by Steve Gaines

In a back street…looking for seven dollars
(one of life’s little theatricals…outside the proscenium)

in December of nineteen ninety-eight I was working the boards in Buffalo

the Studio Arena … Main and West Tupper
a long gray building adorned with large gold stars on its side
anchoring the northeast corner of the theatre district
playing a Polish bartender eight shows a week
just returned to the Muse back from my old day job
fresh from retirement out of academia
without wheels and walking to and from my apartment between shows
about a half a mile eighteen times a week back and forth in that western
New York weather
where I met up with a “woman of the streets” along Virginia Place
a street too narrow to allow a casual avoidance without turning back in
a panic
knowing I was about to be “approached” hoping to avoid it

“never show fear in the face of the confrontation”…I had learned that somewhere
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