Waterfront Journals (8 page)

Man in Brew & Burger on Forty-second Street and Eighth Avenue

NEW YORK CITY

I guess things are going okay … a little slow since the convention in Portland. My son is out of the army and finally off drugs … he's not so much a problem anymore … my wife still gets angry as hell but I don't know what to say to him. I mean he's working fairly regularly, drives a cab, starts around midnight and works till six o'clock in the morning … we hardly have words these days because when he gets home around seven he goes right upstairs and hits the sack. Some nights he'll get into an all-night card game with the fellas down at the taxi stand … I can't get angry with him … I mean, I don't know what he's been going through … he used to be a beautiful kid, long hair and built like an athlete. Now he's gained weight he's up to 250 pounds and lays around most of the time drinking beer but he does work. He rides in the car I bought him two years ago … god you should see that car now, what a mess, the two sides dented in like a nutcracker squeezed them, the back fenders hanging off and some days the backseat is piled up to the rear ledge with beer cans. My wife gets really upset because she's home all day. My daughter, she's a real doll, she's a sophomore in college now, she's engaged to this terrific young fella who's with RCA … the two of them flew off for a week to the Keys together …

Work has been slow for me since the beginning of the year. I feel bad because I'm not pulling my share of the load … it's just that there's so much mental activity holding me back … I try to stay away from the city … I've been pretty successful with doing so … I mean I walk down Forty-second Street and I'm sad to say it's changed so much since ten years ago. I can remember that in the summer of '69 you could walk down the block and there were all these beautiful kids hanging out … now they're all addicts and in gangs looking to rob you … but occasionally I still go to the bars in the upper Forties … they have some great music and the dancing kids are really wild, good-looking kids and they move in a great way. But I don't go for the sex in those places … it's like two minutes in some smelly dark cabinet and there goes thirty bucks. Where I live I have some wild times … there's young boys in their late teens, sixteen or seventeen, hitchhiking all over the place and a lot of them are into sex … it's really something I mean I have to keep telling myself that I'm a man with responsibilities … I have an outstanding job and a wonderful family … I really can't afford to get arrested. I'd lose it all yet I can't help it … I mean it's so simple to go for a drive … after I pick one of these kids up I work in four sex words into the conversation. There's this one kid who goes to high school just a mile from where I work. I picked him up hitchhiking one time and three minutes later we were in the parking lot of my job in the backseat making love to each other. I've seen him a couple of times a week for a while but I guess he's decided to end it … he hasn't shown up in three weeks … I drive over to the school every now and then and wait for a half hour or so but I guess he's not going to show up …

Guy on Fourteenth Street 3:00
A.M.

NEW YORK CITY

I got busted once while I was in my apartment doin acid. I lived in this building that had an intercom but if somebody buzzed I'd just ring em in without askin who they were so the buzzer rang and I pressed the button and two cops in plain clothes came in. They flashed their narc badges and one of them said: We busted Daniel tonight and found your name in his telephone book. Now I really had balls that night … I said: Look man if you ain't got a search warrant get the fuck outta here and they were pissed but left. About four days later the doorbell rang and this girl I knew was out there and asked to borrow somethin of mine so I told her come on in. She sat down on the couch and I got the thing for her and she continued sittin there all greased up with a towel around her … she was actin kinda dizzy so I finally said: Look I got someone in the other room and she said sorry and left. I saw a pack of cigarettes where she'd been sittin on the couch and I said to the kid: She'll be back she forgot her cigarettes and sure enough the doorbell rang and I took the cigarettes to the door and didn't even look out I just stuck my hand through the door and bam there was a handcuff on it … it was the fuckin cops so I said real loud:
Oh, It's the cops
figuring the kid would hear me and flush his stuff down the toilet but he was young and so instead of getting rid of what he was holding he was too busy trying to wash the Vaseline off his ass. The cops threatened to charge me with impairing the morals of a minor and I said: What are ya talkin about? We ain't done a thing and the cops say: Yeah? then why's your dick all greasy? I said: Hey man, my cock's all chapped from the cold weather so I cover it with Vaseline, works great ya oughta try it sometime … and man did they kick the shit outta me … broke my fuckin nose and busted two ribs …

Man Drinking Coffee in Thirty-third Street Pizzeria

NEW YORK CITY

I have had no desire for sex for the last ten years … up till ten years ago I'd want to get into bed a lot … when I'd see some young cat with a good body I always wanted to have sex with him … or with some girl with a beautiful figure I wanted to put my hands around her but then suddenly I decided I was tired of waking up and feeling that sex is a head thing … I mean you use a lot of thoughts in sex like: What makes this person excited? What turns that person on? It made me very tired and so it just dropped from my life … There's this one cat who lives in the building of a woman I know … now I never for the world thought that this guy would be involved with any kind of homosexuality. He was a fine-looking cat, a real nice-looking guy. One day he knocked on the door and asked if I would mind him coming in for a chat. I said: Oh no not at all man. I opened the door for him made us a couple of drinks with vodka and grapefruit juice and we talked on and on and suddenly he leans over and puts his hand on my leg and says: Man I want to go to bed with you. I was shocked and after a moment or two I said: I'm
really
sorry man but I
can't
. If I got into bed with you I'd just get you all excited and get myself half excited and it wouldn't work. After a few minutes he got up and left … I felt terrible … I sat down and wrote him a long letter trying to explain all the things that were going through my head and sent it to him … not long afterwards he sent me a very beautiful letter thanking me for mine …

Man in Coffee Shop Midnight East Village

NEW YORK CITY

Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I got beat up when I was twelve or thirteen years old. It was in Cortland Park. I had gone there fishing with three other friends of mine and these older guys came along, like five or six guys, most of them about fifteen or sixteen and one guy older maybe around eighteen. They took turns beating us up, taking us into the bushes and punching us in the face and all over. One of my friends started crying and then another started crying but I was too furious to cry and then the third guy started crying and I was getting more and more punches in the face and finally I realized that if I could work it up to cry they would probably stop so I forced myself to cry a little bit, then we got split up, me and one friend were taken by the two oldest guys into some other part of the woods. The other guys disappeared and at some point the oldest guy—boy was he good-looking, I didn't think of it then but now years later looking back on it I realize he was a handsome boy with a good body and bluish eyes—well he had us take off our clothes saying somethin about keeping us from running away and then he had us unbutton his pants and take out his cock and then he said: Alright, which one of you has the biggest ass and he looked at both our asses. I remember squeezing real tight so my asshole would be smaller and he decided the other guy's ass was bigger so he fucked the other guy for a while and then tried to fuck me. I remember he couldn't get it in me cause I kept squeezing and so he fucked me between the legs and then he came. I remember it was revolting, his come smeared between my legs. Afterwards he let us go and we had to search around for soda bottles to cash in and get money to take the train home. My face was swollen. I had two black eyes and I was all bruised and scratched. I didn't tell my mother that this guy tried to fuck me but she took me down to the police station and made me report it to the police anyway …

Man in Casual Labor Office 6:30
A.M.

SAN FRANCISCO

I'm tired of being a tramp … my father was a tramp and he's dead … I'm a tramp and I don't want to be one … I stopped drinking … I wear only old-man clothes … I wash up every day … I work … and I'm still a tramp … does anybody want to tell me the secret? How do I de-tramp myself? I read Machiavelli and he done me no good …

Now my wife, she tried to do me good … she thought she could put me away in some asylum … you know, what's the name of that place up north of here? … well anyway she said to the neighbors: You think I can't put him away? You just wait and see. So she cooked me a fine meal … ummm, it was good and when I came home she said: Baby, you just sit down and lemme take care of you. So I sat down and ate and after dinner she drew me a bath with all that bubble stuff in it and then she said: Now you wash up and I'll wait for you in the bedroom. So I took the bath and when I finished I walked into the bedroom and she was lying there with her silks on and her legs spread apart … mmm, she took care of me real good … then when we finished she said: Baby, why don't we go for a ride okay? I said: Why? and she said: Cause I want you to meet somebody in that hospital on top of the hill. So I said: Okay let's go and we drove up to the hospital parked in the lot and went inside. We were walking down the hall and I see this group of attendants walking towards us … I knew what the bitch had in mind so I quick reached down and took hold of her skirt and pulled it up over her head and started shouting:
“Hey you. Over there. Quick grab this woman she's crazy and I've been trying to commit her.”
So she was screaming and they took her and locked her up … she's been there twenty years now … I'm the one who's crazy and they got her in there and they won't let her go till I sign her out …

Man on Interstate Heading Towards NYC

We have plenty of time so I'll start from the beginning … see I was managing about thirty-eight stores at the World's Fair and making some decent money. It meant working for the mob … and around that time I met this beautiful guy, a burly football jock with translucent skin all cock and no brains but he was sweet. He was one of those guys who didn't think he was—I hate to use the word
gay
can't stand it but for the moment let's say it: gay—I made it with him but he still considered himself straight … around that time while I was managing these stores someone came up to me and said: Hey I figured out this system for roulette that's unbeatable and he gave me the system and there was this guy working for me in one of the stores, sleazy slick pool shark kind of guy and mean too but smart so I took this system to him and said: Hey Sal check this out and let me know what you think, will it work? Sal checked it out and said: Look, it's an old system it'll work for you for a while but eventually you'll get cleaned out. It just doesn't work for long. So me and Sal and the jock got a whole lot of money together, we stole a lot of it, and took off to Puerto Rico. We moved into a hotel but Sal didn't want any part of our scene he wanted to be alone so me and the jock moved into another hotel not far from his near the casino districts. For the first few weeks we'd each take some of the money and go out to the different casinos and work them using this system. It was great, we were making a thousand a night, we got pretty well known at the casinos. We'd be there every night and it got so that the croupiers hated us couldn't stand the sight of us but we were having a ball making lots of money spending lots of money. The jock was delirious we were all excited and having fun but after about six weeks I started getting a little crazy, bored with the whole scene and then one night I was working the tables and this entertainer from one of the nearby hotels showed up and played. He was playing against the house and I was playing with the house. Do you know what that means? So he was taking even numbers and I was taking odds with the house and well, do you know what the record is for throwing straight passes, for throwing the dice like evens so many times in a row? Well the record was something like thirty straight passes and this guy threw twenty-seven straight passes in a row and I was putting a lot of money down and by the end of the evening we were cleaned out, had absolutely no money and to tell you the truth I wasn't upset at all, Sal was pissed off, the jock was upset but I felt relieved, like it was the answer to everything and I didn't have to deal with it anymore.

So we split up … Sal disappeared got himself into some trouble and ended up in La Princhessa, that was the name for the worst prison on the island. This prison was situated on the bottom of a cliff and guys used to go over to the top and look over and the inmates would jerk themselves off through the bars of the window screaming and yelling all sorts of stuff. Anyway Sal ended up in La Princhessa, but we didn't find out about it till later … we didn't know where he was he just disappeared and me and the jock ran into some American woman who had a condominium on the beach and a couple of kids and her husband had just left her. They were in the midst of a messy divorce and she had something like sixty bucks left to her name and her rent was due and right around then I met this French woman who was trying to get off the island before she got deported. She was having some trouble over something but was pretty much broke and she had the lease to this bar that was closed down, a street-corner bar and I asked her how much she needed and she said about fifty bucks and I said: How about handing over the lease to the bar and I'll give you the fifty bucks and she said: Sure okay so I went back to the American woman and got fifty bucks from her and traded it for the lease to the bar and with the other ten bucks we got these cards printed up saying good for one free drink at The Bar on the corner of Valencia and such ‘n' such and we went into the bar and covered the front of the door on the outside with a thick piece of black velvet and put a door knocker in the center of it, covered the windows, bought some ice and cans of Coca-Cola and a few bottles of cheap rum something like fifty cents for a fifth and after that we put a spotlight over the front door aiming it at the knocker and then we went down to the beach passing out the cards to everyone we saw: drag queens people from the circus and tattooed guys and the jock got into what I was doing and he handed out some too and then we opened the bar and the place was filled, packed with every freak on the island. We had gone downtown to a jukebox joint and gotten one so the place was hopping every night and some of the characters from the sideshow of the circus made it their hangout and this one drag queen got a flamenco dress left to her in a will and she showed up and we had her dancing on tables to the songs from the jukebox and one time a giant from the circus showed up. He was taller than any basketball player but not really a giant, and he got a blow job from the flamenco dancer in the middle of the bar one night. Things were going well I never had any trouble or anything until one night when this Puerto Rican guy said: Hey how come you got yourself a bar and I'm Puerto Rican and I ain't got one and I said, Hell I did it with fifty bucks you can raise the money go open your own and one night this guy threw a knife at me and it just missed my head flew right past me and stuck in the wall so I grabbed this lead pipe we kept behind the counter and hopped over the bar yelling: Turn on the work lights and the guy ran through the door into the street screaming: Policia Policia. Other than that I never had any trouble … a couple of guys here or there would try to lay some muscle on me but I usually could talk my way out of any situation … so around then things were going great, the bar was a success and me and the jock were living with the American woman and he fell in love with her. I remember one night we were lying in bed and he rolled over towards me in his sleep and I went down on him and it just drove him up the wall. He flipped out about it and I said: Who needs this shit and got my stuff together and left Puerto Rico …