I met Poppy over the summer. I was going to a birthday party in the Village. On my way, walking down East Fourth Street, I passed four Hispanic guys playing dominoes. They were on the sidewalk, sitting in folding chairs at a makeshift table, keeping score on an old Marlboro carton. Their leader was this wild-haired, shirtless old man with thick round glasses.
I’d learned how to play dominoes a year before, while interning at my parents’ office. So I stopped, leaned against a car, and watched. I wasn’t there ten seconds before Poppy smiled at me.
“Hey, you wanna play?”
I suspected treachery. Maybe they were hustlers. “Um … I don’t have any money.”
“So? We don’t play for money—we play for fun. Sit down!”
Poppy got up. I took his seat. “You want something to drink, my friend?” he asked, patting my shoulder. “Beer? Soda?”
“No, thanks.” I didn’t feel comfortable taking beer from this guy just yet. Besides, I wouldn’t have time for beer. I was only going to play one game.
He grabbed my hand. “The people, they call me Poppy. Wha’s your name?”
I couldn’t tell him it was Ned. Too dorky. If I was going to play dominoes with these guys, I needed a new name, something edgy and streetwise.
“Skitch,” I said. I’d always wanted to be called Skitch.
“Skitch?” he snorted. “No, cabron,* what is your real name?”
Okay, so Skitch was too fake. I needed something neutral.
“John.”
“John, my new friend, welcome!” Poppy raised his head to the sky. I sensed a ritual coming on. “Yes, welcome to East Fourth Street, the capital of the world! You wanna beer?”
This time I said yes.
Two hours later, I was still there.** For those of you who’ve never played dominoes, the game is like hearts or bridge. You play in teams of two; the strategy is figuring out what the other players are holding.
It’s addictive, especially when accompanied by free beer, which Poppy never stopped providing. As my new friend handed me a second, third, and fourth Bud—no questions asked—I began to understand how things worked on East Fourth Street. Poppy was the king. He had free rein at the bodegas:* he could have complimentary chips, salsa, beer, gum, whatever. If I offered to pay for these items, he would give an automatic staccato response: “No, cabron, everything has been bought and paid for in full!”
The other players were almost as entertaining as Poppy. We had Fumo, the silent Confucius look-alike who sat in for two games and left promptly, as if he had a meeting to get to. Poppy said he was homeless. Then there was Old Tony or Old Frankie—I forget which—a timeless geezer who kept a cigarette drooping from his lips at all times and didn’t seem to care if it was lit.
Other members of the East Fourth Street community came to see Poppy—not to play dominoes, but to pay tribute. They slapped him on the back, made sure he was doing all right, gave him beer, talked about the weather, and left with a handshake. Sometimes, to Poppy’s delight, they asked him about President Clinton and Monica.*
Poppy had strong opinions about the Clinton and Monica scandal. Whenever someone mentioned it, he began howling, “Clinton y Mooonica! Ayyy! I tell you, these Republicans, cabron, awful. They try to kill the president for nothing! Clinton, he did not even do it to her, just a little thing with a cigar!” The cigar was of particular interest. Poppy would rhapsodize about it. “He should have smoked it! Destroy the evidence! Aaaa!”
I stayed at East Fourth Street for three hours that day, and I made a point of coming back all through August and September. I liked Poppy; I loved dominoes; I didn’t mind the free beer;** I enjoyed spending my time with nutty old men; and for the low, low round-trip price of three dollars subway fare, this wasn’t a bad way to spend a summer evening.
One Saturday, a homeless black dude with a shopping cart came by the dominoes table.
“Major!” Poppy greeted him, jumping up. “Major, long time we have not seen you. Meet my new best friend, ah, wha’s your name?”
Poppy needed to be retold my fake name every time I visited. “John,” I said.
“Ah, yes, John. John, meet Major.”
I shook his hand.
“Ya wanna see my cart, right?” Major asked. I nodded.
Major led me into the street and beckoned me to a shopping cart. Like many homeless people, he made his living filling his cart with bottles and recycling them. “Ain’t you never heard of Major’s cart?” he beamed. “I got the best cart in the city. Man, this here’s the Cadillac of carts.”
I had to admit it was nifty. He had partitioned it with wooden planks, sorting his bottles by color. “Nobody messes with my cart, man. They just see it, and they go, ‘Hey, that’s Major’s cart!’ and they leave it alone. You know how much weight I can pull in this cart?”
“Forty pounds.”
“Twenty-one hundred pounds, man! I pulled that much when the cops was chasing me.”
“That’s a lot of bottles.”
“Damn right. Thing was full.”
Another time, a friend of Poppy’s came by the table and introduced himself as the world-famous French ballet composer, “Pierre.” (He gave me his business card. It read, “Pierre. Dance.”) I also shook hands with a self-proclaimed descendant of Peter Stuyvesant, who said he’d made millions in currency trading. (“Yeah, a millionaire, right, so what is he doing here?” Poppy asked.)
But in late September, I stopped going to play dominoes. It got cold, so no one showed up anymore. Also, I had to go to school.
Around December 23, I returned to East Fourth Street looking for Poppy. I wanted to wish him a Merry Christmas, plus I craved a real game with Fumo and Old Frankie (or Old Tony). Poppy wasn’t out on the sidewalk—it was far too cold—but I found him in the back room of his favorite bodega, sitting at a folding table. A jagged scar ran down his forehead, the stitches still in place.
“Whoa, Poppy, what happened to you?”
“Ay, cabron,” he smiled at me. “You come at a bad time.” He pointed at his face. “I get stabbed in the head with a bottle.”
“What?”
“Yes, yes, with a bottle! Happened a few days ago. These drug dealers come to my block; they mess with me.”
“Oh, man.” I sat down next to him.
“It’s not bad,” Poppy said, waving his hands at me. “It’s shown me many things. For example, my friend, I have stopped with the bottle. It is no good for my health. No good for my pocketbook.”
I couldn’t believe it; Poppy could pack away a lot of beers.
“No more!” he yelled, standing up. Then he sat down and pulled me close. “You know, John”—this was the first time he remembered my name, I swear—“They used to call me a ‘street father.’ I am friendly to everyone, get people things, right? Not anymore. Too much drug dealers, too much everything, I get stabbed in the head.” He pointed to his wound. “Now I say, let these people buy their own beer! Let everybody play dominoes by themselves! Merry Christmas!”
Poppy stood up, drew himself a glass of water, and turned on his radio to the Spanish station.
“I like you very much, John,” he told me. “But it’s no more dominoes for a while.”
“Okay.” Not much I could say. I shook his hand. “Feel better, I guess.”
As I walked out of the bodega, Poppy told me I could have some free chips, so I took barbecue. I had this urge to tell him my real name. I turned around to do so, more than once, but I was too embarrassed—of my real name and of the fact that I’d lied for so long.
*Cabron means “goat” in Spanish. It’s an all-purpose insult.
**I never did get to the birthday party I was going to. The girl hosting it was angry with me.
*Bodegas are little shops scattered all over New York. The Mini Mart where I’d bought beer with Owen (this page–this page) was a bodega.
*Ho boy, if you don’t know about Clinton and Monica (or “Clinton y Monica,” as Poppy would say), look them up. One of our truly great political scandals.
**You’d think I’d get in trouble as a minor openly drinking beer in the street, but the cops never came to East Fourth