Seagulls in the Wild

the last two years I have spent weekends working at Winick Fine Jewelry abd living in a large tent mounted on a platform. Comfortable?

A Man in A Panama on the Bowery

Last week I spotted a man wearing a stiff panama on the corner of Bleecker and the Bowery waiting for the change of lights. I couldn't recall ever seeing a man in a Panana on the Bowery. I knew the Boulevard 9f was wearing a straw Italian fedora. I approached the man and complimented his hat. We traversed the avenue together and walked with him to Bowery Market

I asked his name and he said, "Charlie, I do the sound here." walked with him to Bowery Market

Charlie Sound the Bowery. walked with him to Bowery Market

"Are Charlie from CBGBs?" walked with him to Bowery Market

"Yes."

And with that I was transported to another time__ In December 1976 I was walking down the Bowery to my SRO room on West 11th Street. A thin fall of snow covered the sidewalk. I heard a band playing a breakneck cover of the Rivieras' CALIFORNIA SUN from inside a white-stuccoed bar with a white stucco front. I walked inside the wooden door, paid my admission, and walked to the stage, mesmerized by the leather-jacketed quartet. In less than a minute I was hooked by the Ramones and still am to punk to this day. Charlie's sound was a big part of it. The Dead Boys, Ramones, Richard Hell, Guadalcanal, Xcessive, Kim,my cousin, et al. Charlie Martin. Long-haired genius. Now working at the Country Western bar next to Bowery Market. It's good to be back in the City, where ghosts come alive__ The Ramones - California Sun 1976 Thank you, Charlie__

AUGUST 16, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

Last night I snorted nine thick rails of cocaine with my nerves on edge and my penis soft as a worm.I tried to msturbate hoping to exhaust my blood. No wood and I fell asleep before the dawn.

My restless sleep lasted until noon. Alice wss already working at the yogurt shop. I have no work, but hopefully can pull off a coke deal for money for a friend of Mark Amitin.

I call Mark.

"$2100 for an OZ."

"That's fine. It's not my money."

The buyer is an entertainment lawyer from Long Island. The end of the line starting with a Bolivian farmer, a local buyer, a muleskinner transporting the leaves, a lab turning the leaves into powder, a pilot, a wholesaler in Florida to a Dominican dealer, and finally my friend, Rick Guadalcanal. My piece of the action will be $150. I should have charged 2200, but decided 2100 was going rate. The buyer is going to test it, then say 'yes' or 'no'. I hope yes, because I only have $11.

Elvis the American Dream
A young Memphis trucker sings rock to become an international star.
HOUNDDOG to VIVA LAS VEGAS
Private jets, Grilled PBJs, sold-out concerts, and Graceland.
The light are off in Graceland.
The King died alone.
None of his fame or fortune forestalled his fate
Priscilla had deserted him
His Mom died at 42.
His body grew fat, but his fans only saw the glitter of the gold suits.
Poor Ole White Boy was never his own
After BLUE SUEDE SHOES hit the charts
The Colonel ran his life.
Elvis was sold out every second of his life
He was the King
And a King can not trust anyone,
But he gave away things to the poor. Cadillacs, houses, money.
He was the common man. Long live Elvis.

Alice came back shaken to her coreby the death of her idol. A hillbilly God.

"I can't feel good about myself."

"Nobody can, because no one hates you more than yourself."

We get drunk and getting drunk solves nothing. Not when the King is dead__

Fifi The Rasta - BOIS DE BOULOGNE - 1985

I love Paris in the summertime, especially after July 14, Bastille Day. 30-50% of the city's inhabitants vacate the sixteen arrondisements for Normandie, Les Alps or the South of France.

Less people, if you can avoid the foreign tourists thronging to the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and le Louvre. The lack of traffic after le Grand Depart seemed to clear the sky of pollution and I relished the emptied streets.

Back on a warm morning OF the July 14, 1985 I had driven my friend's Vespa 150cc motor scooter west past the Arc de Triumphe to Porte Dauphine into the Bois de Boulonge, once the royal hunting grounds. The park is twice the size of New York's Central Park. I took off the Bell helmet. The wind fragrant with nature blew through my hair. Les Brazilian putes had erected their tents for le traffic des dejeuner or the lunch trade. Most were trans and I rolled past without a sideward glance. These girls brooked no gruff.

A bois is more a woods than a forest, but the green was a welcome change from the close street of le Marais medieval, the old Jewish quartier, where I resided in a small room in a small hotel on le Rue Des Ecouffes. Pulling over to a bank of the Lac Inferior to lay in the shade of an oak tree, I open my bag and spread out the pears and cheeses purchased from the shops of the Rue du Rivoli. After a few bites and a sip of a strong Cote de Rhine, I lay back and gazed meaninglessly at the cloudless sky. All the gray of Paris ceased to exist today and I felt one with the park.

A Citroen pulled onto the grass fifty feet beyond my resting place. A family sat inside. All their bags were packed atop of the sedan. An older man in his forties got out and pulled a well-coiffed poodle from the vehicle. His children were crying. He picked up a stick from the ground and threw it into the woods. The dog chased the stick. The man jumped in the Citroen and the family drove away headed for the Alps, le Sud de France, or further afield in France. The big poodle came back and searched for the car.

It was gone.

The poodle looked at me.

I already had a dog waiting for me in the Marais. Angus. A loyal Scottie.

The poodle was on his own.

Later that night I related this tale to my fellow doorman at les Bains-Douches and Grand Jacques shrugged saying that the poodle had been abandoned by the family for the summer vacation.

"C'est le tradition."

Throughout August on my travels to the Bois I spotted the poodle running with other dogs. An ever shaggy pack. They seemed happy to be tramps. Free at last.

A month later I drove through the same section of the park and spotted a Citroen slowly cruising the woods. The same one, which had deserted Fifi the previous month. It braked at the same spot as July 14. It was August 15. The day after le Grand Retour from le Grand Depart.

The tanned driver got out and called for his dog.

"Fifi, Fifi."

I shook my head thinking him cruel, but Fifi bounded from the underbrush.

His hair was matted like a Rasta and his body was considerably thinner from a diet of squirrels and trash.

The man greeted his dog with a smile, as if this rendezvous had been planned from the start adn that they had experienced this reunion more than once before.

"Oh, Fifi, time for you to see the beauty salon."

The owner opened the door to Citroen. Fifi jumped inside with joy and they drove off in the direction of Neuilly-Sur-Seine, proving once more Josh Fielding's old adage, "A dog is the only animal that loves you more than it loves itself."

Even if their owners are Parisienne.

ps Angus was just as happy to see me that day.

B AND H DAIRY - EAST VILLAGE

Two years ago a friend from the Yucatan and I had pirogis at the B&H Dairy, the historic counter restaurant on 2nd Avenue serving customers since 1938. The pirogis and matzo ball soup were the same as they ever were. Afterwards we walked down 2nd Avenue and I was struck by the many vacant retail spaces. Tweren't that way in the 70s. There was the Stage Deli, Gem Spa, Kiev, the Orchida, and the St. Mark's Theater. The Filimore Eaest and Club 82 Plenty of other establishments enlivened the avenue. Covid killed many, but nothing like the greed of the realtors. The first people to go in a revolution are landlords.

1960 - Chaney Noyes Gone To the Forever - Video

My best friends as a child were my older brother and Chaney

We lived in Falmouth Foresides, Maine.

We did everything together.

School, hockey, eating stolen strawberries from the nearby farm, hang at the docks at the end of our street, and swim at Sebago Lake.

My family moved to the South Shore of Boston in June of 1960.

This excerpt from GAYBOY relates the last time we saw each other. --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chaney stood on edge of the lawn. My father had mowed it this morning.

“I guess I’m going.”

“Have a good summer.” Chaney kicked a clump of cut grass with his sneaker. His jeans were torn at the knee. This summer was supposed to have belonged to us. A snorkel and diving mask hung in his hand. They were a gift from his Czech grandmother.

“My father says we’ll return in July for vacation.” The week on Watchic Pond couldn’t come soon enough.

“Don’t go swimming without me.” Chaney lowered his head. Boys weren't supposed to cry in public.

“I won’t.”

I eyed his mask, wishing I had one.

I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out my Pete Runnel’s baseball card. The infielder was our favorite Red Sox player. I offered it to him.

“Here.”

“No, you keep it, but if you go to a game at Fenway Park, have him autograph it for me.” Chaney smiled with the prospective of having the .300 hitter’s signature as well as not having to hand over his mask in trade.

“Everyone in the car,” shouted my father.

“See you.” I slipped the playing card back into my shirt pocket.

“Not if I see you first.”

I never saw him again

AUGUST 13, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

Last night while we lay naked in bed, Alice requested to bind her hands behind her back. I went to the kitchen and found a ten-foot cord under the tub. Light seeped through the curtain over the airshaft winow. Not much. She lay on her back like a starfish. I forced her onto her belly. She stretched her arms back and I looped the rope around her wrists. I entered her with a steely hardness and we fucked for thirty minutes. Neither of us came and she asked, if she could masturbate.

"Yes, slave."

"But you can't watch."

"You want me to take off the rope?"

"No, I can reach me." Alice had been a gymnast in high school. She could tied her body in knots and always said that if she failed as an actress that she could make it in the carnival as a contortionist.

I believed her and went into the living room, listening as her whimpers became moans.

I sat on the sofa feeling like a Wehrmacht soldier trapped in Stalingrad; no more bullets and nowhere to run, but to death.

This morning I did a wash-dry of the sheets at the local laudromat on 1st Avenue.

I can't believe I'm writing something so banal, but most of life is banal and in most cases that is a good thing. Mark Amitin's theater venture fell apart on the road. I have no money, no job, and no future. Rent is due in less than two weeks. TS Eliot wrote that 'April is the cruelest month of all'. The poet had never spent an August in New York. Everyone is going on vacation. Only the dead, dying, and desperate remain in the city

Highways carry metal semi-trailers, 1967 Buicks and 1970s GTOs
Hector hitches Indiana-bound
The army private is AWOL from Fort Dix
The conscript buzz-cut betrays his rank
The grunt's ironed khakis are government issue
His tee-shirt pressed creaseless
"Damn, it's so strange in boot camp,
But it's only another two hundred miles to home
Everyone stops for a soldier in uniform
On the run from the MPs__

In the 1960s and early 1970s army deserters dotted the interstate's shoulders either heading to Canada or into hiding at a hippie commune.

"Ain't no way I'm going back to Vietnam. Let the general fight with the blacks."

Afro-Americans constituted a high percentage of combat troops and casualties through the Long War. My draft number was 91. I avoided service by attending college thanks to a $10,000 grant to avoid shooting at strangers and Viet Cong shooting at me in villages foreign to teenagers on the South Shore. I started as a Math major, failed two subjects, but remained at BC. I saw no jungles or rie paddies. I heard no bullets whizzing past me or thudding into fellow soldiers. I studied THE MYSTERIES OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST. A Boy Scout uniform was the only one I have worn other than an altar boy's cassock and surplice forever faithful to atheism.

Alice lies on the futon, complaining about being nothing. She is in a rush to be an actress and their clock ticks fast. Still being nothing is better than being a bullet-riddled corpses in Vietnam, although the only fighting in Indochina is between the Khmer Rouge and the PAVN (People's Army of Vietnam). I have guilt about not fighting for my country. Not much, but some.

Alice looks out the window of the back bedroom.

"It's raining."

"What else is new?" After a heat wave the city has been deluged by rain for the past eight days. My kitchen faucet also drips endlessly.

Rain - the life-giver of water The Johnstown Flood 1889 The Little Conemaugh River The South Branch dam failure The flood washed away the helpless Like the mighty Mississippi through a valley. Forty days and forty night. No, just one torrential night And the next day Johnstown was gone.

AUGUST 13, 2021 - JOURNAL ENTRY - CLINTON HILL

About fifteen years ago in Pattaya, Thailand I learned that I had somehow transitioned to 'Vanilla' status by a visit to an S&M parlor. Nik, an English friend wanted to pay me back for a favor and suggested we go the THE CASTLE. MY wife was curious about how the club's goings-on and gave me permission for bad boys night out. 'The Castle' sas right across the street from our regular THE BUFFALO BAR. We told the girls there about our intended destination and they joked how we were going to be whipped like 'Kwaii.' or a stupid buffalo. The bouncers yelled we were 'sadique' and Nik asked me at the door, "Are you top or bottom?"

I don't know. I guess top."

"Me too, but I might try some bottom as a test." I wouldn't have expected any else from an Englishman. "Remember this is all on me."

The black-clad mama-san gave us a list. Top and bottom fantasies.

"Yeah, I'll do that and that. What about you?"

"Nothing really strikes my fancy."

Nik and the old lady read through the menu.

"No, no, definitely no."

The dominatrix and slaves enacted rough sex routines. I shook my head in disappointment. "Mai mee faaen-dah-see."

"Good enough for me," said Nik and two slender sadistic witches dragged him into a back room. The lash of a whip. Scream. "More."

After an hour Nik emerged chastened by the experience and said, "Damn, that was something, but I don't think I'll go bottom again. Are you sure you want nothing?"

"Nope, I'm vanilla."

When I was in the hospital I didn't look at any porno online or have a asexual fantasy. My libido had to be damaged along with my body by my years of excessive drinking, but I thankfully don't have any DTs. My roommate at NYU was a black lineman. I had overheard him tell the doctor that he had fallen in the street. Both of us so strong and now invalid. The doctor says I'll get better, but it will be a fight.

And I didn't forty-two years ago.

PS THE CASTLE is still open 24/7. Muang Pattaya, Thailand Hours: Opens at 6PM - Closes at 3AM Phone: +66 91 052 2671

Hand Bondage Foto by Joana Kruse