It’s the kind of night that doesn’t ask for permission — it just shows up, loud and uninvited, like a drunk ex with a pocket full of bad ideas.
The air was warm. Too warm. October was supposed to bite, but this one kissed — humid, heavy, uninvited, like the kiss from a hooker, like the city was sweating out its sins. I stepped off 7th Avenue and into the blur: neon bleeding down wet pavement, steam curling from subway grates like ghosts with nowhere left to haunt.
Above me, the marquee screamed:
SEX PLAY — UNCUT — IMPORTED FROM SWEDEN
Right next to RAMBO II and MAD MAX 2, because why not? Times Square didn’t care about logic. It cared about spectacle. About bodies and bullets and bad dubbing. A cinematic cocktail of lust and violence. Times Square didn’t do subtle.
I lit a cigarette with hands that smelled like subway steel and cheap whiskey. The flame flickered against the wind, defiant. I took a drag and let the smoke curl out like a sigh I’d been holding since summer. Took a look at the crowd. A girl in fishnets and a leather jacket argued with a cabbie. A man in a trench coat leaned against a lamppost like he was waiting for a noir plot to find him. Teenagers in denim jackets laughed too loud, their joy reckless and temporary.
Inside the theater, the velvet seats were torn, the screen stained with time. The projector wheezed, and the screen flickered like it was trying to forget everything it had ever shown. Sex Play rolled — dubbed, grainy, unapologetic. The crowd didn’t flinch. They were here for the escape, not the plot.
Back outside — a blur of hustlers, punks, and tourists. the city kept breathing. Steam rose from the grates like the last gasp of something holy.
I took another drag. The smoke tasted like regret and asphalt. I watched the lights bleed into the puddles — red, blue, yellow — like the city was crying in technicolor. Dire Straits played Madison Square Garden that week. I didn’t go. But I heard “Money for Nothing” echo off the bricks, bouncing between the buildings like a lost prayer.
And me? I was just passing through.
A witness to the noise, the neon, and the night that refused to cool down.
Times Square in ’85 wasn’t just a place. It was a mood. A moment. A neon-soaked fever dream that smelled like popcorn, perfume, and bad decisions.
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