Chinatown Bill

Bill was sitting right by the entrance of the Chinatown McDonald's, asking pedestrians for change. He was wearing a navy-blue sweatshirt and black sweatpants, folded where his right-leg prosthesis should have been. He sat confidently, with his left leg stretched, his prosthesis to his right and with a black beanie with some pennies in front of him. Most of the crowd walked right past his heavily-urban-accented requests for change. I was waiting for someone, so I stood just a couple meters away from him, looking at my cell-phone and at the white-tourists in search of cheap, fake Louis Vuitton bags.
I lit up my lucky (last) cigarette while I was waiting for my lunch partners. Bill asked me for a smoke. I told him it was my last one, but that he could finish the half that was left. He took it and thanked me. I kept standing there. I got there about 20 minutes early, and I couldn't just leave. A few minutes later, a middle-aged Chinese man passed by and gave Bill a pack of cigarettes, and he offered me one. I didn't take it because I didn't feel safe smoking something from a beggar, but I thanked him and gave him a light.
We started talking and he told me about a Chinese lady who was doing yoga at Columbus Park a few blocks from where we were. She had given him a hot plate of rice. "I love that Chinese lady," Bill told me. "If anyone messes with her, I'm gonna kill them! I love that Chinese lady." He smiled. "And I love rice."
Bill told me other things too, but I couldn't understand much. He spoke as if to himself, with a really Black-stereotypical vocabulary and saying "You kno' I sayin'?" every other sentence. From what I could make up, he grew up in New Jersey and lost his leg in a war about a year ago (which war he wouldn't say), in a place where there were a lot of Black people. He also told me he wasn't a thief, and to underline his point he said he could have taken my stuff if he had wanted to. "I just sit here and ask people for change," he said. "I don't bother nobody."
My people arrived a few minutes later and I told him I had to go. We shook hands and I left thinking I would bring him some food on my way back from lunch. After I had eaten dim sum to my heart's content, Iwalked across the street from the McDonald's on my way back to the Canal Street Subway station. I didn't stop by to say hi to Bill and I didn't bring him food.

White Man in Chinatown

The other day, I met up with some friends in SoHo. Our limited budget and ethnic alliances ended up leading us to Chinatown. We walked and my friends were being loud and giggly, like high-school girls on Ecstasy, and eyes kept turning to us as we walked by. We made occasional stops at interesting shop windows, blithely blocking the way of people 5-times our age, stopping them from being functional members of society.
As we kept on walking, we passed an old white man -- the only one I remember seeing in Chinatown. "Stay in highschool," he said, "so that you can do something with your lives." I stopped walking and corrected him. "We're actually all college students," I said, "we go to school upstate."
Mr. white man looked happy about it. His white biker beard morphed into a grin, and he told me to then stay in college. His two daughters did, and now they are nurses, "so stay in school," he said. "That's some solid advice," I replied, and left.
As I caught up with my friends a block away, I thought, "This guy fathered two nurses: He must know what he's talking about." I mean, nurses are awesome. I've always liked nurses. They're hot.