Last Stand in Red Hook

by iago, somewhere in New York

"Ain't gonna hurt nobody…we're just dancing, baby…"

That's uh, that's some group, turn of the century, pre-turn of the century. Happy times. Happier times? Not for me, they weren't. Of course, my ass wasn't living yet, so ain't no happier times before I'm living, right? But ain't no happier times during I'm living than now I'm living, know it?

They forgot about us, know it? Wrote us off. Wrote us off early--Second Depression early. Worried about The Littler Bigger One coming down over here, worried about tsunami whipping us down, called us The First Line of Defense and pushed back inland. And oh, the folks living there thrashed their teeth and begged and cried about the need to stay protected, the need to come up, and the liberals, the liberals were just as bad, hollering and crying about abandonment, about New Orleans before Katrina, then before Alina, then before Gertude, and before Claxton did that last lick of what they'd call damage. We can't just abandon Red Hook. We can't just call it The First Line Of Defense and forget the people who live there.

But they did call it that. And they did forget us. And they saved us, saved our lives.

You're too young to know about any of those names. Hurricanes, they were. And earthquakes. Lots of storms, lots of earth, lots of shifting and shaking, just like Second Stand's hips. You saw Second Stand shaking when you came this way, didn't you? Fine woman. My woman. We got saved by being The First Line of Defense. Only we didn't look at the geography quite that way, know it? We inverted it.

We're making stands out here, not against nature, but against those folks back on the inside. And you know what? We live longer. And you know what? We live better. Know it. We live better. You know why? Because they wrote us off.

In the old days, the real olds, this country, this land is your land, this place was obsessed with frontiers. New places to discover. I think that's what killed the heart of it off, a lack of new frontiers. Sad the rest of the world got dragged along with it. But The Hook, that's our frontier. Once they left us out here, but they decided to still "protect" us--the way they say it, protection is what we need--once they left us but decided to keep us safe--haha--once they did that, we frontiered ourselves.

So me and Second Stand, we could do what we wanted, stand in the rain, sleep in the rain, make love in the sun. We walk at our own pace, hands in hers when we want them there, off to find others when we need, you know, others. We stumbled into utopia out of their disaster of having too much.

And kid, this is what I'm trying to tell you--there are pockets. You'll find pockets. I don't know what brought you here to the Hook, but you found the Last Stand. You found the Second Stand. You found The First Line of Defense, and for you, kid, I think it really is your First Line. You've got pockets to find.

I bet you're looking for a woman. Am I right?

Last Stand is right. Last Stand knows it.

She's out in the world, kid, know it. She's somewhere in the pockets.