ector is the largest man I’ve ever seen. He is 400, 500 pounds. (At that size, you can give or take a hundred.) He is so wide he looks like two people smooshed together, and he wears a basketball jersey and a gold chain and what he’d really like to do with his life is be a rapper. In the meantime, he’s the neighborhood drug lord.

He sat down beside me and Lisa the other night at the bar. I’m not sure why. He never hit on us or anything. Right before he joined us, Lisa and I had performed a rousing sing-along to “Come On, Eileen” from our seats, so maybe we seemed like friendly people. He bought us each a beer, which was exactly two more beers than either of us needed, but it’s hard to turn down Hector. He has a way, you know?

At the time, Lisa and I were talking about chopped and screwed—what a load of shit it is, like a parody of a rap genre, an entire genre for abusers of cough-syrup, and that’s when Hector starting telling us about his dreams of being a rapper. He doesn’t go for any of that chopped stuff, either. He’s got flow. Or hustle. Whatever, I was drunk, and he could squash me like a bug.

Lisa and I left soon after that, but I like to think I’ll see Hector around. If not at the bar, or on the stage, then at least on the street corner, where I can offer a friendly wave, reaffirming the fact that no matter what they say: New Yorkers really are the nicest people.