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by Michael Cohen

I live in Brooklyn, New York City. I was born and bred there. I am one of eight million New Yorkers. New York City is sometimes described as a "melting pot," meaning we are like different Kool-Aid powders that dissolve into a uniform color and flavor. My view differs, though. I think we are eight million different insoluble liquids layered one on top of the other, appearing like oil floating on water. When stirred these liquids are rustled from their respective positions, almost coming together, only to revert to their original separated composition a second later. I'm sorry, Dr. King, we haven't all "sat at the same table" yet. This polarization and social indifference, I believe, stems from the ruthless, heart-hardening, cutthroat environment of our city. But underneath this coarseness, I wonder if there isn't a sliver of pillow-soft care and empathy for those wishing to escape the city's coldness.

New Yorkers are stereotypically known as a crass and rude group, devoid of compassion. Having visited other places in the world I can frankly attest that I have never experienced apathy so widely spread throughout a populace as I have felt living in New York. The "New York attitude" isn't unique to lower class individuals who are down on their luck; it transcends class, gender, and race. It's evident in the Wall Street white collar, the ghetto rogue, the chubby mothers of three-and me. It's a compelling force. I've been trained, conditioned like one of Dr. Pavlov's dogs, to behave this way; to bark on demand, to push as I'm being shoved, to hate when hated.

I was sucked into the vacuum of hate at an early age. When I was twelve years old, I got a taste of the caustic malice that would grow, like a cancer, steady and imperceptible, eventually decomposing my soul. I was riding my bicycle in my relatively safe neighborhood (keep in mind, safe, compared to places like Harlem and Bed-Stuy, might not be considered so safe in terms of average America-you still had to be smart and keep your head up on the street), minding my own business, and rode by two kids who were walking. As I passed them, one of them spat at me and said, "fuckin' Jew." I continued riding, my ear drenched in this person's gooey, bacteria-laden saliva, and my innocence told me this was normal because when I reached the next intersection a man making a left turn drove by me and yelled out a similar epithet from his car. The exact words don't matter. It's the faces, the sneers of hatred, the furrowed brows of enmity that have caused me to become another jaded member of this regressing social zoo.

The very hate I was taught to loathe, for my race has been scapegoated and hated since the dawn of mankind, was now slowly becoming part of me. Being swept away by the malevolent New York attitude caused me to ignore this paradox, to let it be taken captive by my anger. It pled with me to listen, to stop hating, but I shackled it to the back wall of my conscience. The overpowering ethic was bestial, fit for animals, not humans. I'm not talking about any lovable bunny rabbits or timid deer, mind you. I'm talking about vicious animals, like New York, cat-sized, hairy, filthy, germ-carrying rats that don't scurry when something bigger comes their way, that line their holes with a dead one's crumbs, that gnaw their way into basements so they can pillage someone's food supply. I was surrounded by these animals; therefore, I could only expect to become a fuming, smileless, growling animal like them.

I got older and learned to drive. Now I was the one yelling, "You fuckin' guido?" or "muthafuckin' nigga'!" or "bastard spic!" It was natural animal instinct. Anyway, who'd you expect me to love? The nightly eleven o'clock newscasts I saw on my TV weren't filled with ivory clean, safe, suburban "nothing doing" stories. I saw murdered priests, burnt synagogues, shootings, arsons, gang-rapes, babies disposed in trash dumpsters, death, and more death. I saw Rashid Baz and Lemrick Nelson. Baz, an Arab livery driver, sprayed bullets with reckless abandon into a van transporting a group of Hasidic young men on the Brooklyn Bridge. He killed one. Why'd he do it? No excuse could explain it, not the Koran, not the Muslim fundamentalist doctrine, not anything. Nelson, today a free man, was found with a bloody knife on his person the night Yankel Rosenbaum was murdered in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The blood was positively identified as Rosenbaum's. Nelson was part of the angry mob that surrounded Rosenbaum and chanted, like something out of Lord of The Flies, "Kill the Jew! Kill the Jew!" But this hunt wasn't fictional; it happened on an everyday Brooklyn street. For such atrocities I can only accept one reason: we are New Yorkers; we are animals, predators; we grew up angry and wanted to see the bloodshed of others we didn't like. A consistent diet of spoon-fed images of hate-drenched violence penetrated our consciences. Now, we are immune, desensitized. It's okay to hate, for there's no one to love. Having pondered this, I've told myself that this attitude can't possibly evolve into a formula for happiness, but being too busy clawing and biting my way around the real world, I was not keen enough to contemplate change yet.

I wonder if I acquire an education, will I become human or merely a smarter, craftier animal? Every morning I take the subway to Manhattan so I can acquire this education. On an elevated platform I wait for the F-train. Off in the distance, to my left, I see the old parachute ride apparatus in Coney Island that looks like the Space Needle of Seattle. It serves no function nowadays, except to remind us how we've degenerated. When that apparatus was working, Coney Island was in its heyday. On hot days, hundreds of thousands would flock there to enjoy the beach, the rides, the carnival-like atmosphere, and Nathan's franks. It was a happy New York. Today, Coney Island is dilapidated and scary. High crime, drug traffic, and poverty have ravaged the area, not unlike dozens of other neighborhoods throughout the city. To my right, I see the Twin Towers, formally known as the World Trade Center, standing tall, very tall. I take for granted, sometimes, that it is one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world. To me, it's just another big building. But now, from so far away, it shines like a polished jewel, surveying the mind-blowing industrious pace of its city below. Looking up close from the plaza between One and Two World Trade Center, one can understand and can't deny that these structures probably can withstand the impact of a 747 jumbo jet, as its structural engineers proudly contend. It thrives nonstop, lit throughout the night. When six Muslims bombed it two years ago it merely coughed black smoke for a couple of days and resumed its frantic pace soon afterwards. It is an icon of the unrelenting, dog-eat-dog capitalism and greed that embodies New York and has driven many to ledge-jumping. I stand between these two polar edifices, wondering if I am another gear in this machine of a city, if I will ever escape New York's contagious, mass-produced animal destiny.

Travis Bickle, the title character in the Martin Scorsese film,Taxi Driver, drove and saw "filth and scum" daily. Disgusted, he felt they should be "washed away, just the way rain washes away the dirt on the street." Bickle built up an arsenal of guns and hate. He consummated his frustration by killing a pimp and a gangster and was lauded as a New York hero because he helped return a twelve-year-old prostitute to her white American family. Through violence, he transformed his discontent. My ideology differs from Bickle's, but I wonder if it's possible for me to affect my environment, to enact a change from its current bleak decline. Can I be like Bickle and separate myself from the vacuum suck of this powerful city?

Or can I be like the Flatiron Building on the lower Fifth Avenue corner, where a fork splits Broadway and Fifth from their brief intersection? The Flatiron has a unique teardrop shape. From the long sides of the building it appears as any other normal building. The way the windows are situated on its face gives the illusion that the Flatiron has the equivalent sides and depth a normal square or rectangular building, like the Empire State Building, would have. But as you walk around its base and turn the corner, the building curves smoothly, appearing thin and sleek, defying the expectation of another square side. It was built early in this century. It is a timeless, classic work of architectural art. It bucks the trend of New York buildings that appear gaudy and modern to grab attention, only to fall out of vogue when their trendy quality is dated. I wish to elude my carnivorous counterparts' bloodthirsty jaws in this pan-competitive city, but will I stand modest and proud in the end, like the Flatiron, having survived my inner battle for compassion in a soulless environment?

The F-train takes me home at the end of my day. It is packed as I get on. I'm one amongst Black, Hindu, Asian, White, Jewish, Hispanic, and so on. With each stop, weary bodies depart and file themselves away in their respective neighborhoods. After forty minutes I grab my backpack and prepare to get off, too. Through the window I see a majestic sun setting in pretty tones of orange and red. As I get off the train I see the Coney Island parachute apparatus straight ahead. Its days in the sun are long gone. It looks at me, its construct antiquated, as if it's weeping, warning me, "You're next. Your fate . . . like mine." I turn around, shunning its somber expression, trying to find a glimmer of hope in something, only to face the daunting World Trade Center. Straight-faced, like a banker letting you know your loan request has been denied, it tells me, with a confident clean-shaven-and-starched-collar-executive coolness, "Don't even think about it. You can't change a thing. Not a chance." I want to defy this unfair proclamation. I want to break out and become human, with my own mind, my own will to care. I want to rise above and break the mold of the carbon copy, mean beast this city wants me to become. I refuse to regress.

As I descend down the stairs, from the platform to the street below, I accidentally bump hard into somebody. I offer an apology to this fellow and stick my hand out in good will. He responds with a vile grunt and an ice-cold stare and mumbles, "Fuck off," before hurriedly scurrying away. Predictable, like a hackneyed cliche from the tobacco-chewing mouth of a vociferous Texas football coach in a half-time motivational talk with his players, is the behavior of this rough-hewn New Yorker.

I tried leading this horse to water. He refused to drink. This new-found compassion to lead, to rectify, has lifted my soul halfway out of the hostile, rancorous dark New York mire. The remaining half of my soul is being held back by the stubborn horses whose reins I'm holding onto. They refuse to join me, to whinny and trot along the green meadows of tolerance. They keep bucking. But letting go will only pull me back in.

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