Heaven is something we all think of around here but none of us believe we'll actually get there. Heaven is for nuns, or for girls who keep their skirts down until marriage. Not for the working boys of New York. It started to be like Santa Clause… just one more thing we'll miss out on because we are alone, because are poor and forgotten about. Thoughts of Heaven slowly melt away as you get older, and when someone in our lives die, they just stay there…
Buried in the ground.
A traveling Preacher came into our diner just before Christmas and told us that we could all be saved; we didn't have to turn to drugs, crime or loose women. We could be Men of the Cloth. We could be saved. God loved us and wanted us to be his children. That is the part that always got the younger ones, making it seem like he was someone who could hold them and feed them.
The Preacher quickly left, bringing God with him when he realized what we already knew. That we are the streets; we are the pain and the drugs, but most of all, we are the damned. The so called demons he warned us of.
We didn't always used to be like this. At one point all of us had families, or at least someone who held us after we were born; someone who briefly thought that their child might do great things in this world given the right chances. As we got older the dreams were quieted by slaps or alcohol and eventually killed by death, or promises of it.
It's a common theme in New York to be alone or to be running. Running from a secret you are sure only you have, but then you realize you are like everyone else. No one on the streets of New York is wanted; no one here has a good life waiting for them. Sometimes the boys even find a friend who is running from the same life, an abusive drunk who pretends to be a father or a mother who is too poor to feed her baby and her growing boy.
Soon, the heart of a child slowly dies and turns into a heart of a man, a cold bitter man who is always looking for the next con or the next deal; something that might give him two dimes to rub together and a shot of whiskey to keep the cold out. Heaven becomes an after thought, and for the first time in said mans life, he is free. Free of conviction, free of empathy, free of dreams.
This man lies in each one of these boys. Some find it sooner then others, some won't find it until they are made to, but eventually every boy turns into a man.
There are two kinds of men in New York, cowards and con-artists.