"Our [gym] instructor was Detective Washington, who had taught there for most of his career. He was a superb athlete and a black belt, and he sought to hone our survival skills by providing all kinds of so-far-unimagined motivations:

'You know what's gonna happen if you get killed on the Job -- if you're too fat to run up to the thirtieth floor of the Polo Grounds projects on a gun run, and you're gasping for breath on the fifth, too wiped out to do anything but throw up, you can't even lift your arms, forget about remembering this wrist hammer-lock we learned today -- and Bam! You are done! And everybody's gonna be sad for a while, and the Mayor and the PC will go to your funeral, and a few months, a year later, your partner, your best friend, the one who said he'd look out for you, he's gonna be looking out for your wife! He calls to see how she's feeling, and he's the only one who understands, and the next thing you know, they're on the beach together in Martinique! Martinique! My favorite place in the world, and they're gonna be drinking mai-tais and daiquiris and saying, 'Should we have another?' and 'Yeah, why not!' because you're paying for it! They're living fat on your pension money there, and speaking of fat, you're gonna look down and say, 'Shit, she's looking good, why couldn't she lose those fifteen pounds for me! She does it for him, and not for me!' So do yourself a favor and stay in shape, and remember what I'm teaching you today so your partner can buy his own mai tais for his own fat wife....'"
- Edward Conlon, Blue Blood

"Child Welfare called me because one of their workers had been harassed by a man named Larry during the investigation of a case of child neglect, and I was quick to interrupt, 'That would be Crazy Larry.' He sometimes dated an enormous drunk woman who had loose custody of her niece's children, and when they were on the outs, he would leave threatening notes under her door. He had somehow obtained stationery from Bronx Lebanon Hospital, but the woman was able to discern that the crude scrawls of 'You got the AIDS, Bitch! Fuck you, You got the Clapp!' were not the diagnosis of a qualified physician. In fact, I was there for the removal of the children, early one Sunday afternoon, when the woman's brother tried to wake her, pinching her nose and covering her mouth till she came to, pitching and bucking like a Brahma bull -- she'd risen and fallen early that day, on fortified wine -- and the caseworker walked past the three smiling children in playpens to examine the refrigerator and its solitary container of sour milk, when there was a furious pounding on the door. I inquired, 'Who is it?'
The reply came: 'This is the police! Who are you?'
I said, 'This is the police! Who are you? Crazy Larry?'
'No, I'm the police, you're Crazy Larry!'
'No, you're Crazy Larry, I'm the police!'
'Police!'
'Crazy Larry!'
'Police!'
'Larry!'
In the end, I think I won the point, because he left first. Moreover, although we both get checks from the City, I still wear a blue uniform while he yells at fire hydrants on 169th Street and Washington Avenue."
- Edward Conlon, Blue Blood

"I can say with a great degree of certainty that I was one of the only straight white boys in the greater Philadelphia area who wanted more than anything else to be a member of New Edition. If there were others, I would like to meet them. Perhaps we can start some sort of club or something. That might be nice."
- Jason Mulgrew, Everything Is Wrong With Me