Reno Nevada Blackjack May 29, 1974

In 1974 my 21st birthday was spent driving across Nevada with Andy, a pot-smoking pianist, and Carole, a blonde co-ed heading to the West Coast. We had made good time in the rent-away station wagon up to this point and I decided to celebrate my coming of age by gambling at every desert town along I-80. Elko, Winnemucca, Lovelock, and Sparks were generous to my cause. I was up about $1000 from playing blackjack or 21. It was a simple game and I had a good head for numbers as would anyone who had been a math major in college.

Sunset fell over Reno, the Biggest Little City in the World. The first bright lights since Denver. I picked out Harrah’s as my next victim. Before entering the casino I handed Andy my traveling money and $500.

“Don’t give me this no matter what.” I had seen gambling movies. No one came out on top. Carole shook her head. “What’s wrong?”

“If you’re going to play, then play. Never fix a limit.” Carole was a junior at a girl’s college outside Boston. She was studying business. Her advice sounded dangerous.

“I’ll leave the money with Andy.”

I sat at a blackjack table. The dealer was kind. I was up another $500 and felt like I could kill the bank for another $1000. Andy asked me to call it a night.

“We can crash in the Sierras.”

“Another ten minutes and I’ll buy us hotel rooms.” I couldn’t lose and tapped a passing cocktail waitress. She was tall and wearing a very short dress. I ordered a Jack and Coke. My favorite drink. I had several more. I recall something about threatening Andy for money and then nothing until I woke up along the Truckee River. The ground was no soft hotel bed and my hang-over not a crown of victory. Carole and Andy were standing over my resting place.

“Did I lose everything?”

“Everything but the car.” Carole wore an expression of pity. It wasn’t until we reached Sacramento that Andy returned my traveling stake. All my birthday winnings had reverted to the casino. There are no winners and I’ve avoided casinos ever since that day, having learned that blackjack doesn’t mix with Jack and Coke.

It’s a lesson that stays with me. I might not have scored good grades, but I was a good student and Reno was an even better teacher. It was a lesson I only needed to learn once.

May 30, 1978 - East Village - Journal

Alice is very disturbed with the lack of the progress on her senior project THE GENTLEMEN FROM VERONA at EST. She hates everyone. Mostly herself. She started on me, as we walked away from CBGBs. She had once more been made to pay. I never did. I had wanted to stay to see Patti Smith, but Alice was still recovering from her drink at the Four Gemini party two nights ago. Too much Jack Daniels. same for me. I was only drinking beer.

"I hate you get in for free. Why? It's not that you're anyone."

"Can't you channel that hatred?" Most people transfer their self-hatred to the one closest.

"What do you know? Are now a psychiatrist?"

"No, I know nothing." I readily accepted my role as whipping boy. My adolescence had two years of bullying and my self-esteem was still scarred by the beatings.

"Nothing?"

Alice had her own issues. Like mine they never saw the light of day or the depth of darkness.

We're on the Bowery and silently head over to West 11th Street. She hated my SRO. I hated it too.

yeah ask myself doesn't stop bending her anger at me for over a month is the breaking point because I came upstairs to get my contacts Alice thought I was leaving for CBGBs. we walked back to my SRO. she said, "Fuck you. You expect me to come upstairs?"

"You can go home."

"I don't want to be alone."

I didn't either. We entered. The desk clerk didn't lift his head from the Post. Probably had it turned to the horses. I didn't say hello.

"I hate this place."

I hated her sublet. I might have been there once. She shared a room and thought her lesbian roomie wanted to fuck me. Both of us. She wasn't my type and I loved Alice. not that I didn't have sex with other women. I was sure Alice did too.

On the 4th floor we stripped naked. I threw her a towel.

"Shower."

There was a grimy shared bathroom in the hallway. This late at night is was free. The water ran hot and long. I soaped her back and ass, then turned around, so she didnt see my erection.

We returned to the room. my feet stuck to the linoleum floor. Alice lay back, her belly pouting. Legs apart, blonde hair rimming her vagina. I stuffed the towel over my groin.

When I turned away seconds later her voice broke,

"Don't hit me."

"You stupid fucking bitch. Who do you think I am? A rapist? You say you love me words, but fantasize about me raping you. I'm not that man. That's all you care about. getting fucked like an animal. Go find someone else to filfill your fantasy. Someone else to use."

I pushed her away.

"Don't hit me, please." She was begging me to be hit like the heroine of THE STORY OF O.

I was very hard. I wanted her badly. Like this, but no.

"I don't want to hit you and I don't need this shit from yo. That's all you've been giving me and you know it's when you know it's my birthday. All you care about is yourself."

"Same as you."

She was right on the money. Women are always right and I admit it I care about nothing. Notto her. only about myself.

"But I do love you."

"I'm sorry."

She said the words like she had learned the line for a play.

"Big shit. More words show me that our words all you have to do to make me stay."

"I'm afraid of everything. Afraid to do anything. Afraid I want to be afraid."

"I'm here. Don't be scared.".

I shut off the bed light Alice and I don't talk. The bed is too small to sleep apart. She guides me in. She cums. I fake it. We sleep. I have a nightmare of being hunted on an interstate chased by unknown monsters.

I wake up. Broke. I'm twenty-six. She gets up. We kiss. College is over. Alice is leaving New York to go back to West Virginia for the summer. Apart will be hard. Once again I care for some someone. Alice and I want her to see how strong this love is. January to May.

A May Bee - Bleecker Street Balcony with a Vu

Bleecker Street afternoon The 9th floor balcony Balmy end of May My birthday I banished the noises The traffic The voices of pedestrians Below The hum of ACs But not the breeze Not the Buzz of a scout bee Seeking sweetness We have met before He bigger than the end of April A brief landing on the railing nothing of interest And he is off Leaving only the wind And moi un homme tres vieux.

May 29, 1992 - Bangkok - Journal

May 29, 1982 - Paris - Journal

May 29, 1995 - LA - the Milk Bar

1995

Los Angeles

Beverly Hills to be exact.

May 29.

My birthday. No cake. No candles.

My life was not BEVERLY HILLS 90210, but the stars from the popular TV show came every night along with many others. The Milk Bar was something no one had seen in Los Angleles for a long time.

Grace Jones had performed in LA and after the concert she came to the Milk Bar in Beverly Hills, where I worked as the doorman. Our mutual friend, Scottie, was co-owner.

She greeted each of us with a kiss. We knew her from New York. 1980. The Jefferson and Continental, two notorious after-hours clubs famed for flaunting witched till dawn. A fellow denizen of the night. We shared mutual friends. Arthur Weinstein, the Prince of the Night. Scottie told her it was my birthday. He didn't say which one. She didn't ask and gave me a hug, saying, "You put on a little weight. California suits you."

We had drinks at the bar. More than three. JZ came in with two weaslth management clients. I knew him from New York. Trouble, but only for banking irregularities. I introduced him to Grace. His clients were enthralled by the charcoal black disco queen. She was famous for the wilderness. At night's end JZ suggested that I accompany them to the Beverly Hills Hotel to party. I had nothing else to do and joined the bankers, two blonde starlets, and Grace for a short ride to the famed hotel.

We were seven in a limo counting two starlets enlisted from the club. A gassed banker had a bag of blow for twenty. Inside the hotel suite Grace grabbed the stash and we locked ourselves in the bathroom rather than listened to three zooted investors brag about their millions to the coke-glazed starlets in a bad remake of Tony Montana from the last scene of SCARFACE.

Grace and I spoke about our friends from New York in the toilet.

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll

In Hollywood was only the drugs.

The two bankers banged on the door. JZ knew better. I opened it and told them to fuck off, "Unless you want to deal with Grace."

They had all seen Grace in CONAN THE DESTROYER. She had been scary and not movie scary. The two bankers backed off. I slammedthen jammed my heel against the door.

"I knew there was a reason I liked you."

Grace and I spent a few more minutes in the bathroom, then rejoined the party. Everyone was happy to be reunited with the cocaine. Not so much us, although the starlets conspiratorial winked at Grace . we were all on the same team. At dawn we shared a taxi home. Her to the Marmont Hotel.

A Happy Birthday wish and a kiss on the cheek.

Next me to a small bungalow I shared with Scottie over the Hills in North Hollywood. The driver had driven me there before. The sun rose a harsh desert morning. Both of us had sunglasses. Back in North Hollywood in bed I shivered to sleep until noon.

That was May 30, 1995.

Grace seemed to be my age.

44. It was my birthday. May 29.

Maybe my math is bad. About Grace's age.

Everyone lies about their age and weight after thirty.

Stars save the queen of Disco. Fierce indeed.

HUNG

"The Village in New York had always attracted a kaleidoscope of radical, deviant, and perverse characters considered abhorrent by mainstream America. The Reds of the 40s gave way to the beatniks of the 50s, who in turn evolved into the hippies of the 60s before surrendering the shattered counterculture ghetto to the junkies, artists, punks and sexual revolutionaries of the 1970s. In 1978 I lived on East 10th Street with Alice, my hillbilly girlfriend, and my faux-sister Pip rented an apartment off Bleecker Street. She called me Pud. We had met at CBGBs, which was our Lincoln Center. The owner couldn’t figure out how we got so drunk on one drink. It wasn’t magic. Pip and I smuggled bottles of vodka past Merv at the door.

One Spring evening the Ghosts opened for the Dictators. My girlfriend didn’t like either band, so I went alone. Pip sat at a table near the stage. Our chairs leaned against the wall. Pip reached under the table to fill our glasses from a vodka bottle. We had no ice.

The Ghosts played a blistering set and closed out the show with RICHARD IS A FORKHEAD. There was no encore and the band’s juvenile guitarist came over before heading to the dressing room.

“You mind.” Xcessive pointed to Pip’s glass. He had spotted our trick.

“Not at all.” My ‘sister’ was sweet on young punk rockers.

Xcessive drained the glass and coughed a little before wiping the sweat off his face.

“Thanks.”

“Good show.”

“I tried.”

The young guitarist thread through his admirers by the stage and I said to Pip, “Isn’t he a little young for you?”

“He’s just a friend. Same as you.”

The cheery NYU coed had a crush on most of the men on the scene and many of the girls at CBGBs suffered the same affliction. This was the 70s and not the 50s. None of us were going steady and I struggled to be faithful to Alice.

“Besides I have my eye on my new neighbor. He’s really cute. His name’s Marc Stevens,” cooed Pip.

“Marc Stevens?”

“You know him?”

“I don’t know him personally, but he’s known as Mr. 10 and a Half.” The well-hung actor was John Holmes’ rival in the XXX film industry.

“Mr. 10 and a Half?”

“Yes, 10 and a Half inches.” I had seen him dancing naked covered in silver body paint at Studio 54. His penis had looked a normal size that evening.

“Oh, that’s big.”

“He was the star of THE DEVIL AND MRS. JONES.”

“I don’t know that film.” Pip studied literature at NYU. Her professors expected their students to read MADAME BOVARY and Camus’ THE PLAGUE. The Francophile intellectuals had no use for pornography other than THE STORY OF O and I gave Pip a 10-minute course in XXX films from DEEP THROAT to BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR. Her eyes shined with joy. She loved celebrities.

“He’s living with this girl, Jill Monro.”

“Jill’s no girl. She had an operation to change her penis into a vagina. She’s the first tranny movie star.” “No, I can’t believe I know a transvestite.” “Transsexual.” They were two different creatures. She kissed my cheek for explaining the birds and bees of a hidden sect. “I love you, Pud.”

Not everyone held porno actors in esteem, but I haunted the Times Squares peepshows in search of arcane films. My hillbilly girlfriend had no idea about my research. It was a secret I kept close to my heart.

Late that May Pip decided to throw a party for a quartet of Geminis. An underground designer of nightclubs decorated her apartment. She invited a hundred people. Over 200 crammed into the duplex. I knew many of them, since I was one of the birthday boys.

“Mr. 10 and a Half is coming,” Klaus whispered in my ear. The German opera singer was a fiend for size and he shivered saying, “10 and a half. Divine.” Klaus and I discussed gay porno films, as if we were voting for the Oscars.

My hillbilly girlfriend wandered off to CBGBs to see the Mumps. Alice didn’t like drinking and liked me drunk less.

A minute later a curly-haired man came up to me and said, “I thought she would never leave. My name is Marc.”

“Pip talked about you.” I looked through the crowd. His better half wasn’t in the room.

“She talked about you too.” Marc wore a white jumpsuit. He was the thinnest person in the room. His hand touched my ass. “You want to do some blow?”

“Yes.”

I was as used to gay guys hitting on me as they were accustomed to seducing straight guys.

“Not here. There are too many vultures.” His soft brown eyes darted over the crowd, as if he were looking for someone special. “Let’s go to my place.”

Two men leaving a party together was no scandal, although Pip leaned over to Klaus and pointed out my departure. The singer gave me the green light with a wink and shouted out, “Gluck.”

“I don’t need good luck.” I was straight or at least that’s what I told myself, but everyone in the Village was a little bent in one way or another.

“Your friend is cute in a strange way.”

“He likes you.”

“All size queens desire Mr. 10 and a Half.”

“I bet they do.”

Marc tiptoed down the hall.

“I don’t want any of the neighbors seeing us. My wife is very jealous.” He opened the door and pushed me inside.

“My girlfriend is the same way.”

“Everyone is so hung up about love. Sex is just sex. Nothing more.”

Marc shut the door. The one-bedroom apartment was decorated with dark brown furniture favored by gays for hiding stains from intercourse.

The XXX actor went into the kitchen to fetch a Pond’s cream jar from the cabinet.

It was crammed with a white powder with a pinkish glow.

“What is that?”

“Bolivian flake from one of my admirers.”

We sat on the soft sofa. The cushions wrapped around me like a Venus Fly Trap. The music from Pip’s party thumped the wall. I recognized the song as UP BONDAGE UP YOURS.

“You like that music?” Marc spilled out a mound of blow. The lines were thick as rope.

“I’m a punk.” I had been since seeing the Ramones play CALIFORNIA SUN. Their speedy version of the Rivieras’ hit opened my eyes to a new world and CBGBs became my second home.

“I like leather, but not that music. I’m more into disco.”

He unzipped his jumpsuit to his bellybutton and handed me a straw.

“Enjoy.”

I huffed the first rail. This was not street gear and the coke burst into my nasal capillaries with the intensity of an Incan sunrise, then scorched my veins with an avalanche of euphoria. I fell back into the sofa with my bones sizzling on a Incan hot plate.

“Good, huh,” Marc whispered in my ear. His lips were tender on my neck. He spooned a small pile into my other nostril.

“Breathe.”

I obeyed his command.

The coca sizzled my senses and the universe shimmered out of focus.

I was in no condition to resist Marc’s advances. He was a veteran of porno movies. Millions of men and women fantasized about lying in bed with him. I gripped his thick member with the tenderness of a butcher preparing to cut a steak. Millions of XXX viewers had seen him in MICHAEL, ANGELO, AND DAVID.

The photographer Robert Mapplethorpe had immortalized this penis in a black-and-white shit titled MARC STEVENS MR. 10 and a Half, 1976.

I gave it a squeeze.

“It’s not hard.”

“Rough trade gets me erect.” Marc’s admission was not a confession, but a request.

He pinched his nipple and his cock stiffened with a throb.

“I like being the queen,” murmured Marc. “You wanna be king?”

He undid my jeans. My cock was semi-hard.

I think we did too much blow.”

“Or not enough.”

Keys turned the lock of the front door.

The actor sat up straight and zipped his jumpsuit.

“It’s my wife. Do some more blow.”

I snapped out of my trance and turned my head.

A statuesque brunette entered the apartment had a couple inches on us in her stiletto heels. She regarded the coke and then the two of us.

Her smile was held none of the unease of seeing her man with another man.

“Marc introduced us.

“Please to meet you.” His wife held out her hand with a tilted wrist.

I offered mine, expecting a limp handshake.

Jill crunched my knuckles in a vise.

Marc was her man.

I winced with a pained grin and ripped my fingers loose. “I met him at the party next door. It was fun.”

“I can see that.” Jill sat down and the surrender of accepting Marc for what he was.

“Nice meeting you too. Time for me to rejoin the party.”

“Leaving so soon?” Marc was in no position to pursue his desire.

“It’s getting late.”

“Thanks for coming.” Jill smirked with the pleasure of re-establishing her dominance over my host.

“Sure, just one more thing.” “What?” Jill straightened her posture, as if she was ready for a fight.

“A good-bye gift.” I bent over and snorted the other two lines within two seconds. “Thanks Marc laughed and Jill joined him.

“Sure you want to leave?” She spread her legs to invite a touch. “I already have a lover.”

“Lucky girl.” Jill kissed Marc on the cheek. “Same as me.”

He spilled out more blow. She delicately bowed her head to inhale her first line. They looked like such a nice couple.

I returned to the party.

Pip grabbed me and asked, “What happened?”

“His wife came home.”

I poured myself a vodka. “And what were you doing?” “Talking that’s all. I have a girlfriend.” Pip was a spy for my hillbilly girlfriend. They were good friends. “And I’m not gay.” “And you’re not straight either.” Pip shrugged with disappointment. She had been all ears for some good dirt, but left me to flirt with the Ghosts young guitarist. I stayed for another hour. The coke ran its course. Klaus lived in the East Village. We shared a taxi to St. Mark’s Place. “So how big was it?” The German was all ears. “Have you seen his movies?” I could tell Klaus anything. He loved keeping secrets. “Yes.” His eyes widened with delight. “It was that big and thick.” I didn’t comment on the softness of his penis. “Wunderbar.”

“He said you were cute.”

“Really?”

“Maybe you’ll get lucky one night.”

“I can only wished and hope.”

“Klaus dropped me on St. Mark’s. I walked to 10th Street.

My hillbilly girlfriend was asleep in our bed. I took off my clothes and slid next to her.

“How was it?”

“What?”

“Mr. 10 and a Half.”

“Big and thick.”

“Too big for me?”

“Yes.”

“And you?”

“I went strictly there for a look-see. I came, I saw, I went.”

“You’re a good boy.” Alice cuddled up to me with a childish tenderness.

I was surprised she believed me, but I didn’t mention the temptation.

She was strictly GP-13 and I fell into a wired maze of dreams. None of them were XXX and that was probably better for Alice.

Better for me too, because 10 inches was as a big penis in dreams as it was in real life.

Klaus and me at the party.

Foto by Kim Davis.

MAY 27, 1978 THE VILLAGE JOURNAL ENTRY

An incredible quadruple Gemini birthday party at Kim and Kyle Davis' apartment on Bleecker Street. Sean Hausman, Eric Goode, and Kim had hung blue and white balloons overhead. They had plastered xeroxed fotos of the four natal celebrants on the wall and illuminated the living room with a modulating blue lights. Punk and funk music. Beer and bourbon. Tons of people.

A ballerina said, "I saw you on 42nd Street. You entered a peep show. Do you like porno? Would you like to see me naked?"

"Yes."

By the bathroom door Alice entertained lithe lesbian actresses about the poetry police. It was a funny spiel, but I had heard it a couple of times. Normally as she started to get drunk. The ballerina led me out of the apartment in a slow motion pas de deux into the stair well. Her name is Dove. She tells me to keep my distance. I nodded, although my hands wanted to rip off her dress. She smiled at my distress and peeled the dress off her shoulders, as if under George Balanchine's direction. It fell to her feet. Her body was emaciated by dance, revealing every sinew, muscle, and bone. "My name is Dove. One day if we're lucky, we will fuck." Her hand drifted elegantly to her crotch and rubbed her labia, then licked her fingertips. She didn't offer them to me and I realized she was baiting me to take her against her will. It wasn't the first time a woman to misinterpret my innate propensity for violence as sexual.

"Like you said. Not tonight."

I returned to the party.

ANARCHY IN THE UK blasted on the stereo. Kyle chatted with Billy Flicker from Television. She is so in love with him and couldn't be happier with his attention solely hers.

Excessive enters and shouts, "Now the party begins."

I love him. He starts an argument with a bassist from the Testors. I step in.

"It's a party and if anyone is going to start a brawl, it's me. I'm one of the birthday people."

We spoke for a few minutes and somehow I diverted the two of us into a ballad of loneliness.

"Oh, wow. Not easy to be alone with this many people here for your birthday."

"Easier than you think."

I went over to Alice.

"Ignore me."

She drank a slug for 101 proof Bourbon, then silked away to hillbilly dance with Barbara, returning to the bathroom to extoll the virtues of hard drinking to those waiting for a piss. She was very funny. even the partygoers inside the toilet laughed at her humor.

Kim gets drunk with Marc Stevens, Mr 10 1/2 of porno fame. He whispers he wants to talk with me.

"Later." I glanced at his crotch and he smiled like to say it's all there.

Patrick shows up with a bottle of bourbon. I don't know how it became the drink of the party. He hands me a manifesto for the National Resurgence Party, which I promptly lose.

Ro shows up. I'm too drunk to form sentences. We score some speed, but Steve Forber steals half. Cyrena get her photo taken by Sean and his father. Roz shows as does William Lively and Andy Reese, then Clover. Alone, Blonde, Young. We spoke in the hallway, "I haven't been avoiding you. My Texan sponsor is in town. He leaves tomorrow."

Amos, Kim's love, is drunk and leans against the wall supported by wobbly knees.

Ann makes out with Excessive, who pukes and I have to sober him up in the kitchen with a bump of speed. Bruce and Lewis enter with gifts of a tie and hankercheif. Klaus comes with Claudia. Dark and mysterious in leather. I say nothing to her. Little John is drunk.

Kim's Greenwich friends become invisible. The bourbon has blurred everyone's vision and stripped away their inhibitions to the bone. It is the height of the Sexual Revolution and we are all rebels with a cause of flesh to flesh. Rhonda makes move on Alice. Anthony stands close as a voyeur, wishing he had been camera back from the repair shop. I speak to Sean about film and anarchy. Markey from the Ghosts has not stop dancing. Sweat flies off his body to UP BONDAGE UP YOURS. Rick Danger loses his leather jacket. Someone stole it. Marc invites me over to his apartment for some blow. He takes out his cock. Long and thick and not hard at all.

"Touch it, " he says, as if it was a pet snake.

His girlfriend, Jill Monro, enters the apartment.

We do some more lines and she hefts his limp cock.

"He does blow and he's useless in bed. Sweet, but useless."

I go back to the party. Eric is making out with a girl whose name I can't recall. It is not Alice.

"How big was it?" Klaus asks licking his lips.

"Go over and ask. I'm sure he'll show it to you."

He brings Andy Reese with him.

Clover and I kiss in the stairwell.

"One day you and me."

"What about now?" I know she wants me to have my way with her.

"One day."

Not tonight.

Alice hasn't spoke a word to me in hours. She's kissing one of the Greenwich girls.

The lights go out. A blown fuse. We light candles The beer runs out, so does the ice. We find R&B music on a transistor radio. We have plenty of bourbon. Creeps from CBGBs arrived at the door. I tell them to fuck off. William Lively cries when I refuse him. People puke over the railing in groups of two and three. Cyrena leaves with someone other than Sean. Alice is out cold on the couch. Kim and Amos are on the floor. There is no sign of Kyle or Billy. I bring back Alice to her sublet. I put her to bed and she slurs, "I wish you were David Bowie."

I did too and walk back to my SRO room on West 11th Street.

All and all it was a great party. .

Drunken Bully - C'est Moi

Almost ten years ago my faux-sister Pip was defending 1970s porn star Marc Stevens on Facebook. I caught the thread in mid-stream and joined the fray. Marc and I had and I had almost been lovers.

Here's the exchange; PIP - Marc Stevens was a next-door neighbor and pal...here he is on David Susskind...We partied all the time...but our scenes were different...viva la difference, he was oddly fatherly to me...and if though I knew he was a porn 'star', I never saw his movies...but he did give offer me advice about boys..which I was happy to hear. Sad to see him had such a tragic end...like so many of that time...famously photographed by Mapplethorpe. ah me!

WOMAN FROM BERLIN I wondered why he was coming to Club 57 - it was you who told him. Wednesday at 3:07pm.

PIP - yup...hung with Peter Nolan Smith, my sister Kyle Davis Cadley and a whole motley crew....ah woe!

ME - Marc was good fun.

WOMAN FROM BERLIN - He was very polite and nice as I recall.

PIP - A good fb friend, gay english teacher is Fla., was bemoaning a Porno star making a PSA...it rankled and brought Marc to mind! What a great role model he was for gay kids! Did we live in a particular place in time that enabled us to be open and happily accepting of each other? The more I know about what people 'out there' think, the less I feel I belong.

ME - it was a special time. we accepted each other for what we were and our opinion evolved from relationships after overcoming prejudice. The era of errors.

WOMAN FROM BERLIN One is brought up to be accepting and loving of others or not. I think it's that simple.

ME - Most people are raised with the bias of their community. It is up to the individual to change the thinking of the majority through our thought deeds and words.

PIP - So we made our own community...and now we're in a right wing hell hole.

WOMAN FROM BERLIN So what's new? We were always in one. Remember Anita Bryant? The Moral Majority? America, Love it or Leave it? Yuppies? Nancy Reagan's red cloth coats? Ring any bells?

PIP - Vaguely...Anita was mean to Harvey Milk...orange juice...we in the thick of it could dismiss the wacko's..harder now, somehow, perhaps my view is too narrow and shaped by our unique perspective...I get pissing mad when I think of people in closets and suicidal teens...Surely we have gotten somewhere!!!!Do You remember that party you had in Chinatown...someone fell off the roof ( is okay, I believe) and I made out with a beautiful girl all night!!!! Cyrena. Ah YES, I'm an old goat now lol

WOMAN FROM BERLIN - Steven Kramer who was married to Patti Astor at the time pulled that tap dancing trick on the ledge, which is something he often did, but alas fell off that time. Brilliant artist of many talents. You kissing Cyndria Fox maybe? I know that night Robert Gordon propositioned me with my pal and his girlfriend Snooky nearby. What a creep. That was the opening party for NWV. Andy Horn was there, he says, but I haven't the slightest recollection of having met him then. PIP - My only GF Cyrena...wow...flashback.

WOMAN FROM BERLIN - Everyone had them in Boarding School, but unfortunately I was expelled before I got one and the irony was that I was accused of sneaking out to meet boys - at the tender age of 11? and kicked out. I actually think the "Ban The Bible" pin that I wore on my uniform and my disregard for the rules made them have it in for me. You had a girlfriend?

PIP - She was everyone's girlfriend! LOL..not girlfriend...What do the kids call it??? Friend and hook-up?

PIP - Ban the bible...good one LOL Marc Stevens www.ovguide.com Watch Marc Stevens Videos. Free Streaming Marc Stevens Video Clips. I Added this after a long day research Trappist Beer in Belgium. Always trying to make a story about me.

ME - I remember Steven dancing on the edge. Anthony Scibelli and I pulled him down and two minutes later he was back up there. We went to grab him and he fell the wrong way. Crunch. We looked down at him. He was lying facedown in a pool of blood.

ME - David McDermott and I leaped to the billboard on the other roof and climbed down to him. Patti was screaming at the top of her lungs. David was a little horrified by the sight of so much blood, but was brave enough to say, "If we don't move him, he's going to drown in his own blood., but I asked Steven if he could move his feet.

ME - "You're right. Can you move your feet. He moaned 'yes' and I turned him on his back. Someone yelled from your roof. "What do you need?" -

"I yelled back a beer."

WOMAN FROM BERLIN - Another stunt that he used to pull at Kristian's loft would be he would be hanging on the ledge outside of the window and when you noticed him he would wave at you while holding onto the ledge with the other arm. It would scare the you know what out of you.

ME - I ran into him months after his fall. He asked if I knew him. I said no, thinking he might be embarrassed. finally I succumbed to his insistence and said, "I was the guy who turned you over on that roof.' He walked away without another word.

SQUARE GAY - I stand by my post of yesterday. We are supposed to be reminding gay youth that they can be gay and healthy and happy throughout their lives. I don't think we need more reminders that the gay world is hyper-sexualized and that many, wrong...

WOMAN FROM BERLIN - You know, I think I remember you shouting for that beer. I was so sensitive years ago

ME - I must say that many teens of whatever sexuality are self-loathing. I was wheeling in my bed at this moment.

ME - Noel, the Aids epidemic was manufactured. Me - straights shared the same lifestyles. We had a good time. Don't demonize the past. L 7

WOMAN FROM BERLIN - Oops, this is my stop, gotta get off. Bye Y'all.

PIP- Noel is dismissing us as drug addled losers from the 70's!????

CARO!!! Ha ha. not quite.

ME - Noel, this world is too filled with squares telling us we were wrong. You want to shout that out. Sing to a different choir. We are altos and falsettos in this crew. Buzzkill someone else

PIP - Noel, could I be wrong in thinking that this is a case of the oppressed becoming the oppressor? It seems you want a place at the dinner table of Middle America! You'll never feel better until you (collectively) accept yourself...oh dear.

ME - believe me, i can still throw the buzzkills off the bus. Noel, stop looking in the mirror and admire the shadows

WOMAN FROM BERLIN - Lucia, not all are enlightened or have drank from the same fountain. Au 'Reservoir'.

ME - Marc 10 1/2 Stevens. he had some crank on him, drool factor 12

PIP - I never sorted all my pals out...gay..straight..we were individuals baby...As Ann Magnuson said in "The Nomi Story" which I saw for the first time...we were all outcasts who came to NYC to find a place to feel free and express ourselves...the miracle is we found each other. Peter...I saw the Mapplethorpe 'penis' today ! Hello!

ME - the uncut version. what a schlong. Off to sleep after drinking Trappist beer on the Belgium border Aulne 8, was anyone really straight

PIP - not then...well...some 'girls' LOL, well, my brain is a fried kitten from all the drugs and sex I've had.

WOMAN FROM BERLIN - Poor Noel, shame on us, or you, for allowing a drunken bully like Peter to run wild (again). Non-Quitter or Non Sequitur? Hard to say and honestly if we were all drooling over penis sizes the human race wouldn't have an over- population problem.

SQUARE GAY - Squares? really? Are you twelve? Look who's doing the judging now. and I am obviously waaaaay to L7 to get the mirror/shadow metaphor. and, Kimmy, I am opressing no one. Drag queens and leather daddy's have long had too high a profile in the gay community. I can be out and proud--even to my teenage students--without becoming a parody of myself. i think that's what a gay student of mine was referring to recently when he told me that i was the reason he stopped seeing it as a curse. to each his own, but I'm not going to support yet another gay cause that thinks its de rigeur to bring out the porn stars or present caged masters and slaves at their galas or whatever else just because it's part of the "wonderful patchwork of who we are."

PIP - recently 'out', not too proud, a gym rat is just another way to say gay...I don't think I mentioned 'leather queens' once...but my cousin would describe himself as such, as well as a member of Boston's symphony...stereotypes indeed Noel. Drunken bully.

WOMAN FROM BERLIN knows him from way back when.

THe WOMAN FROM BERLIN knew knew me. She is more wrong than right, but then a woman is never wrong, but she and Pip defended Marc Stevens. He was a good guy and a lot of fun!

ps He wasn't into squares either and I wouldn't have trust the woman from Berlin with a bag of mud.

Then and now and I wouldn't have beem intimate with her even on 'Ludes.

photo of marc stevens from robert mapplethrope. Redacted by the uncool censors of Facebook

May 26, 1978 - East Village - Journal

Tonight is the Four Gemini Party at Kim and Kyle Davis' apartment on Bleecker Street. We have sisued 'invitation only' passes to our many friends and flings. Kim is concerned about fight or fights. I'm not too worried, since I know how to stop a fight.

"You know how to start fight too." Her younger sister had seen me battled in CBGBs more than once.

"I promise to be good." I meant it too.

I handed in my guest list.

Bruce, Lewis, who couldn't get into CBGBs last night, Jaci from Dojo, Tommie DeMeastri from MCBElls, Anthony Scibelli, Cookie Mueller, Klaus, Willem and his girlfriend Liz, Roz from the Socialist Review, Michael Stumm, Fred and George from the SRO. I invied more males than women, but who cares? It should be fun.

Later

I was ssaved from eviction from the SRO by Mark Amitin. He had received my last unemployment check from the Boston School Committee, plus xeroxs of the missing checks. James had lied. Who is there to trust in this city? Mark said, "Looks like you don't owe him any money for rent."

"I paid rent." At least I thought I had. "He ripped me off for $250."

"He asked about the typewriter. I guess that make you a little even. It's yours now."

"Yeah, it's a dead issue. How is James?" The old jazz impressario had given me a room on Berkelel Place on Park Slope, when I had nowhere to go, but back Boston. James had introduced me to the loft jazz scene adn Cecil Taylor and Bobo Shaw and Ornette Colemen.

"Not good. He's looking really old. The curse of the Irish."

James and I met at the Riviera Cafe. We liked drinking together. Before I left, he came home bloody and I thought some rough trade had beaten him, but Michel, the bartender at the Gaslight Pub on Seventh Avenue had told me that James had exited the bar several times tofall on his face.

For some reason the life has been sucked out of James.

"He's going to drinking himself into the grave, unless he leaves the USA."

There was no chance of that. I tried to figure out how old James was. He had fucked James Dean, the big movie star. James had been very handsome even when I met him last year. The drink was destroying him. THe fate of all hard drinkers.

My first drink was Vermouth after school. With Paul Keenan, who had stolen the small bottle from his fatehr's liquor cabinet. He said cracking the seal, "It was in the back and covered with dust. He'll never miss."

We were in 6th Grade. THere were three of them. We liked the way we felt. Afterwards he brought them into school and we lifted out desk to sip during classes. Sister Mary Osmond saw nothing. It was just a small buzz. I drank Miller beer behind St. Elizabeth's church with my friends. I puked and haven't drunk Miller since.

May 25, 1978 SRO - Journal

"Don't you want to fuck?" asked Alice. She was naked under a sheer and I sat in my unzipped black jeans on the edge of the small bed in the West 11th Street SRO. I wanted to have sex, but I wasn't going to make the first move, since I often felt her cringe to my advances. One of the main problems with our sex life was that I always had take charge. I looked at her unmoved by her request. THere was no invitation in her eyes. Her hand reached out to touch my cock, as if it were uncooked hamburger. No erection.

"Not if you aren't into it. I don't feel like raping you again."

"What are you talking about?"

"It's nothing."

She slipped over to rub her crotch against my thigh. No erection. I asked myself why. I knew why. This was all pretend.

"So you don't want to fuck?

Silence was the easy way out, but I looked into her eyes.

"Every time we fuck, you act as if I'm raping you. Even if I'm gentle. You like it rough. I don't like the rape game. Lastly I'm not fucking you, unless you want me to."

"I want you to fuck me. Physically." She rolled away with wet eyes. "I don't know what is wrong with my libido."

"I do. You like sex. You cum every time we have sex. I don't think you're faking it." I faked ejaculation, since I had leather dick from jerking off too much. "Before me you were a lesbian. Maybe you want to go back to girls."

"No, I want your cock in my cunt. I want it in my mouth."

That got me hard and I fucked her hard. She came several times and I finally came in her mouth. Wiping away my sperm, she asked, "Was it good for you?" Breathless I said yes.

It was the truth, but it wasn't the best.

Across the street from the SRO were the ruins of 18 West 11th Street. According to Wikiedia the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion occurred on March 6, 1970, in New York City, United States. Members of the Weather Underground (Weathermen), an American leftist militant group, were making bombs in the basement of 18 West 11th Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood, when one of them exploded. THree of them died. These were the only three deaths in their campaign against the industrial-military complex.

We felt that doing nothing in a period of repressive violence is itself a form of violence. That's really the part that I think is the hardest for people to understand. If you sit in your house, live your white life and go to your white job, and allow the country that you live in to murder people and to commit genocide, and you sit there and you don't do anything about it, that's violence.

— Naomi Jaffe

Memorial Weekend 2024

Memorial Day traditionally kicks off the summer holidays in America. Boy scouts, veterans, and politicians parade to honor the nation's fallen soldiers and sailors, after which families gather for BBQs before heading home sated on burgers, beer, and hot dogs. This mass departure usually creates epic massive traffic jams on the highways of the USA.

Unlike today in my youth Memorial Day was celebrated on May 30, which preceded my birthday by one day, so as a child I looked forward to the holiday with doubled anticipation.

As a Boy Scout in the early 1960s we marched into the town cemetery with veterans from the country's many wars, firefighters, police, and politicians. A prayer was said at the Civil War monument and a military color guard shot blanks into the air.

Somehow I thought that some of the accompanying veterans had fought in the Civil War, except Albert Henry Woolson, the last surviving veteran of the War between the States, had passed in August 2, 1956, so maybe these ancient soldiers were the remnants of the Rough Riders from the Spanish American War.

Memorial Day was first held in Charleston, South Carolina, when colored townspeople had reburied the corpses of union soldiers, who had succumbed to disease and starvation at a rebel prison.

According to Professor David W. Blight's Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, African Americans founded Decoration Day at the graveyard of 257 Union soldiers labeled "Martyrs of the Race Course."

The "First Decoration Day," as this event came to be recognized in some circles in the North, involved an estimated ten thousand people, most of them black former slaves. During April, twenty-eight black men from one of the local churches built a suitable enclosure for the burial ground at the Race Course. In some ten days, they constructed a fence ten feet high, enclosing the burial ground, and landscaped the graves into neat rows. The wooden fence was whitewashed and an archway was built over the gate to the enclosure. On the arch, painted in black letters, the workmen inscribed "Martyrs of the Race Course."

At nine o'clock in the morning on May 1, the procession to this special cemetery began as three thousand black schoolchildren (newly enrolled in freedmen's schools) marched around the Race Course, each with an armload of roses and singing "John Brown's Body." The children were followed by three hundred black women representing the Patriotic Association, a group organized to distribute clothing and other goods among the freed people. The women carried baskets of flowers, wreaths, and crosses to the burial ground. The Mutual Aid Society, a benevolent association of black men, next marched in cadence around the track and into the cemetery, followed by large crowds of white and black citizens.

All dropped their spring blossoms on the graves in a scene recorded by a newspaper correspondent: "when all had left, the holy mounds — the tops, the sides, and the spaces between them — were one mass of flowers, not a speck of earth could be seen; and as the breeze wafted the sweet perfumes from them, outside and beyond ... there were few eyes among those who knew the meaning of the ceremony that were not dim with tears of joy." While the adults marched around the graves, the children were gathered in a nearby grove, where they sang "America," "We'll Rally Around the Flag," and "The Star-Spangled Banner."

The official dedication ceremony was conducted by the ministers of all the black churches in Charleston. With prayer, the reading of biblical passages, and the singing of spirituals, black Charlestonians gave birth to an American tradition. In so doing, they declared the meaning of the war in the most public way possible — by their labor, their words, their songs, and their solemn parade of roses, lilacs, and marching feet on the old planters' Race Course.

After the dedication, the crowds gathered at the Race Course grandstand to hear some thirty speeches by Union officers, local black ministers, and abolitionist missionaries. Picnics ensued around the grounds, and in the afternoon, a full brigade of Union infantry, including Colored Troops, marched in double column around the martyrs' graves and held a drill on the infield of the Race Course. The war was over, and Memorial Day had been founded by African Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration.

Decoration Day became increasingly popular with the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, as the remains of their missing comrades were transported from where they had fallen in battle to their home states.

Today saluted the hundreds of thousands of dead, who fought to free a slaved people.

They are not forgotten.

A Memorial Day Thought:
"Obviously what causes war is the desire for power, position, prestige, money; also the disease called nationalism, the worship of a flag; and the disease of organized religion, the worship of a dogma. All these are the causes of war; if you as an individual belong to any of the organized religions, if you are greedy for power, if you are envious, you are bound to produce a society which will result in destruction. So again it depends upon you and not on the leaders - not on so-called statesmen and all the rest of them. It depends upon you and me but we do not seem to realize that. If once we really felt the responsibility of our own actions, how quickly we could bring to an end all these wars, this appalling misery!"
-Krishnamurti

The Muse of the Sex Pistols

Lesson 2. Establish the name Sex Pistols.

Who was this girl?

Not a natural blonde. British. Now about 50. Then 18.

This goddess of punk was in THE GREAT ROCK AND ROLL SWINDLE. Film credit - Soo Catwoman

Where is this icon now?

Back in 2020 Unknown wrote in comments, "Her name is Judy Croll. She was allegedly fourteen years old in this movie. She was portraying as Soo Catwoman."

Mystery solved, although another remains. What was lesson # 1?

From Wikipedia : Soo Catwoman began developing her distinctive hairstyle in 1972, when she began to spike up the sides of her hair in reference to Bride of Frankenstein, while also having a pink-striped fringe. Displeased with always having to style this hair, in 1976 she had the middle of her head shaved in an Ealing barbershop. She used Vicks VapoRub to style this cut. This haircut led to her and Marco Pirroni being approached by a woman in summer 1976 to join Club Louise, a lesbian club on Poland Street, where she befriended the members of London's early punk scene.

Fade to 2010 Soo covered O’Jays hit “The Backstabbers” with Derwwod Andrews (Generation X)on guitar, Rat Scabies (The Damned)on drums 2010.

Soo Catwoman's last Instagram on Instagram dates back to 2020.

I wish her the best.

Punk Forever.

May 24, 1978 - Kiev Diner - Journal

Alice woke up screaming. She had been dreaming a horrifying remake of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. Awake she shuddered in my arms. Poor darling.

THE KIEV DINER

A Ukrainian diner
Sitting with Clover
A blonde runaway
Only sixteen
A little more than a friend.
4:28 AM
The after-hours crowd from CBGBs
Mindless
No one caring about the mindlessness
Rejects from destiny
Cups of coffee In their pale hands
Not wanting to be junkie zombies
But Vampires
To live forever
All victims exiled to the suburbs.
Rock and roll, sex, drugs.
Trapped by the will be
That never will be.
And living in the dreams of 1978.
Free stoned and punks.
Especially Clover
Sixteen
Free
From nothing and everything.

Castration Craze

Back in 2009 Bangkok's The Nation reported on a growing castration (lopping off the testicles) or gaan dton trend amongst young wannabe ladyboys without funds to finance a complete sexual transformation. The castration operation costs $130US or 4400 baht and in most cases required parental approval.

These young boys were convinced that ridding themselves of their testicles will soften their masculine features much like a eunuch of the royal courts of China, however a leading homosexual support group had called on the Medical Council of Thailand to curtail this selective surgery for under-18s, since the youths might be succumbing to peer pressure rather than acting with a true desire to join the Third Sex.

Thailand is relatively ka-thoey friendly with gorgeous ladyboys competing on national television for beauty pageants, although the Thai TV way of life drives many ladyboys to work as streetwalkers on the sidewalks of Pattaya and Bangkok to support the constant need for drugs to maintain their female appearance. It’s a tough life and few sixteen year-olds can foresee the future before they irreversibly remove their offending manhood to achieve a dream of beauty.

Castration was not only an Asian phenomena.

In the 17th century young boys were castrated by church choirs to insure the salvation of their angelic voices. Klaus Nomi strove to re-enact these castrati soprano songs in the late-70s without undergoing surgery. He was a hit with David Bowie and in the back rooms of the West Village.

Not all castrations were for beauty or art.

The Skopsi of Czarist Russia created a blasphemous sect under the belief that the road to heaven was achieved only through castration. Numbering in the hundreds of thousands the sect appealed to the common man with Utopian communities based on Christian redemption on Earth. Their leader asked the czar to castrate himself. Peter III was a little mad, but not that mad.

Neither are the young boys of Thailand.

The boys just want to be girls.

Grace Grace Grace 1995

Strangely Grace Jones performed SLAVE TO THE RYTHYM at the Queen's Jubilee, while spinning a hula-hoop around her waist. An odd choice for QEII, but Grace Jones has reached a broad audience over the years.

In 1995 Grace Jones had performed in LA and after the show she came to the Milk Bar in Beverly Hills, where I was working as the doorman. The singer greeted me with a kiss. We knew each other from New York. A fellow denizen of the night. We had mutual friends. Arthur Weinstein, the Prince of the Night, for one and when the night ended she suggested that I accompany her party of Hollywood bankers to the Beverly Hills Hotel for further fun. I had nothing else to do and rode their limosine to the famed hotel. I knew one of the bankers from New York. JZ was trouble and under investigation for insider trading, but this evening he and his friends were enthralled by the presence of the charcoal black disco queen.

We were seven in a limo counting two starlets. A gassed banker had a bag of blow for twenty. Inside the hotel suite Grace grabbed the stash and we locked ourselves in the bathroom rather than listened to three zooted investors brag about their millions to the coke-glazed starlets in a bad remake of Tony Montana from the last scene of SCARFACE.

Grace and I spoke about friends from New York in the toilet.

Drugs sex and rock and roll

In Hollywood was only the drugs.

The bankers banged on the door. I opened it and told them to fuck off. Grace and I spent a few more minutes in the bathroom, then rejoined the party. At dawn we shared a taxi home. Her to the Marmont. Me to a small bungalow over the Hills in North Hollywood. The sun was harsh. Both of us had sunglasses, I didn't get to sleep until noon.

That was in 1995.

Grace seemed to be my age.

41.

Maybe my math is bad.

Everyone lies about their age and weight after 30.

God save the queen of disco indeed.

David Bowie Versus Sha Na Na 1972

My friend Keith and I share mutual musical tastes and this week he posted a Youtube video of David Bowie singing with Cher. Keith had actually seen the Ziggy Stardust tour. I missed it for a stupid reason.

My girlfriend at the time was 26.

Linda was a junior exec in my father's office. I worked there as a summertime clerk. Linda walked through the aisle like a high fashio model with her hips thrust forward. I lost my virginity to her at an Emerson Lake and Palmer concert on the Charles River.

A sleek divorcee had long legs and wore French lingerie.

For my birthday she offered to take me to the Ziggy Stardust tour. I picked Sha-na-na instead. Linda left me at the end of the summer, saying the only reason she had slept with me was because my father would not and that Bowser of Sha-Na-Na was more my type than the Thin White Duke.

She knew me oh too well. Upon hearing that story Keith shook his head. He knew me well too.

Happy birthday David Bowie.

Bowie and Cher 1975

David Bowie's career saw ups and downs. The worst period was in the early 70s. The English glam rocker succumbed to heroin. His best friend was Iggy. Money went faster than it came and his financial commitments required his appearing on the CHER SHOW in 1975. Their duet covered YOUNG AMERICANS and several pop classics. Their timeless collaboration went through than the Hollywood studio.

Lovers.

Cher and Bowie.

Fame has its price and the morning after a long session of sex the bedroom door opened for Bowie's wife. Angie served Cher and David breakfast and left the room. Cher was freaked by the intrusion.

David was merely high.

Here's the Youtube URL of that momentous show.

Great trash

N'est pas?

And what's with Cher's thatched roof?

Bowie Ball

In 2011 I received an invitation to the Bowie Ball.

A homage to David Bowie's Glam Years on Columbus Day at Le Poisson Rouge or Red Fish.

I had nothing to wear.

My gold Elvis suit is history. My platform shoes were tossed in 1975. I was so out I can never be in for the In Crowd, unless I showed up with quaaludes.

And those I do have.

Three from a 1974 jar of Rorer 714s.

Those originals pleasure pills grant credence to everyone.

Even to old queens.

"Oh, I love 'ludes."

And I have three.

Two for me and one for Ziggy Stardust.

But let's not forget Slade.

RUN RUN AWAY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHoPYLQvnQM

Forever Young

I live in the now The now was is will be It's all the same The Now of Forever

A teen in the 60s The 70s A hippie, then a punk Paris the 80s Such a life Such a life And more

The young wish Then was now To be free To travel To be free

But it's all the same The Now of Forever

Wherever we go it's there Forever there

Bali, oh yeah Africa oh yeah Tibet oh yeah Paris hell yeah

The now of then The Now of Now Always here Hell yeah Always here Hell yeah

For us all In peace Hell yeah Forever Now We're only young forever

Dedicated to Colonial Rockford

Foto Had Rayong Thailand 1999

Villa Ineprium Sine Fine - Rome

All empires collapse from greed. Rome gathered the plunder of the known world. Virgil described the city on the Tibet as Imeprium sine fine. The Glory of the Empire without End attracted the Visigoths to plunder the fabled wealth of eternity. Not the first nor the last army to lay waste the Eternal City. Yet as much as the invaders looted, there was always more treasure in the ruins to reveal the Splendor of Rome, until all that remained were stone ruins too heavy to be hauled to Ultima Thule.

“I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.” Augustus (Roman Emperor 27 BC – AD 14)

"Rome was too grand to be burned in a day."

Pascha Ray - unknown poet

Painting by Joseph-Noel Silvestre "The Plunder of Rome"

Good for the Bad - Milk Bar 1986

Written 2010

Eternally bad behavior has been endemic in bars and nightclubs. Drinking tended to assholize many people, myself included, and drugs exacerbated the dilemma. The problem covers all stations of life from the very rich to the very poor. My years of working security at Hurrah, the Jefferson, Bains-Douches, Milk Bar et al had cursed me a deep insight into how one person's fun becomes another person's nightmare.

One spring night in 1986 at the Milk Bar on Seventh Avenue I heard someone say that a thief was stealing wallets from the clientele. I spotted the pickpocket on the stairs. He spotted me and tried to escape up the back stairs, but I was quick on my feet back in the 80s. I snaged him by the cuffs and swept to the steps, clonking his skull hard. He was semi-conscious and Isearched his pockets for the purloined possessions. Five wallets with cash and a wad of money.

"That belongs to me." He reached for the dollars.

"Nothing belongs to you." I slapped his hand and frogmarched him up the steps into the street, kicking him in the ass as a farewell gesture. I was wearing army boots and the pickpocket protested my violence.

"You're lucky I didn't call the police."

That last word sent him muttering into the night and I returned inside to distribute the wallets to their owners. Each was grateful to be reunite with valuables, except for one man, who asked where was the thief.

"He ran off."

"That's not good enough, I want you to call the police." He was about twenty-five and his face was a bloated red. Bigger than me by a few inches. His suit was tailor-made. His Ivy league accent nailed him as a Wall Street banker and I figured that my Haitian partner had let him into the club after a bribe. The standard charge for boxhead bankers was $20.

"What for? You got back your wallet."

For me it was case closed and for the most part the police turned a blind eye to any crimes at the Milk Bar, since most were of choice. I climbed up the stairs to the front door.

"I want to make a complaint about the thief and about this place." The loudmouth's girlfriend followed him with an embarrassed expression.

"Well, you can call from outside. There's a telephone booth across the street." I held up a dime.

"I don't need your money." He slapped the coin from my fingers. His girlfriend pulled at his arm. She had seen this act before.

"Calm down, let me buy you and your girlfriend a drink." My bouncer sized up the stranger with regret. Big Bernard was 6-5. He didn't like trouble.

"I don't need your drinks." He took a step closer. His muscles tensed under his jacket. Gym muscles spoiling for a fight.

"Please calm down." I gave him one last chance to save his night.

"Calm down? I am calm." His breath smelled of steroids. His girlfriend cowered as if she had been beaten more than once at the end of an evening. He lifted his hand to poke me in the chest. "You fucking____"

I didn't let him finish the epithet. My foot swept under his loafer to knock him off-balance. Big Bernard pushed him into the street.

>"You are officially uninvited from the Milk Bar." I moved aside for his girlfriend. She joined him on the sidewalk, once more tugging at his arm. "Let's go."

"Go. I'm not letting these assholes treat me like this. I went to Harvard. I make big money. I could buy and sell you."

"Sorry, but you couldn't even rent me." I should have kept my mouth shut, but I was an anti-capitalist by nature. "So fuck off."

"C'mon let's go." His girlfriend pleaded with the irate banker. She seemed too nice for him, but also very Upper East Side. The night was still young. They could have a good time somewhere else. New York was a big city.

"Don't tell me what to do." The banker openpalmed his date and grabbed her by the hair.

I had hit two women in my life and regretted each incident. Both times there was no excuse, so I had no qualms about coldcocking the banker with an overhead right. He dropped to his knees and I caught him with a left under the chin. Big Bernard pulled me off him before any real damage was done. The girlfriend helped her date to his feet, as a patrol car inched around the corner. The driver was a patron after hours and didn't want to get involved in a public scuffle. His partneralso came to the Milk Bar.

"You okay?"

"Fine."

"See you later." He waved to me and they cruised over to make a cash pick-up at lesbian bar on Hudson Street. The couple departed from the corner. I only wished the girl would leave him before he hurt her, but that was hoping for too much.

"Thanks for the help." I had been planning to kick the banker in the head.

"You know I don't want no trouble." Big Bernard was Haitian. The NYPD didn't mind white people hitting white people, but black on white was another story to be heard at 101 Centre Street or the Tombs.

"I know and there'll be no more trouble tonight." My right hand was sore. I might have dislocated a knuckle. Squeezing the thief's wad of cash made it feel better. Money always had that effect on me and everyone else too. We were all just human.

A L'Enfer Baby Doc

In 1971 Baby Doc Duvalier inherited his father's dictatorship over Haiti.

At twenty years old Jean-Claude was the youngest ruler in the world.

His power was enforced by the dreaded Ton-Ton Macoute. The cadres of these sunglassed henchmen tortured and killed thousands of people over the decades with the support of America, Land of the Free. Jimmy Carter tried to back away from the ruthless regime, but the Ivy League CIA's hatred of communism preserved the Duvalier's lock on the most wretched nation in the Western Hemisphere. The family controlled all aspects of life and commerce. The sale of Topsiders shoes, Rawlings baseballs, and Haitian body parts enriched the family's coffers. Baby Doc married the most beautiful woman on their side of Hispanola.

Michèle Bennett Pasquet from the mulatto elite of Haiti.

The wedding cost $2 million dollars.

The fete was paid by the people of Haiti who were earning less than $200 a year.

Revolution was impossible.

The CIA helped the Ton-Ton Macoute suppress dissent.

Hundreds of thousands fled to Brooklyn.

Pope John Paul II called for change during his visit to Haiti.

Porte Au Prince was a transport center for cocaine.

More money to fuel the repression.

Baseballs were sewn tight. More hone runs were hit in the Major Leagues. Ivy Leaguers loved Topsiders. Ronald Reagan's CIA transported arms to the contras in Central America. Mayans were massacred in Guatemala. They had nothing to do with baseball.

The people rose against the Ton-Ton Macoutes. Baby Doc attempted reform. Too little too late for a people too abused by his power.

On February 7, 1986 Baby Doc left Haiti with his wife for France. She looked so happy to go, especially to Le Sud de France.

Michelle took a lover sur le Cote d'Azur.

Her 1993 divorce beggared Baby Doc according to the Press.

They were telling lies.

His family had Swiss banks and Swiss bankers never lie and they never tell the truth. A 2004 Global Transparency Report said he had over $300 million in Geneva.

That money belonged to Haiti.

The people.

The Swiss said the money belonged to no one.

They are super thieves.

Baby Doc remainded dead.

The money is gone.

It exists as a binary-column in the database of a Swiss bank.

All that murder and mayhem for nothing.

I expect little else from the banks.

They always get what is theirs.

Ton Ton Macoute a Geneve.

Allez-allez.

Ode to Johnny Thunders

May 18
Friday afternoon
Post op
Weill-Cornell Hospital.
Apple juice
A bagel
And IV Dilaudid.
Not Chinese Rocks
But feeling no pain.
Oh Johnny Thunders.
We hardly knew yah.

MAY 18 1978 TIMES SQUARE JOURNAL ENTRY

Yesterday Clover and I acted out mini-dramas on 42nd Street. Both of us dressed in the nines. Her skirt cut high to her thigh. We weren’t from the sneakers and jeans brigades. The pedestrians wondered who we were; a young blonde runaway and her protector. Anthony Scibelli snapped shots of us. He seemed very pleased with the results, even without printing the shots. We went into a peep show and the cashier allowed us to engage in various suggestive poses. The XXX shop's customers voyeured with honest intent. One man rubbed his groin. Clover shut the door on everyone, including Anthony. We made out and groped each other.

Afterwards the three of us walked over to piers. As we posed in the soft afternoon light before the derelict USS Pennsylvania, dancing over the barnacled dock, we drank Jack Daniels. My stomach reacted badly, still recovering from the previous evening's drunk. The shoot stopped when Anthony dropped his Minolta.

He headed home uptown to Harlem, hoping to fix his camera's shutter.

We wandered back through Times Square.

No one paid attention to us now.

“I’m from San Francisco. I used to crowds like this.” Clover said and then added, You haven't been coming to Tim's lately.”

“Yeah, he thinks I stole money from him.”

“Andy Reese told him that, but it was probably Andy, who was the thief. He has a drug problem. You might be a thief, but you don’t seem the type to steal from friends.”

“Thanks,” I explained that I had gotten rid of gas-guzzlers from Boston for people who would file an insurance claim for a stolen car. The owners had gave me the keys and $300 to vanish them in New York. They reported the disappearance a day later. I had done it three times thanks for a lawyer's friend ands had helped also James Spicer with the ATM scam, which entailed opening accounts on dead people’s IDs and putting $300 in the back. The ATM machines had a 45-60 minutes lag before registering the withdrawal. You could hit three. Four, if you were lucky. Once I left James’ apartment in Park Slope, I had been honest,

We entered Bryant Park. The shadows stretched across the lawn. Clover was a little drunk. We sat on a bench and finished the Jack.

“Could I kiss you?” she asked leaning close. Her breasts pressed against my arm. Her neck smelled of youth.

She wore red lipstick and after a long session none remained on her bruised lips. Some of mine. I thought fucking her would be nice, but when we arrived at her St. Mark's Place apartment, she said, “Not tonight, but I was curious to find out how you kissed. Nice.”

Nice, yes, nice.

The Smell of Eucalyptus 1986

In June of 1986 I came back from France to write porno scripts with an old girlfriend strung out on H. North Hollywood, the ground zero of the XXX film industry. Obviously I was not thinking straight, but I had confused lust with love, especially since Sharon was a porno actress skilled at faking orgasms.

One rainy night Sharon drove her big gas-guzzler over to rescue Harry Reems for an OD. She called 911. the dispatcher said EMS had been to that address too many times.

"It's a waste of time," said the dispatcher.

A junkie herself Sharon knew better and on a very rainy night we drove over the Hollywood Hills to a Laurel Canyon cottage. The nocturnal gloom was thick with the scent of eucalyptus trees. The door was open. I recognized Harry, having seen DEEP THROAT once in a Times Square theater. We were in time to revive Linda Lovelace’s co-star from death. He groaned, “Stop slapping me.”

I sat by the bed, as she rummaged through the desk, closet, and under the mattress without finding a stash. Sharon left to score and never came back.

The rain worsened to a deluge. I was going nowhere and settled into a lounge chair with a blanket over me. It was cold and damp. I was going nowhere.

The next day Harry woke around noon and asked, "Who the fuck are you?"

I explained, And then threw me out. My parting shot.

"You have a small dick."

I walked outside.

It was a sunny California day, but weren't they all.

MAY 17 1978 EAST VILLAGE JOURNAL ENTRY

The Bruins lost 2-1 at the Forum against the Montreal Canadiens

What else is new?

Hilde Harnett is crossing the Hudson for a Saturday night on the town. She had been babysitting her aunt’s children in New Jersey. Her grandfather had been mayor of Jersey City. A powerful man. Her father is the editor of the Boston Globe. Hilde is no longer a teenager. Or almost not a teenager. I like her more than before, although I really liked her before. She thinks I ignore ( hate ) her, because of how crazy things were between us. Her and Dennis. Me living there, Dennis and I fighting in the hospital, while she was sick with a blood disease. He actually won the fight and her. Actually I’m indebted to her. Without those crazed episodes I might have never left Boston. And not become the me who is now.

And not become the me who is now.

And I loved her back then.

Maybe always will love her back then.

Solar Flare May 2024

Last week the extreme electromagnetic radiation flares burst the 93,000,000 from the Sun to Earth in less than nine minutes creating intense Aurora Borealis over a swarth of North America. Friends driving to the Canadian border were reward with the most dynamic cosmic display in a decade. I saw nothing from the roof of this Brooklyn brownstone, but I felt the energy washing over the planet on its way to the farthest reaches of the Solar System, although my hair did not stand on end.

I was treated Anonymous texted this

OH 7001: Night falls swiftly! Darkness takes hold.

My response.

The day lengthens in May. The night retreats. Flowers come to life.

ps I embrace the night Maybe this evening The Northern Lights O'er New York

A Night Without Northen Lights 4/13/2013

Fort Greene April 13, 2013 From my roof I sought the Northern Lights The moon shone silver in the clear night Vanishing the aurora borealis from sight Banning the promised show from a city too bright. Clouds soon blanketed the heavens with a soft white Disapointed I descended from the roof's heights To my room and drink beer to soften the plight Of Man's futile search for the Northern Lights. and I don't have to rythme anything with beer, because the dance of the sky is always there after the sixth beer.

Alice In A Rubber Dress

1984 London Leicester Square The Cafe de Paris DJed by Albert de Paname The young Dancing Fun. The place to be. Black Jack and I At the ropes A ten-thick crowd Other side of the ropes. We control the destiny of the night. In or out. Ingrid arrives with Alice Svelte Blonde English A black rubber dress. Jacques and I part the crowd Like Moses and Aaron At the Red Sea. Kisses on the cheeks Happy to be there Happy they are here. Friends forever Day or night. ps the rubber dress melted in Tanzania.

Aurora Borealis - Jack London - 2013

“With the Aurora Borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself--one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad.” Jack London

Lazarus II

Two summers ago in the black night of Brooklyn I spewed several liters of blood into the bathroom tub. After wiping the retch from my face More blood surged from my body. Liters' Something was not right. Something was very wrong.

Dying In a taxi I crossed the East River. To NYU Inside the emergency room. The staff took one look. A scrum of nurses, technicians, and doctors sped my body into ICU. Many hands stripped my body nude.

“Sir, can you hear me?” A young intern. Nod. “You are bleeding to death from the varices.” “Varices?” “Small stomach fissures. Do you have family in New York?” Head shake from side to side. “Do you want to be revived?” “From the dead?” “Yes?” “Yes.”

An oxygen mask on my mouth and nose “If you have any prayers, say them.” “An tsíoraíocht.” The Celtic word for eternity held no meaning to Christians. Their only afterlifes Heaven hell or purgatory. The hiss of gas. Propofol swarmed the life out of this life. Dead in limbo. White light. Nothing, only white. There was something else. Eternal nothingness times zero equals zero. This was death and I was cool with that. And then I was back. Life. Here. Pain. The Here not my own bed.

The pain mine. This had not been a dream. I sucked air. The other patient in the room. Not breathing. Never again.

Hospital. Nurse. Doctor. An earnest doctor. “You were very lucky. We stopped the bleeding.” “I like luck.” “But I have bad news.” Plenty of bad news. Cancer, cirrhosis, the looming threat of death. I was 69. Alone in a hospital bed in a city of millions. Bad news. It was all right I had had a good life.

I was not dead, still alive. But straddling eternity. No fear I had died before. Car crashes. Beatings. Broken hearts. Whatever didn’t kill me made me wish it was dead. This time same.

Why fight for life? Why not give up? Morphine made surrender easy. Free five days later.

My friends saw death in my eyes. My children in Sri Racha prayed That I will live forever. People believed in life eternal. I once believed the same. Not now. I had had a good life.

New England, New York, California, England, France, Germany, Hawaii, Quebec, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, China, Nepal, Tibet, Kenya, Tanzania. Friends by the thousands. Two family in Thailand. It was a good life. I was not dead, still alive. But straddling eternity. No fear I had died before. Car crashes. Beatings. Broken hearts. Whatever didn’t kill me made me wish it was dead. This time same.

Why fight for life? Why not give up? Morphine made surrender easy. Free five days later.

My friends saw death in my eyes. My children in Sri Racha prayed That I will live forever. People believed in life eternal. I once believed the same. Not now. I had had a good life. And there was still more to come. Months passed. A year and more. A new hospital. Cornell-Weill. Jaundice, weight loss, pain. People thought I looked like a Rolling Stone. Keith Richards. Ahead my last days. Then a miracle. Yulemas. An available transplant. That night back in the OR. The room cuts to black. Clear light. I know Limbo well. No gods, no heaven, no hell. Nowhere. Nothing. No one. The white light of death. Gone again. To London
Smithfield Market Slaughterhouse. My body on a chopping block Entrails scattered across the wood. Then back to life. Antiseptic smell. Clean sheets The machines beep. None followed a Max Roach beat. A nurse gave me water Taste of Limbo. Nothing. This not my body. A black scar marks the execution of the old me. Yet I am alive. Bracketed by pain. But alive with another soul within me. Paula. My donor. Forty years old, 300 pounds. I love her and she me. Old School Lazarus II. Where's the morphine. Back from the eternity of white propofol extinction. No Maine, no South Shore, no New York, no Paris, nor Thailand. No permanent record. Tabula Rasa. Not a trace of the Here-Before. Just Paula and Lazarus II Wicked scars. Never dead before my time. Only dead to the time before now. Now a gray winter sky o’er Brooklyn. Time eternal, because there is no time in nothingness. Only Nothing Paula and Lazarus II. We are not too lonely together. Living forever again. Remember from whence thee came and where we’re going. Ashes to Ashes not.