In the Shadow of the American Dream (6 page)

August 14, 1977

We woke up and walked the dogs and talked a bit then went to breakfast. We had omelets and coffee and I found a mosquito spread-eagled on the corner of my eggs and after hem and hawing we sent it back. The waitress came over and said, Oh I didn't realize they were even in season …

Ken would reach beneath the table and rub my leg or hand occasionally without much forethought—real natural and it was exciting. Never before have I been relaxed like that and able to accept the touch of a man who was also a lover in public—even beneath a table. I just didn't give a shit what anyone thought. It felt warm and nice. A friend of his came in who is into Gertrude Stein a great deal and was very gentle in voice and thought. Quoted lines from Stein that I could only paraphrase: A river in its rush and turn can become muddy but in its course of flowing the mud gradually settles and the water runs clear again.

This fella had recently broken up with a lover and said this sentence was like his life. He was all calm and had accepted the outcome of the relationship although the love pains were evident. Who can I read Gertrude Stein with now that we are no longer together? He had a marvelous voice for Stein's work.

Ken and I walked through the Village and Soho checking out bookstores. Ken bought a copy of Ezra Pound's
The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry
and another book on Chinese root segments of characters. He walked me to the subway and we kissed before parting. I literally moved home through fine gray filaments of sound and shapes, emotions running like flashes to past and projected future.

August 15, 1977

Ken called me at work. I had smoked a good deal with two other employees and was rather ripped. Felt tight in the head as I spoke to him because I had been thinking of him all day and really wanted to call but felt I should cool down and take it as it moves, like no frantic feelings, was excited hearing from him. Plans to get together Wednesday night. Will call him at eleven Tuesday night (tomorrow).

Stayed up last night until five
A.M.
rewriting “Cutting through the South,” put in a quote from “Christ Is Alive in the Bum Sleeping in His Piss on a Sidewalk” by Plymell in the beginning under title of story. Made the story much more personal with prose—strange beautiful brain stuff—was half dead to finish it.

Got up at 8:30. Called work at 9:55. Was so tired and out of it that instead of squeezing my nose to pretend sickness I wrapt my hand around my throat, squawkin'…

Ken called. We talked for two hours on the phone. I was out of it having had no sleep at all. Hamburger was on the stove. We talked about hamburger burning up on a stove but I didn't get up to shut it off, kept talking about different stuff. I tried to explain the editorial qualities of
REDM
but fucked it up and blab-blabbed, felt terrible that I had come out sounding like personality judge. But it was really a fear that people would think that we have no notion of good writing 'cause some stuff was raw or rough, can't worry about it any longer really.

Met Ken in the evening, went to fantastic Animation Film Show. Ken touched me throughout the film putting hand over mine massaging it, his arm around my shoulders. The light on the screen alternately plunging the audience into discreet darkness and illuminating them/us. I felt a variety of changes in my head, at times extremely self-conscious of the moment other times feeling fine about it and glad of the changes I was working in.

We went to Sandalino's for salad and I talked a bit afterwards as we walked down Bleecker about what I felt as far as open affection in public places, that it was new to me, scared me a bit at times but that the embarrassment or fear was good for me to go through/handle/work with. Immersing oneself in one's fear produces opposite results—that area where it produces neither anxiety or ego-excitement. Don't know what the fuck to say about all this—

September 1977

New York

Human Head II

First-draft poems and other stuff …

…
While I searched continually to find the place and the formula
.

September 10, 1977

Walked through Soho and over to Christopher Street, went to the big pier past the old truck lines and Silver Dollar Café/Restaurant where I spent many a night on the streets. Funny I see it all different—no longer a rush of (many) sad weird feelings hanging out in old areas. Feel real good today—kinda sad—good like a backwards glance over everything and seeing it all as okay and good vibes for the future it seems. Walked onto the pier and sat at the very end with my feet dangling like Huck Finn from his eternal raft with waves plash-plashing beneath every once in a while a great SWASH of water from a passing party boat or tug. Sunlight drift over New Jersey cliffs illuminates sparse architecture and great warehouses and piers and ships all shapeless from the blinding show of sun making it all look like India with orange postal card skies and you expect a huge herd of cows to be flat-walking over the river surface—where's the Taj Mahal!?

Came home and walked the Promenade a couple of times, the night sky clouds still slightly illuminated. Ghost whites beyond the night (sunset long gone) and met some fella named Bob walking through the streets a commercial artist and also artist/artist in the personal sense. He was out for a break in work—working in his own apartment/studio on some whiskey ads for Monday morning. We yakked awhile before retiring. He was wonderfully honest about his head and feelings—nice nice evenings of which I hope there will be more. I'm gonna get into weight lifting with him on Tuesdays and Thursdays 8-10 o'clock. He's got a healthy build and was previously like me in terms of skinniness so finally I'll have a chance to work out without hitting some gym.

Coming home on Montague Street. I stopped by the homemade ice cream parlor and ordered a vanilla-banana scoop with whip cream—sugar addict's delight. Real sweet girl behind the counter now recognizes me in fact two of them do. Said hi and all that and gave me a huge sundae for 85¢. NICE DAY—

September 19, 1977

SEEING MYSELF SEEING MYSELF SITTING BY AN OPEN WINDOW

When dawn comes on after a night that has spent itself by the window, dark ships ease into the frame of sky taking the place of clouds. Upside down they are sailing on and on toward an imagined horizon where the seekers of love stand to the side of the curtains peering out. There is great mystery, one of foreign soils and oceanic breath disappearing beyond the fine line of water and sky. We are growing steadfastly, fingernails and hair and subtle gray curves in the head. Lessons come in all forms from every direction, out on the bench by the river an old man sits swayed by neither water nor air, yet from this porthole several stories up I am seized by a continent of my own making.

Death and birth are just so much seawater floating around the curl of rocks and sand, there are pyramids and cliff dwellings that open their doors like great yawns to the upcoming sun.

How slowly we enter age and sleep, were it all a matter of putting one's head down and thought escaping like air from the insides of punctured tubes, movement would be a thin rose in the beaks of winged animals and today: a day of work and weariness would no longer be a necessity.

Food enters the mouth on the sharp edge of steel; it is not everything that we have bellies full or that our hair is shiny and combed. There are those of us that sleep well in doorways and on benches, not for reason or choice but because of the hard edge of vision in these times.

If I turned from twenty-three to eighty in the simple sway from window to bed what lives would remain in my heart, what answers to the questions of solitude and movement?

September 25, 1977

Gonna put together a collection of voices—overheard monologues or character monologues that'll consist of junkies in a Chinese/American restaurant in Frisco, junkie on 8th Avenue and 43rd, Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips, Mike the bookstore guard, and the kid in Reno pickup truck, Huncke and others.
*
Illustrations will be photos of odd moments/people retreating into darkness/around corners/sliding off tables in old restaurants/back views/views from the shoulders down.

[No date] 9:30
P.M.

Phone woke me at ten with Dennis on the other end. I was foggy and rubbery I couldn't get my brains unscrambled. He was in Rahway, New Jersey, and was ill—possibly a flu—needed someone with a car to come and pick him up. I got the number of the pay phone he was nearby and promised to call him back. Then sat with my phone/address book and called everybody to get a car. Most were not home and those who were didn't have a car at their disposal. Talked with Mom and she sounded slightly out of it—like pressure everywhere. She told me a story on young New York poets—with me, Dennis, and John in it, was going into Fordham Paper over the weekend. I called Syd in New Jersey; first time we talked in two years. I was afraid to call at first as I didn't know what was going on in his life, like maybe everything had changed and he was no longer interested in going out anymore. He was real happy to hear from me and we made plans to get together this coming Thursday. I realized how much I missed and love him. I would spend the rest of my life easy with that man if he weren't married and was open to a relationship—seriously. I grew through more heavy areas in my life with his aid than with anyone I know, and to renew contact with him was good.

I finally tried Laura and she agreed to come out with me to Dennis's spot and pick him up. I met her after a quick shower at Penn Central and we caught a bus out to her parents' house in Long Island. After arriving we discovered the keys were with her father at his job and we had to take a taxi over to pick them up. After that I called and said I wasn't coming to work till late and then we split. Made it out to Rahway hours later over the Verrazano Bridge through Staten Island and over the Goethals Bridge. Poor Dennis looked like Papa Grump with his thermal pants and undershirt. He looked healthy but moved around like he was tired and sick. We drove him home after loading the bike into the car and he gave yells of New York! God! I don't believe I'm home! etc. Laura let me drive for a period. Over the Verrazano I took the wheel and drove the rest of the way. Did okay although a slight mistake once. Sure I could pass the exam if I took it, ya know?

After Dennis went to sleep Laura and I stayed in the room adjacent to the kitchen and talked and listened to Handel, Wagner, and the Stones for a while. She reached towards me several times, wrapped her arms around me and I responded but held back as I felt it would be a bad thing for both of us if it went further. I don't want to start getting into a heavy relationship with her as there are too many complications in both our lives and though I do love her things won't be ironed out or balanced by that love. I called Jim and Louie and they told me to come right over so I walked Laura to the car and kissed her good-bye. She split to her parents' house on Long Island and I bought a bottle of wine and headed down to the party. The party was pretty nice. Jim and Louie had invited a lot of men all involved in the arts to a certain extent some maybe not but a diverse set of characters. I drank a couple of beers and didn't talk most of the evening as I felt removed from everybody. Don't know why, just felt slightly inhibited as I knew no one well enough and tire easily of bullshitting conversations. I don't like to talk unless I mean what I'm saying, can't make small talk too well when I'm feeling down or inhibited so said little. Met this fella named John—the one person I did talk to for any period of time. He's an artist/painter, studies at the Art Students League, and works there making sandwiches once a week on Saturdays. We talked about hitchhiking and gradually I started feeling warm in my belly over him, wanted to tell him or say something to indicate what I was feeling but was unable to. Hope to see him again sometime.

October 6, 1977

Met Syd down near Port Authority on 9th Avenue in the rush of squallin' buses and fruit market pedestrian ballet. We headed for New Jersey and went to a motel/hotel across from the railroad tracks and across the street from mobile homes and trucks in the parking lot, etc. We talked about our past two years and I was glad we finally made it back together. It's amazing how he has grown in two years. I guess he's in his late forties or fifties and he made me kinda sad at times as I miss him and to hear some of the changes he and his family have gone through is amazing, all of them—the son shooting dope in the army, getting discharged, and eating himself into blimp size; wife getting operations on her ovaries, I think a hysterectomy; other children doing well. It was raining and we sat afterwards in a diner and ate lunch and talked about the city and its homosexual scenes, bars, etc. He drove me back later and I got out on the familiar spot on 40th and 9th to the side of the fruit stand, waved good-bye, and split across the honk snarlin' streets flap into the Port Authority building.