Desolation Angels (38 page)

“No wake up! you'll never see Washington again probably! Look! The White House that big white dome with the light! Washington's monument, that big needle in the sky—”

“Old mint,” said I as we rolled by it.

“This is where the President of the U.S. lives and does all his thinking about what America's going to do next. Wake up—sit like this—look—big Justice Departments where they rule on censorship—” Lazarus looked out nodding.

“Big empty Negroes standing by mailboxes,” I said.

“Where's the Empye State Building,” says Laz. He thinks Washington is in New York. In fact he probably thinks Mexico is a circle around.

25

Then we go barreling to the New Jersey turnpike in the eye-dry morning of transcontinental automobile horror which is the history of America from pioneer wagon to Ford—In Washington Irwin has called the Poetry Consultant of the Library of Congress to ask about Raphael, who hasnt arrived yet (waking up the man's woman at dawn) (but poetry is poetry)—And as we drive the Turnpike Norman and Tony up front with Laz are both earnestly advising him about how to live now, how not to goof, how to get a hold of himself good—As for going in the Army Laz says “I dont wanta be told what to do” but Norman insists we all have to be told what to do, but I disagree because I'm just like Lazarus about the Army or the Navy too—(if I can get away with it, if
he
can, by diving into the night of the self and becoming obsessed with one's own solo Guardian Angel)—Meanwhile Irwin and Simon are now completely and finally exhausted and sit erect in the back seat with me (all's well, toot) but with their heads fallen down sweaty and suffering on their breasts, the mere sight of them, of their weariness-slicked unshaven sweaty countenances with lips poofed in horror—Ah—It makes me realize it was somehow worth it to leave the peace of my Mexican Moon Roof to go yungling and travailing across harsh folly world with them, to some silly but divine destination in some other part of the Holy Ghost—Tho I disagree with their ideas about poetry and peace I cant help loving their suffering sweaty faces and disheveled heads of hair like my father's hair when I found him dead in the chair—In the chair of our home—When I was absolutely incapable of believing there was such a thing as the death of Papa let alone mine own—Two crazy boys exhausted years later heads down like my dead father (with whom I'd hotly argued also, O why? or why not, when angels gotta yell about something)—Poor Irwin and Simon in the world together,
compañeros
of a Spain of their own, bleak parking lots in their brows, their noses broken with greasy … restless philosophers with no bones … saints and angels of a high assembly from the past in that post I held as Babe of Heaven—Falling, falling with me and Lucifer and Norman too, falling, falling in the car—

What will be the death of Irwin? My cat's death is a claw in the earth. Irwin a toothbone? Simon a brow? Grinning skulls in all the car? Lazarus has to join the Army for this? The mothers of all these men pining away in shaded livingrooms now? The fathers horny handed buried with shovels on their breasts? Or printer's ink fingers curled over rosary tomb? And their ancestors? The aria singers gulping earth? Now? The Puerto Rican with his cane reed where herons hay graves? The soft dawn wind off Carib doth rustle Camacho's oil flutter? The deep French faces of Canada staring forever in the ground? The Singers of Dawn Mexico hung up on
corazón
(heart), no more ope the high barred window serenade handkerchief girl lips?

No.

Yes.

26

I was about to come across a belly of wheat myself which would make me forget about death for a few months—her name was Ruth Heaper.

It happened like this: we arrived in Manhattan on a freezing November morning, Norman said goodbye and there we were on the sidewalk, the four of us, coughing like tuberculars from lack of sleep and too much resultant concomitative smoking. In fact I was sure I had T.B. And I was thinner than ever in my life, about 155 pounds (to my present 195), with hollowed cheeks and really sunken eyes in a cavernous eye bone. And it was
cold
in New York. It suddenly occurred to me we were all probably going to die, no money, coughing, on the sidewalk with bags, looking in all four directions of regular old sour Manhattan hurrying to work for pizza night comforts.

“Old Manhattoes”—“bound round by flashing tides”—the deep VEEP or VEEM of freighter stack whistles in the channel or at the dock. Hollow eyed coughing janitors in candy stores remembering the greater glory … somewhere … Anyway: “Irwin, what the hell are we gonna do now?”

“Dont worry, we'll ring Phillip Vaughan's doorbell just two blocks away on Fourteenth”—Phillip Vaughan aint in—“We could have camped on his wall-to-wall French translation rug till we found rooms. Let's try two girls I know down here.”

That sounds good but I expect to see a couple of suspicious sandy uninterested Dikes with sand for us in their hearts—But when we stand there and yell up at cute Chelsea District Dickensian windows (our mouths blowing fog in the icy sun) they stick their two pretty brunette heads out and see the four bums below surrounded by the havoc of their inescapable sweatsmelling baggage.

“Who is that?”

“Irwin Garden!”

“Hello Irwin!”

“We just got back from Mexico where women are serenaded just like this from the street.”

“Well sing a song, just dont stand there coughing.”

“We'd like to come up and make a few phonecalls and rest a minute.”

“Okay.”

Minute indeed …

We puffed up four flights and came into the apartment which had a wooden creaky floor and a fireplace. The first girl, Ruth Erickson, stood greeting us, I suddenly remembered her:—Julien's old girlfriend before he got married, the one he said had Missouri River mud running thru her hair, meaning he loved her hair and loved Missouri (his home state) and loved brunettes. She had black eyes, white skin, black black hair and big breasts: what a doll! I think she'd grown taller since the night I got drunk with her and Julien and her roommate. But out of the other bedroom steps Ruth Heaper in her pajamas yet, brown sleek hair, black eyes, little pout and who are you and what for? And built. Or as Edgar Cayce says, builded.

But that's all right but when she throws herself in a chair in such a way I see her pajama bottom I go mad. There's also something about her face I never saw before:—a strange boyish mischievous or spoiled pucky face but with rosy woman lips and soft cheek of fairest apparel of morning.

“Ruth Heaper?” I say when introduced. “Ruth who heaped the heap of corn?”

“The same,” she says (or I guess she said, I dont remember). And meanwhile Erickson has gone downstairs to fetch the Sunday papers and Irwin is washing in the bathroom, so we all read the paper but I cant keep my thoughts off the sweet thighs of Heaper in those pajamas right there in front of me.

Erickson is actually a girl of tremendous consequence in our Manhattan now who heaps lots of influence with phonecalls and dreams and plots over beers to cupid up people, and makes men guilty. Because (making men guilty) she is an irreproachably sensitive open lady tho I suspect her of evil motives right off. But as for Heaper, she has wicked eyes too, but that's only because she's been spoiled by her self made grandfather, who sends her like Television sets for Christmas for her apartment and she's not impressed at all—Only later I learned she also walked around Greenwich Village with boots on, carrying a whip. But I cant see that the reason is congenital.

All four of us are trying to make her, the four coughing ugly bums of their doorstep, but I can see I got the upper hand just by staring into her eyes with my hungry want-you campy “sexy” look which nevertheless is as genuine as my pants or yours, man or woman—I
want
her—I'm out of my mind with weariness & goop—Erickson brings me a darling beer—I'm going to make love to Heaper or die—She knows it—She however starts singing all the tunes from
My Fair Lady
perfectly, imitating Julie Andrews perfectly, the Cockney accent and all—I realize now this little Cockney was a boy in my previous lifetime as a Boy Pimp and Thief in London—She's come back to me.

Gradually, like always the case, the four of us boys get to use the bathroom and shower and clean up suitably somewhat, even shaves—We're all going to have a gay night now to find some old friend of Simon's in the Village, with the happy Ruths, walk around in cold lovely New York winds in love—Oh boy.

What a way to end that horrible trip up.

27

And where's my “peace”? Ah, there it is in that belly of pajama wheat. That naughty kid with shiny black eyes who knows I love her. We all go out to the Village streets, bang on windows, find “Henry,” walk around Washington Square Park and at one point I demonstrate my best ballet leap to my Ruth who loves it—We go arm in arm behind the gang—I think Simon is a little disappointed she hasnt chosen him—For God's sake Simon give me
something
—Suddenly Ruth says just the two of us oughta go up and hear the whole album of
My Fair Lady
again, meet the others later—Walking arm in arm I point to upstairs windows of my delirious Manhattan and say: “I wanta write about everything that happens behind every one of those windows”

“Great!”

On the floor of her bedroom as she starts the record player I just kiss her, down to the floor, like a foe—she responds foe-like by saying if she's gonna make love it aint gonna be on the floor. And now, for the sake of a 100% literature, I'll describe our loving.

28

It's like a big surrealistic drawing by Picasso with this and that reaching for this and that—even Picasso doesnt want to be too accurate. It's the Garden of Eden and anything goes. I cant think of anything more beautiful in my life (& aesthetic) than to hold a naked girl in my arms, sideways on a bed, in the first preliminary kiss. The velvet back. The hair, in which Obis, Parañas & Euphrates run. The nape of the neck the original person now turned into a serpentine Eve by the Fall of the Garden where you feel the actual animal soul personal muscles and there's no sex—but O the rest so soft and unlikely—If men were as soft I'd love them as so—To think that a soft woman desires a hard hairy man! The thought of it amazes me: where's the beauty? But Ruth explains to me (as I asked, for kicks) that because of her excessive softness and bellies of wheat she grew sick and tired of all that, and desired roughness—in which she saw beauty by contrast—and so like Picasso again, and like in a Jan Müller Garden, we mortified Mars with our exchanges of hard & soft—With a few extra tricks, politely in Vienna—that led to a breathless timeless night of sheer lovely delight, ending with sleep.

We ate each other and plowed each other hungrily.

The next day she told Erickson it was the first
extase
of her career and when Erickson told me that over coffee I was pleased but really didnt believe it. I went down to 14th Street and bought me a red zipper sweat jacket and that night Irwin and I and the kids had to go look for rooms. At one point I almost bought a double room in the Y.M.C.A. for me and Laz but I thought better of it realizing he'd be a weight on my few remaining dollars. We finally found a Puerto Rican roominghouse room, cold and dismal, for Laz, and left him there dismally. Irwin and Simon went to live with rich scholar Phillip Vaughan. That night Ruth Heaper said I could sleep with her, live with her, sleep with her in her bedroom every night, type all morning while she went to work in an agency and talk to Ruth Erickson all afternoon over coffee and beer, till she got back home at night, when I'd rub her new skin rash with unguents in the bathroom.

29

Ruth Erickson had a huge dog in the apartment, Jim, who was a giant German Police Dog (or Shepherd) (or Wolf) who loved to wrassle with me on the varnished wooden floor, by fireplaces—He'd have eaten whole assemblies of hoodlums and poets at one command but he knew Ruth Erickson liked me—Ruth Erickson called him her lover. Once in a while I took him out on a leash (for Ruth) to run him up and down curbstones for his peepees and works, he was so strong he could drag you half a block in search of a scent. Once when he saw another dog I had to dig my heels into the sidewalk to hold him. I told Ruth Erickson it was cruel to keep such a big monstrous man on a leash in a house but it turned out he'd just almost recently died and it was Erickson who saved his life with 24-hour care, she really loved him. In her own bedroom was a fireplace and jewelry on her dresser. At one point she had a French Canadian from Montreal go in there whom I didnt trust (he borrowed $5 from me and never paid it back) and did away with one of her expensive rings. She questioned me about who could have taken it. It wasnt Laz, it wasnt Simon, it wasnt Irwin, it wasnt me, for sure. “It's that crook from Montreal.” She actually wanted me to be
her
lover in a way but loved Ruth Heaper so it was out of the question. We spent long afternoons talking and looking into each other's eyes. When Ruth Heaper came from work we made spaghetti and had big meals by candlelight. Every evening another potential lover came for Erickson but she rejected all of them (dozens) except the French Canadian, who never made it (except possibly with Ruth Heaper when I was away) and Tim McCaffrey, who did make it he said with my blessings. He himself (a young
Newsweek
staffer with big James Dean hair) came and asked me if it was okay, apparently Erickson had sent him, to pull my leg.

Who could think of anything better? Or worse?

30

Why “worse”? Because by far the sweetest gift on earth, inseminating a woman, the feeling of that for a tortured man, leads to children who are torn out of the womb screaming for mercy as tho they were being thrown to the Crocodiles of Life—in the River of Lives—which is what birth is, O Ladies & Gentlemen of gentle Scotland—“Babies born screaming in this town are miserable examples of what happens everywhere,” I once wrote—“Little girls make shadows on the sidewalk shorter than the Shadow of death in this town,” I also wrote—Both the Ruths had been born screaming girls but at age 14 they suddenly got the urge sexily & snakily to make others cream & scream—It's awful—The essential teaching of the Lord Buddha was: “No More Rebirth” but this teaching was taken over, hidden, controverted, turned upside down and defamed into Zen, the invention of Mara the Tempter, Mara the Insane, Mara the Devil—Today whole big intellectual books are being published about “Zen” which is nothing but the Devil's Personal war against the essential teaching of Buddha who said to his 1250 boys when the Courtesan Amra and her girls were approaching with gifts across the Bengali Meadow: “Tho she is beautiful, and gifted, 't were better for all of you to fall into a Tiger's mouth than to fall into her net of plans.”
Oyes?
Meaning by that, for every Clark Gable or Gary Cooper born, with all the so called glory (or Hemingway) that goes with it, comes disease, decay, sorrow, lamentation, old age, death, decomposition—meaning, for every little sweet lump of baby born that women croon over, is one vast rotten meat burning slow worms in graves of this earth.