Journal Entry - June 22, 1977 - Gaslight Pub - Park Slope

Last night the improv class at Hunter College was crazy, as Chuck, Carla, and I created another version of STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE about trannys. Carla went home with her ex-husband. I headed back to Brooklyn. No one from Manhattan wants to bridge or tunnel to that borough.

At the Gaslight Pub the crowd was in full swing. Robert, a lanky blood, and his Italian cohort, Rabbit, were fighting over the split of a stolen IBM typewriter.

"60/40." Rabbit offered without a smile

"70 for me and 30 for you. Truthfully I don't know why I'm giving you a cent. I stole it."

"Because I carried it here."

"How much you want?" I asked knowing they cost about $500 brand new.

"$100," Robert said quickly. "They cost more than that."

"This one is used. $55 is my one and only offer."

"Fuck that, I'll smash it the street before I let you rob me."

I plugged in the typewriter. It worked like a dream.

James slumped against the bar. It was 2 AM. He had drunk like it was 6pm. I told him the story. He gave me $100. "Get it. Try and get it for less. Those two are junkies. It's late. They need a fix."

I approached with money in hand.

"Rob you. Go fuck yourself. I'll give you $60. Are we down?"

"Yes," they said as a team. I cuffed them $60.

Can you make it $80."

"Not a chance."

They gave me the typewriter.

We drank till closing and every moment Rabbit was jealous of James hitting on Robert.

They might have been junkies, but they were still in love adn love will conquer all for a junkie except for desire.

And a desire not for love.

Journal Entry - June 21, 1977 - Park Slope - Brooklyn

Throughout the night David the super of Berkeley Place played Got to Give It Up (Part 1) by Marvin Gaye over and over again very loud. James rolled into the apartment at 3:30 and pounded on Hazel's wall and the ceiling above his room.

"Shut that shit off."

He put on a tape of the World Saxophone Quartet - Point of No Return. I preferred Marvin to Hamiet Bluiett, Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake and David Murray, but wasn't anything better to fuck with the neighbors, especially David, who turned off his stereo.

Around noon I spoke with Ro to arrange an afternoon rendezvous. She promised chaos. We met at the Riviera Cafe in the West Village. I ordered a vodka-tonic. She had water.

"I'm leaving for Paris to study painting at Beaux Arts."

"When?"

"Soon."

"Then I'll have to get a passport."

"You're coming to Paris?"

"Why not? Flights are cheap. Don't worry I won't bother you there."

She looked at me as if she wasn't so sure about that, but Libby was in Paris. She couldn't be that hard to find."

This evening I had tried to seduce Libby's friend Karen at the Rainbow Room. We danced in a very erotic way. my though between hers. We were both turned on, but she finally shoved me away, saying, "I can't. I have a boyfriend. I'd feel miserable if I did anything with you."

"I understand. I'm very used to being alone."

"It's not that I don't want to, but my roommate is at home, otherwise I couldn't trust myself."

"There's always the bathroom here."

She shut her eyes and said, "Okay, it's not like I'm going to be with my boyfriend forever."

Summer Solstice 2022

Yesterday was the official summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. The day lasted almost sixteen hours in New York and the sun never set in Murmansk, Russia. I woke well before the dawn and went to sleep far past sunset, as the Earth polar cap tipped toward the nearest star 93 million miles away from our home planet.

Five hundred year after the discovery of beer by the Celts the Druid priests gathered the tribes to erect this monolithic bluestone clock to record the rising and setting on the sun and the passage of the stars. To this day modern archaeologists will not attributed this great feat to the Celts, because the true tribe supposedly arrived in Britain in 600 BE before Caeser's reign over Rome.

Fucking Brits haven't even discovered its ancient name.

No one has come even close.

No one.

Not even us remaining Neanderthals.

The Avebury henges followed Stonehenge's creation. By whom no one knows.

Back in 1994 I drank in a good pub at the northern entrance.

I also climbed to the top of the Avesbury Mound.

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Summer Solstice - June 21, 2024

Yesterday 4:52 PM marked the beginning of the summer solstice, the little best day of the year on the Northern hemisphere. People have celebrated this day since time immemorial across the globe. The word Solstice means “sun standing still” or “grianstad' in Celtic. This morning I awoke at first light. 5:14 AM.

Back in the last century my friend AJ and I went out to Stonehenge for a neolithic day trip. I hugged the monumental stones and cried as one with Celtic blood, even though the monolithic stones were erected by an unknown race many millennium before the Irish wandered northern Europe. Since that visit the Crown, which claims ownership of the ruins, has restricted entry to the ring of stones. Today thousands of pagans greeted the dawn at Stonehenge. New Yorkers for the most part ignored the yearly phenomena, even though Manhattan's East to West streets from 14th to 155th are aligned with sunrise and sunset during the three-day solstice period.

According to Wikipedia the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 arranged the street grid for most of Manhattan according to the azimuth at sunset to 299° (i.e., 29° north of due West), so he island's sunset aligns with the streets on that gird.

Tomorrow morning I will greet the sun naked in Montauk.

Enjoy the cosmos.

It's in our blood.

Survivor June 2009

In the course of my 57 years I've stayed in a hospital once. The week of my birth. My parents took me home to Jamaica Plain. Since that day my health has been unchallenged by illness other than colds, poison ivy, and hang-overs. The last year I had thrived in the unhealthy climates of New York. One year without a serious ailment and last week I bragged to a friend, "I haven't been ill this year."

Two days later a cough invaded my lungs. My body was wracked by a low-grade fever. My strength was depleted by minimal exertion. I stayed home one day from work. I would have been fine if I had said nothing. My doctor's diagnosis excluded 'swine flu'.

"A cold. A summer cold. Nothing more." He suggested rest, fluids, and cough syrup.

I followed his advice and slept like the dead thanks to the cough syrup. I drank hundreds of gallons of water and juice. Theraflu was my sole form of entertainment. No beer. No wine. No pizza. Life was meaningless. I don't do sick well. My bed became my empire. I watched all of STARGATE-ATLANTIS Seasons 2 and 3. It's been one week. I almost feel better. I survived being sick.

The weirdest thing was that everyone else in New York looked even sicker.

But then they eat crap.

Vagabonding In the City - 2017

My disaster stint in Alaska cost my apartment in Fort Greene.

Too many hours.

A horrible boss.

Too little money.

How little?

$100 for a thirteen hour day.

I wasn't cut out for selling silver trinkets to geriatric cruise line passengers and my boss fired me without notice. I was glad to go.

May was not the month to make sales in Juneau.

Six days a week.

I lasted a month and returned to New York with less than $600 in my pocket.

My apartment was sublet and I was $4500 in arrears to my landlord and good friend.

I worked everywhere throughout the summer.

On a house in Catskill, New York.

On a farm in Greenwich, New York.

Where a tree bloodied my skull.

My son Fenway was hurt in a motorcycle crash in Thailand.

Not bad and he remains handsome as ever.

On a house in Greenwich, New York.

My old job of selling diamonds was gone. I hated hard labor, but it was better than not working at all, which is what I've been doing the last week.

A vagabond without a place to live.

I used to fit right into this street.

And one day I will again.

Just not today.

HItchhiking Delaware 1970

In 1970 coming from a weekend in DC Peter Gore and I were arrested for hitchhiking by a Delaware state trooper on this stretch of I-95. We were fined $25 at the police station and put on a bus to New York. I never paid that ticket, which has probably ballooned with penalties and interest to $1100. That is why I fear Delaware.

Especially the Delaware Welcome Center.

A slice of pizza $7.99.

And no beer.

ps the following year Peter and I also were ticketed once more for hitchhiking in George, Washington by a zealous state trooper. He threw us off the highway and then off the onramp. Peter was standing on a tree stump and a car stopped for us. The trooper pulled over the vehicle and ticketed the three of us.

I never paid that ticket either.