay and straight. Nor does it erase the movement of black gays and lesbians to Fort Greene, and the settlement of lesbians of all races to Park Slope—both of them Brooklyn neighborhoods that later became dominated by white heterosexual buyers, once gentrification itself was epidemic.

I know as a New Yorker, and as the grandchild of immigrants, that usually after a war, refugees leave their home in a cloud of death. But re-reading
Rat Bohemia
helps me to realize that in the war against AIDS and one of its consequences—gentrification—I stayed put and my home left me.

 

The world's largest rats are the capybaras, the web-footed denizens of the Amazon. Their hair bristles when they get angry and they are extremely hostile to humans. Even ones they know over a long period of time. There was a special series on capybaras in the Kuala Lumpur newspaper. My friend David sent it to me when he was on vacation because he knows how much I care about rats. The articles basically discussed the pros and cons of raising the animals for food.

Bandicoots, which is what giant rats are called in India, are not eaten. Originally they lived in the country but got too fat to climb the stalks of wheat. So, they traded places with the smaller city brand which then migrated to the country and wiped out the crops that the fat ones couldn't reach.

David is HIV-positive but he still had 600 T-cells when he went to China so we didn't have to worry that much. Once over there he went to Guangzhou and wrote to me about a rat-control campaign where the city published special recipes trying to get the residents to eat those rodents up.

He said he saw red lacquered ones, basted with honey and soy, hanging by their tails in the market. But, just like their American counterparts, all Chinese rats are not equal. So, people generally complained about eating sewer rats which they considered only one step removed from eating sewage.

One night David slept out on the street in Chengdu and a rat bit him on the fingernail. He was relieved that it didn't get his blood, but surprised the animal chose nail instead of flesh. This was later
explained to him by a madman he met on the streets of Guangzhou.

“Rats,” said the madman. “They need to grind down their teeth or they die of starvation. So, they bite hard things. Preferably wood, bones, even people.”

A few years ago the mayor of New York decided to cut back on rat extermination. He also cut back on streetlights. As a result, night increasingly meant these dark outlines of buildings surrounded by the scampering of eighteen-inch varmints. Ten million of them at least.

My best friend Killer and I spent a lot of nights that summer just walking around because we didn't have any money. I was saving up to move out of New York and Killer hadn't had a job in two years. She came over every night to eat and then we'd take a walk. She'd forgotten how to even look for a job. She'd forgotten how to sound employable on the telephone. One day I glanced over her shoulder at the Help Wanted pages of the
New York Times
, only it wasn't what you'd call
pages
. It was more like half a column.

One Saturday afternoon we saw a kid get shot in front of The Unique Clothing Store Going-Out-Of-Business Sale and the next day we watched a guy go crazy and throw glass bottles at people for twenty minutes. I've always wanted to shoot rats.

Killer and I are hardcore New Yorkers. But, when we were kids, the only homeless person you'd ever see would be a wino on the Bowery or an occasional bag lady. You never saw anyone sleeping on a subway unless they were coming home from the night shift. The streets were not covered with urine then. That was considered impolite. There have always been rats, though. I remember as a teenager watching them run around on the subway tracks while
I was waiting for the Seven train to get me the hell out of Jackson Heights. But mostly, when I was a kid, rats were something that bit babies in a mythical faraway ghetto. You never saw them hanging out in the middle-class sections of Queens.

An average rat litter is twenty-two little ones and they can reproduce at the rate of six litters a year. Sometime in the 1980s I started to see them scampering regularly in the playgrounds of Central Park. Reagan had just become president and I held him directly responsible. Rat infestation felt like something the U.S. government should really have been able to handle. That's when I started thinking about getting a gun and shooting each one of them on sight. Picking them off the way hillbillies shoot squirrels.

That guy, last Sunday, who was throwing bottles? All he cared about was himself. His personal expression was more important to him than other people's eyes. That's the kind of attitude that makes this town a dangerous place to live. You never know when it can hit. The shooting in front of The Unique was more reasonable. It was just a bunch of friends killing each other. Don't have friends like that and it won't happen to you.

Every morning I go over to the old Veterans' Administration building on West Twenty-fifth Street and wait on line to go through the metal detectors. The crowd moves slowly so all of us look around at the lobby walls. They're covered with old World War II murals of white soldiers getting fitted for artificial legs by white nurses in starched caps. The women lift up the veterans' new legs and demonstrate how to use them.

Once I make it past the security guards, I have to ride up in the elevators with all the whacked-out veterans scratching and getting into fights. Mostly black and Puerto Rican with a sprinkling of white trash. They usually get off first, and then I ride up alone to the seventeenth floor where there is the Food and Hunger Hotline office. I walk through them to my office and then sign in at Pest Control, wasting about half the day unless I get sent out on a job.

When I am sitting in Pest Control, hanging out, waiting, I pay close attention to the goings on at Food and Hunger. I want to see everything I can. Everything. I want to be a witness to my own time because I've had a sneaking suspicion lately that I'm gonna live a lot longer than most of the people I meet. If I'm gonna be the only one still around to say what happened, I'd better pay close attention now.

Killer usually stops by the office at ten for coffee and peanut butter sandwiches. Then she checks in at a couple of restaurants to see if they need any prep cooks. I know for a fact that they're only hiring Mexicans and Israelis. Everyone knows Americans aren't good for restaurant work. They want to talk on the pay phone and give their friends free meals.

In the meantime she's living on forty dollars a week from watering plants for a couple of offices and boutiques. The rest gets paid by the Bed and Breakfast guests she hustles at those four-dollar cappuccino places. Mostly Swiss people or Germans. They think it's quaint. She gives them a bed and then tells them to make their own breakfast. Then she comes to the office to eat some of mine. We've been living this schedule for a long time already. It is one big fat habit.

You know one thing I don't like about homeless people? They ask you for a light and then hold on to your lighter for forty-five minutes blabbing on and on about some misfortune. The whole thing is designed to make it seem like they don't realize that they've got your lighter. But the fact is, they know they've got it.

My father always raised me to be extremely polite to black people. To say “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma'am” and to feel sorry for the hardships they'd endured. Black and white never socialized together where I grew up—or any place I've ever heard of, for that matter. But I was raised with some kind of naïve expectation that saying “Yes, sir” would take care of all of that some day. I was never expected to see my family's own stake in racism. How mediocre we really were and how much we depended on it to be able to put food on the table. I mean, how many white people would own cars today if merit was the only thing that mattered?

Killer was brought up to be a racist. One night I went over to her place to watch TV and her parents brought over some food. Next thing you know the news came on and it was all “nigger” this and “nigger” that. Her parents had these sharp teeth whenever they said that word. They scrunched up the skin around their eyes. It wasn't said calmly. Killer knows better but when she gets emotional, that's what she falls back on.

Like one time some Puerto Rican guy was beating up his kid in the hallway and Killer said, “Look at that low-rent over there.”

“Shut up,” I said. “You haven't had a job in two years. If you had enough patience to stand in line you'd be on welfare yourself.”

“I'd be on welfare if it wasn't for the strength of the Eurodollar,” she said as some blond couple rolled over in the bed. That was the way she looked at things.

God that summer was hot. There's that way that Puerto Rican girls sit close together on the stoops. They have skinny arms and those ten-dollar pink dresses. They smile and wear their hair long with a headband.

Every day homeless people come into Food and Hunger looking for food, but they only get Contact Cards. I gave Killer one of those cards, but she said the food they advertised wasn't nutritious.

One time, before breakfast, Killer walked me to work, but she wanted to stop off at the Xerox store on Tenth Street that was run by some Moonies. They were clean-cut peculiar and wore polyester pants up to their necks.

“They give away free bread and free Chinese buns,” she said.

When we walked in it was kind of slow and real hot. It stunk of Xerox fluid. The polyesters had a few day-olds sitting on the counter and a bag of day-old buns.

“Don't eat it,” I said. “It's old pork.”

“Hi, Killer,” they said, handing her two loaves. Then they turned to me. “What about you? ”

“I don't need free food,” I said.

“Look,” Killer whispered. “Take it. I need it. I'll give you a fresh one later. For your birthday.”

“Okay. No, wait a minute. I don't want bread for my birthday. I want a colander.”

“Do you think I need a professional portfolio? ” she asked.

Killer was still thinking about jobs.

“How is everything going?” Killer asked the Moonies, remembering to be gracious.

“We're having problems with rats,” they said.

That woke me up.

“Do you have big ones? ” I asked. “One-pounders?”

“Yep,” they said.

“Did you put out poison?” Killer asked.

“Poison doesn't work,” I said. “They're too strong. Besides, if you kill one that way it's just gonna stink up your place and bring maggots.”

“Did you try traps?” Killer asked, trying to cut me off because she knew what I was about to recommend.

“Traps don't work,” I said, ignoring her. “The rats are too smart. They spring the traps and get the bait.”

“What about walk-in traps? ” one of the Moonies asked.

“Too expensive,” I said. “Doesn't work on a massive scale.”

“Well, what do you suggest? ” he asked.

“You gotta shoot 'em,” I said. “You gotta get 'em one by one.”

I was born Rita Mae Weems in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City, U.S.A. on August 1, 1959. My father, Eddie Weems, fixed couches for Castro Convertible. My mother, Louisa Rosenthal Weems, was one of those hollowed-out blonde beauties who made their way to New York via Thereisenstadt and then a displaced persons' camp. There are a lot of them still walking around. I see them on the subways now and then. But, in Jackson Heights where I grew up, they were a dime a dozen.