Black was Pedro’s color.  He wore a black leather cap and motorcycle jacket.  Pedro never owned a motorcycle though.  He said he was part of a special club of motorcyclists.  Motorcyclists without motorcycles.  It was a member’s only club and he was the only one who got to pick the members.  Pedro’s pants and beat-up shoes were black and his socks too, when he wore them.  The black started after Vietnam.  He did it to mourn his time in Nam.  He did it to mourn his mother.  She died soon after his return.

Pedro’s hair was black and curly.  It reached his shoulders and a scraggly moustache and wispy beard covered most of the rest of his face.  He wore a black skull cap pulled down to his eyebrows.  Pedro was dark.  A black Puerto Rican – actually more a medium brown.  Pedro wasn’t at all tall or massive but with all that black, he did scare a lot people.  He slunk around quiet, his head buried into his shoulders which didn’t help people’s initial reactions.

Then he started writing poetry, and some thought Pedro had gone loco in the coco. 

Pedro began going around the City bearing a cross.  He made the crucifix with two planks of wood nailed together.  Held up straight, the crucifix was two feet taller than Pedro. 

He painted his crucifix black, then worked on it more.  He went out and got hundreds of condoms – in all colors – and boxes of thumbtacks.  He took the condoms out of the foil packages and nailed each condom ring to the cross with one thumbtack.  Pedro tacked up three rows of condoms up and down the vertical plank and three across the horizontal one.  The tacks looked like bulls’ eyes inside the rings.  The rows stood out in rainbow contrast against the black crucifix. 

He went all over town with that crucifix slung over his left shoulder, taking it with him on the subway, uptown to both El Barrio and black Harlem, downtown to Loisaida, even to Brooklyn and Queens.  Pedro started calling himself El Reverendo Pedro or Reverend Pedro.  Soon he had a lot of people calling him Reverend Pedro – not only friends, relatives but even acquaintances he’d recently met.

He had this power to captivate easily.  Many women – and men – fell for him. 

Pedro began carrying around a black beat up old briefcase.  He made letters on its sides with white tape.  One side said, “Reverend Pedro,” the other “A Buck for a Safe Fuck.”  Inside the case he put dozens of tiny manila envelopes—nickel bags—used for selling small amounts of pot.  But on his envelopes he typed his own short poems.  One said:

Woke up this morning, called my Equal Opportunity Employer. 

“Sir, I will not be coming to work today.”

“Why, are you ill?”

“No, sir, I am feeling great.  If I am sick tomorrow, I will report early.” 

Inside each poem envelope he placed a condom still in its wrapper.  He peddled the nickel bags – the poem condoms out on the street and in subways.

“Hey, people, check out my poems.  Buy yourself a poem.  If you don’t like the poem, fuck it.  At least, you’ll get a safe fuck.”

He painted an old coffee can black and used it to collect donations.  He’d white-taped the can with the words, “Help Me, I Can See.”  

Pedro scared people at first, but most ended up laughing.  Maybe even thinking, without realizing they were thinking.  But when people came across him alone in a dark place – or even in broad daylight – many turned and ran.  He was weird-looking even for New York City.  Still, Pedro had a laugh that caught you up in it, whether you wanted catching up or not.  The laugh was loud, came deep from the belly and let out from a mouth opened wide to reveal the big gap between his front teeth and beyond.  When he came across people he knew he’d explode into the trademark guffaws immediately calling out, “Hey, man, what’s happening?  Que pasa?”  And if they said, “Good”, he’d shout back, “Far out” or “Out of sight.”

One day Pedro almost got killed on the subway.  It was on the F train.  He was on his way to Coney Island, to a place called Side Shows by the Seashore.  The ancient, falling apart theatre was on the boardwalk and had been reopened by a young artist to feature a variety of acts.  Mostly it was freaky-looking people who he’d gotten to agree to be looked at for small sums of money.  A man whose face was completely tattooed (his closed lids had tattooed eyeballs) drove three-inch nails into his nose, cheeks and tongue.  A three-foot tall woman dressed like a mermaid hopped around on her tail and saying, “Hello, hello,” while blowing bubbles.  Another woman, normal in height but obese, roamed around breasts covered only with a writhing python that she encouraged people to touch.  A hairy man jumping around in a cage labeled Ape Man rounded out the “acts.”  And that day there would be Pedro.  He was supposed to read and, he hoped, sell his Buck for Safe Fuck poems.  But when the F got to Bergen St. station, three teenage boys got on the train.  They wore baggy jeans falling off their asses revealing immaculate underpants, huge Nike t-shirts and caps with visors turned to the back or do rags.  As soon as the boys saw Pedro, or rather, saw the crucifix with the rows of tacked up condoms and then him, they swaggered over to him shoulder-to-shoulder in close formation, hands already balled into fists.

“Yo, man, I’m Catolick, an’ you makin’ fun of my religion, cabron.” 

“Yeah, man,” said the one in the middle, “yo, you think Christ dyin’ is funny?  You don’t never mess with Jesus.  Fuck that shit, bro’.”  The boy made the sign of the cross, kissed his fingers, then balled his hand up again fast.  “You lookin’ to get more messed-up lookin’ than you already are, huh, punk?”

“Word,” said the third kid.  “And man, you sure is some weird lookin’ maricon.”

Pedro’s face drained, lost its rich brown.  He talked fast.

“Hey, man, me, I wouldn’t never mess with Jesu’ Cristo.  He’s my main hombre too.  He’s far out.  Out of sight.  I’m jus’ trying to tell it like it is…that, yeah, yeah, man, he did suffer for us… suffered so goddamn much… man, he died with those nails pounded deep inside him till he cashed in… we can’t none of us take this life so easy… not any more man… we gotta take care of ourselves, us Boricuas especially, ain’t that the truth?

Two of the boys heard Boricuas and relaxed a bit, let their arms drop at the sides… started listening.  Then the third said, “I ain’t no Boricua, bro’, I’m from the D.R.”

Pedro kept talking… “Same thing, being Boricuas, Dominicans, even some of them Cubanos is like us… you know with la cosa de Aids, La Sida?  We losin’ too many brothers, too many sisters.  You jus’ gotta always remember to wear your rubbers if you wanna go play out in the rain, no?”

He opened the briefcase.  Dozens of condoms fell on the subway floor…

“Free condoms, folks, free condoms for a safe fuck.  A safe fuck for all.  Have a safe fuck and have a nice day.”

He let out the laugh, his laugh, and a few seconds later the boys like many others —of all ages—in the car stopped looking scared and started laughing and scrambled to pick up the free condoms.