AUGUST 18, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

Tomorrow my older brother is visiting New York to take a two-day legal deposition for his law firm. Frank called from his hotel and asked, "Can I take you to dinner?"

I had $5 in my pocket and over the last three weeks, Alice has been riding me, "Who paid for this?" or "Who paid for that?"

And she's right.

Of the two os us only Alice earns money from her waitress gig, but she pays for breakfast and brings home food from the yogurt shop. I'm getting to hate yogurt, but beggars can't be so picky. I take care of the action-packed evenings, because every place lets me drink for free and Alice too.

My brother didn't extend an invitation to Alice. She is a vegetarian. Frank and I will go to the Old Homestead on 14th Street and enjoy a bovine feast of steaks.

"I don't know how you can eat blood-dripping meat," Alice says before we go to bed. She sniffed my skin, We've moved the futon into the living room. The bedroom has no air.

"At least I'm not a cannibal." My mouth clamps on her calf. I bit higher. Not hard. Her skin is almost too soft. We make love like I am a mercenary. I can't cum and spend myself on her belly. She's not on any birth control.

We lay back and Alice says, "I love the way the city lights up the sky."

We admire the dead black night out the alley window. Not a star in sight. No constellations, No galaxies. Only the full moon above the alley. Man has ceased to reach for the stars. The cosmos has been obliterated by the city bright. We are earth-bound as always.

In the west deserts the night is alive with distant stars.

They are our destiny.

There is no God.

We are the levelers of cities like Hiroshima, Dresden, or Tulsa.

Our victims live as running shadows against concrete walls or charred flesh or almost unscathed.

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. Robert Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad-Gita

NEXT YEAR ANDROMEDA

And Man thought themselves Gods
Divine beings destined for the stars
Traveling in Hydrogen-fission spacecraft
On a Holy mission
To spread the Word
To the Heathen Extra-Terrestrials
The first meeting happened long ago
Hunters greeting tri-podites
They taught us life
Now we ready for the Bible-jihad
We are Gods in our minds
More Shiva than Jesus
Lucky to have survived the last mass mutual extinction__

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,Brenda in the lady's room,Alice funny as hell, Xcessive, Kim,my cousin, the Revelons, a softball game against the Angels, The Johnny Blitz benefit et al

Charlie Martin. Long-haired genius. mono sound with ad four inputs with rotary knobs, bass and treble, and a master with mono. CBGBs sound supreme. Charlie's 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 came back to our apartment from CBGBs well past midnight. Alice was asleep on the bedroom futon. I knew better than to wake her and lay on the living room couch. Not a breath of air from the open windows. I wrapped my naked body in a sheet and futilely attempted to masturbate. No wood and I fell asleep slightly before dawn.

My restless sleep lasted until noon. Alice had already departed for the early shift 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 East 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.

The B&H also serves the only Chocolate Egg Cream on Second Avenue.

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