Tonight is the big Gemini party. Ghe four of us invited everyone we knew in New York. not everyone likes everyone and Kim is scared there will be fights. I tell her not to worry. I'll be the birthday bouncer. I think she was worried about me fighting. My guests are Bruce, Lewis, who coukdn'tget into CBGBs last night, Ro, Alice, William Lively, RR, Pud, Klaus Sperber, Anthony with Cookie, Willem, Clare Hartnett, Michael Stumm, Fred and George from thr SRO, I invited more men than women, but thenjote eryone is 100% straight. Should be fun,
LATER
I was momentarily saved from temporary destituition by Mark's timely letter saying that I have a check in the mail from my unemployment from the Boston School Committee. James Spicer had lied to me and Mark Amitin said, "He stole several checks, so it looks like you don'tow himany back rent for that place on Park Slope, but he asked if you still have his typewriter."
"Fuck him. He stole over $250 and lied every inch of the way. Plus I repaired the typewriter.
Mark took my side, at least to my face and said, "Then it's yours."
"We both got what we wanted."
"Not really, James wanted to sleep with you.
"Not a chance." James was still attractive but even thiugh he fucked James Dean, all he got from me was to drunkily oil my feet like Mary Magdalene did To Jesus according the the New Testament."
James has gone from moderately heavy drinking to serious drinking and Mark said, "He's headed to drunk's grave. He's looking like shit. The curse of the Irish."
We Irish do drink to excess although I don't know if it's a genetic curse or how we dealt with the British oppression. My drinking worries me, but I'll stop worrying, when I stop drinking.
My first drink was withPaul Keenan. Dry Vermouth samplers from his father's liquor stash in their basement. In sixth grade he and I raised ourdesks to take a slug underhe njoses of the nuns. I neverreally got drunk until freshman year at Xaverian. Dave Quann drove his family station wagon down to Horseneck Beach. It was packed with us two, y brother, my next door neighbor Carl, Phil Milan, Kenny Doyle, and Charlie Carr. At the beach we mixed Bourbon with pepto-bismol. I got so drunk that they had to secrertly carry me up my stairs to my bedroom like I was a wounded soldier fleeing the victors. Inateasd of bleeding I puked pink for three days. My father knew what ailed me and patted my stomach. More puke.
After that adventure I drank in moderation until I left high school. Those last three years were so pure. CYO and Surf Nantasket dances, school, never any homework, track, no friends, Janet Stetson as my girlfriend, the Smith-Menconi feud over Ava Gardener, church every Sunday to hide my atheism, dry humping Janet, we never went all the way, I lost my scholarship failing German and religion, but my mother wanted me to go to a Catholic school. I hated it.
But I didn't drink.
Recently I wrote my mother a letter. When I went up to Boston we satatthe kitchen table and she said, "I read your letter. "I'm so sorry. I didn't realie hojw unhappy you were. I feel like I was a bad mother to not have seen it."
"You weren't a bad mothernd I hide my plain from everyone. I never told anyone about it. The one place I felt safe from here. With my family. Outside was very diferrent. I was never safe there except for with SisterMary Osmond, Brother Karl, and Janet. Everything else dangerous."
Very little, but I had books as my refuge.
With them I could go anywhere other than here.
LATER
Today is the first summery day; high cloudless blue skies and a warm wind from the south carrying the scent of the sea deep into Manhattan. I am tempted to hitchhike up to Cape Cod and crash in the dunes south of Provincetown. Take the subway to Pelham Park in the Bronx and stick ouit my thumb on I95. I could be in Truro before sundown. I haven't been there in two years. I ask Alice if she wants to go. Her reply, "You must be crazy."
No, I'm not crazy nor beserk nor mentally challenged. Most of the Cape is very white. Very unfunky. I doubt if there are any punks there. BC students off-seasoning a summer cops. BU coeds serving fish to old tourists. Mashpee Indians, the Silent Majority glowing in the sun like martini drunk lobsters, Points of interest tourists on holiday for two-week holidays away from the rut of th3 work cycle, hackneyed scenery artists selling seagull paintings, homos and dykes in P-town, hippies and the really rich on Martha's Vinyard and Nantucket.. Miles and miles of beaches covered by teenage sunworshippers happy tobe where they were at this stage of their life as long as it wasn't raining,
Cape Cod was not Times Square. No hustlers, whores, runaways, pimps, narco pigs, and thieves, or junkies. I feel comfortable in either place. I can't go anywhere. The Gemini party is tomorrow. I am a new me in New York, still a New Englander, my accent is unmistakable and my thirst for violence comes from teenage battles with everyone from Southie and beyond. My friends here regard me as an anomaly. Rough trade James Spicer once said.
Who cares? .
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