I learned how to gamble, play wappie, everything. He grew up in the gritty east Port of Spain district of John John, where he was exposed to what he calls “real ghetto culture.” “I learned how to cuss.
Not that toeing the line, sartorial or otherwise, has ever been on Peter Noel’s agenda. My heart warms to this fellow slob who, from the looks of it, hasn’t slept in days, sitting among the rubble wearing baggy fatigues and a red bandana and Nikes - the very look he describes in a March 2000 Voice cover story entitled “When Clothes Make the Suspect: Portraits in Racial Profiling” as “ghetto awareness wear”, the “felon look” that allegedly causes certain members of the NYPD to target black men. Upstairs, a cheery intern escorts me to Peter Noel’s cubicle, which looks like it’s been hit by a hurricane: books, papers, binders, manila folders everywhere, the remains of his lunch, the Palm VII sticking out from under something on the walls, a Polaroid of Abner Louima, the Haitian police-brutality-victim on whom Peter Noel has written reams, photos of his kids, a photo of Malcolm X, hand-drawn cartoons, a life-size target-practice silhouette, complete with bullet holes, posters, including one saying “UAW On Strike”. We postpone the meeting till another day.Īm I mistaken, or does the security guard’s face fall, the day I arrive at the Village Voice and Peter Noel is actually in? (Though I do understand his proprietary feelings: Peter Noel, a fellow West Indian made good and one of the few black writers at the venerable weekly, must be protected his precious time must not be wasted by types like me.) He’s been up all night with this thing, he says. I brace myself for another abortive trip to the Voice offices and the security guard’s withering, “He’s not deeerrre.”īut Peter Noel (who, I was to discover later, had recently acquired a Palm VII handheld organiser, bought off one of his “street contacts” for an obscenely low price) is on the ball this time.
Race, crime, the possibility of black activist politics coming into play - Peter Noel would be drawn there like a moth to a light bulb. The women claim the police have failed to intervene. The day before the meeting, however, a group of young black women is assaulted by a group of Latino youths during the Puerto Rican Day Parade in Central Park.
This time I’m careful to e-mail Peter Noel prior to my arrival, and he actually replies, saying we should meet, which we arrange to do over the phone when I get there. In hindsight, a more likely explanation is that some major incident had taken place in the city, some happening probably involving the NYPD or Al Sharpton (or more likely the NYPD and Al Sharpton). Besides, Peter Noel was a fellow Trinidadian, and sometimes Trinis (myself included) don’t keep appointments, or forget appointments, or run late. Having arrived in (pre-9/11, still uncaring) New York via Toronto, with its spotless streets and bicycle lanes and folks who waited for the green light to cross the street, I didn’t take it personally. I went to meet him as planned at the offices of the Village Voice, where a smug West Indian security guard took pleasure in informing me he wasn’t in. I was in town for a few days I’d got his number from a friend of a friend we arranged to have lunch. Peter Noel and I had first spoken in New York back in June 1998.
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