Old Books Squeaky Floor

Yesterday At the Antiquarian book fair Park Avenue Armory Inside Old older and oldest books Maps, and posters A map of Florida Spanish 1768 Florida With no roads crossing the Everglades__ A tourist placard from 1883 p Promoting an Arctic Whaling voyage And comic books In the early 1960s I had the first Spiderman, Fantastic Four, and more Bought with my paper route money My father hated them Tore them to pieces___ They are now worth fortunes All I have from then My 5th Grade report card All As and Bs Perfect attendance 1964___ Now with books Dating back centuries The oldest book in the world The Etruscan Gold Book Solid gold 2400 years old___ At home I have old books Edgar Allan Poe, Collected Works TRUE GRIT, an illustrated Jules Verne AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS En francais__ Now waiting for Iggy Seated on the left handed stairs Listening to the squeak of the wooden floor Beneath the feet of old book lovers None walk silent I am I am not walking___

Foto - Klaus Nomi - 1978

In 1979 the photographer Anthony Scibelli and I conceived a photo-roman with Klaus Nomi, Clover Nolan, Cookie Mueller and I about a runaway blonde captured by a manic scientist ie Klaus. The photos were featured in the 2017-2018 CLUB 57 exhibition at MoMA. This one of Klaus and I The prints come in all sizes and are priced accordingly. Please inquired for prices on other sizes. $750 for 24" x 20' Shipping is available

Tough Guy - Myrtle Avenue

One walking back From buying a Newport loosie On Myrtle across from the park Smoking slow Walking slower A bald man muscular His fit dog dropped to his belly__ "I know how you feel." I say to dog His man "Shut the fuck up, honky." "I ain't the type to shut up, Plus I wasn't talking to you. Have a good day, dog." Dog don't pay me any mind. Master says "I should break your head " "Damn, someone steal your Barbie doll." "Cracker motherfucker." "I ain't no Dixie son of a bitch. My people marched South from Maine to free the slaves . A honky yes. A cracker, hell, no. I hope you find your Barbie doll. See you dog " Bald man throws a traffic cone. Ten feet I'm fifteen feet away I pick up the cone and chuck it. Sixteen feet. Not at him. He is just angry. I know angry. "Damn, guess I won the traffic cone throwing contest. You and dog have a good day." Dog got up and walked West. Man followed, shouting over his shoulder. "Have a nice day "

Resistance # 2

Steal time When speaking with corporations. Act confused. Ask the same questions. Keep them on the phone Address all suspect MAGA males as hump__ Not non - binary All second sex MAGA as fump Drive 10 mph slower when ahead of the police and big SUVs Stop paying your taxes. Put a stash into the bank. Remember the banks takes your money for the government and do not pay you the interest on that money Call up your credit card companies and ask if they can lower your debt. Stop social media Carry cash Stop using plastic NANA Emile Zola

EC Member

Tired from the train back and forth. Three days of Winick Diamonds. Otherwise good. On my way to the Explorer Club to view some jewelry. This weekend Montaukees were talking about upscale clubs in the city. The EC put them in their place One man asked what had done. "What kinda and of exploring?" "Many members have been to Space, Climbed Everest. Spelunkers. scientists. Dangerous stuff. Just last year two members died in that Titanic dive." "So what have you done?" "I've hitchhiking from Lhasa to Kathmandu. Surfed Bali. Drove across the Andes. Many things, but I've also crossed to the other side. One more than one occasion. And each time back I had been reincarnated to this body. One more thing there is nothing on that side, so enjoy life and be a good person." It's the truth and I tell it as the truth. All there was? White light. The wives loved me The hobo poet. ps I paid my dues yesterday.

Writing THE END

Yesterday I typed THE END to ALMOST A DEAD MAN.

348 pages.

Then spell check.

Only seven typos

Then I hit search for God. Only seventeen times. No bad for an atheist.

I first wrote it in Ireland in 1997. I showed it to Shannon who read it in a single night. I sent the manuscript to a few publishers and then left the USA for Thailand where I wrote three more novels sending them overseas to the US. Nothing, but I kept writing.

I rewrote ALMOST A DEAD MAN in 2016, but was too broke to send it anywhere.

When my diamond job ended in Christmas I decided to clean up THE 2016 version. Two and a half months

348 pages

Now the hard part

Finding and agent or publisher

Next a synopsis and outline and talk about it all the time

Along with everything else

I'm hoping to fly to Bangkok and Hong Kong next month.

I start selling jewelry in Montauk this weekend.

It was a long wintah.

Mary Heaton Vorse reportedly said, "The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

Today

Recovering from post partem THE END. I woke this morning, thinking, "Are you mad?"

A novel about pimps and whores with XXX sex scenes, BDSM, and violence and love and redemption and a woman's revenge against man, and fairy tales.

Off the food stamps to see if I can get more.

I had told them months ago that I was homeless, because I feel homeless. Insecure. Adrift. Apart. Like always do I'm comfortable that way.

Wish me luck.

Since the jewelry store in Montauk closed for the winter I've been revising a novel I wrote in 1997

Opening paragraphs of ALMOST A DEAD MAN

Hamburg 192

The scurry of claws across the filthy floor startled the woman on the battered chair and she lifted her black stiletto heels in horror. Rats were the least of her problems. Over the phone her lover had suggested a nocturnal rendezvous on Kaiserkai. No one came to Hamburg’s harbor at night. The woman had driven down to the warehouse district alone for rough sex with her Willi. Instead two men had been waiting on the unlit dock and dragged her into an abandoned warehouse. Now in a damp basement she pleaded, “Please let me go, I haven’t done anything wrong?”

"Nothing wrong?” The black man in the spotless jogging suit circled the chair. Aviator sunglasses hid his eyes. He swatted the dusty 40-watt bulb dangling from the rafter, then tapped the woman’s gaunt face.

“Are you a saint?”

“No, I am far from a saint.” The expensive wig flopped onto a folded lap.

"Saints are only saints, because they are dead. You on the other hand are alive, because you are a sinner."

Cali is still with us.

Trump Shock Syndrome

It just doesn't stop. Every morning I open the news websites to discovered the MAGA leader has come up with another scheme to set the world on fire. Deportations of illegals to El Salvador, Elon Musk slicing jobs from the federal government with his DOGE mandate. Nothing is sacred. Jobs are cut in social services by AI. His minions are so proud of his work against the woke radicals. Applications are only male/female. His world-wide tarriffs has fractured the global economy.

We are at war.

I am in shock.

Tomorrow I'm going to a demonstration in Bryant Park against the fool.

Hundreds of said demos around the country.

I am sure Trump has sent out orders to PDs around the nation to not tolerate any dissent.

There is no waking up from this.

A Man Of Clay

I'm starting the hunt for publishers and agents. Writing is the easy part.

Woody Allen said, "Those that write write, those who don't write teach writing and those that can't write teach physical education."

As a vagabond poet I've had very little truck with either. They travel in different circles or see me and recognize trouble.

I rewrote ALMOST A DEAD MAN from a 2016 version. Yesterday I found a very clean copy from 2017. In 2016 I was working in a metal shop. Bronze, copper, and steel in my blood. Those elements and more affected my brain along with my heroic drinking.

I've been doing nude modeling for Jock Ireland a clay sculpture teacher at the the New York Studio School.

An attendee asked, ""Are you still sculpting"

"No."

"Because I suck "

Jock graduated from university the same year as me

1974.

I wanted to say, "Everyone sucks, but the effort to not suck, however illusive opens our eyes to the opinion that sucking doesn't matter "

As a nude model I held my sand. We are simply humans on a dais. To be rendered by hands from slabs the clay to how the sculptor envisions us.

I end up looking Jabba the Hut's cousin.

That does suck.

Guess there's no Greece hero left in me.

I'm awaiting the B54 bus to Clinton Hill.

Cheers.

April 1, 1980 Journal Entry East Village

April 1

My brother Frank's Birthday

April Fool's Day 1979

Yesterday Michael Selbach and I felt the urge for a short trip up the Hudson on his Kawasaki 650cc motorcycle. The day was sunny and I dressed in white denims; jacket and jeans, then rode the subway up to Times Square. The David's Pot Belly's cook waited on the corner of 42nd and Eighth. He handed me a Bell helmet and I climbed on the back.

"I never thought you'd be my bike bitch."

"Hey, this is only platonic."

He headed over to the semi-destructed West Side Highway and we cruised north along the Hudson.

"Shall we go to the Cloisters?" he shouted with his head slightly turned away from the wind.

"I went there two weeks ago. Have you ever been to West Point?" The famed military academy was about fifty miles away.

"No, I haven't."

"It's worth the ride, plus there's the Storm King Highway overlooking the Hudson. A must see." I had been there once with my family. Like me my father loved the road.

"Sounds good to me."

We crossed the Fiord on the GW Bridge to New Jersey and sped along the Palisades Parkway.

Far back in the Ice Age this falaise had guarded an extinct continent against the rising ocean, as the melt-off from the mile-high glacier carved through the tectonic plate to form the Hudson hundreds of feet below us. A fierce wind along the parkway buffered us from lane to lane. Thankfully traffic was light after the 9W exit and we soon sheltered by the bare branched trees.

The towns along the western bank were situated out of sight from the roadway. THe surrounding towns had outlived their original purpose to become suburbs for men and women commuting into Manhattan for work. We passed by the exit signs dentoing their existence without seeing their centers. After Nyack the land ruralized with farms spreading over the hills, until we reached a massive quarry shipping gravel to reconstruct New York City recovering slowly from the dereliction of the 1970s.

Michael topspeeded on the highway. 86 mph. Helmets restricted any conversation and I spoke within my mind to my minds.

After Haversack we entered the suburban sprawl of malls and little league fields. The station wagons were filled with young boys in baseball uniforms driven by well-coiffed mothers. The young boys studied our passage with a a sense of yearning. Some of them had to want to be us.

Michael and I had grown up in similar surroundings on the West and East Coasts. A life as a bum was preferable to their parents' enslavement to the 9 to 5. I had left behind the suburbs in 1974 and I harbored no urge of returning to the sprawl of my birth.

Lately Michael had been talking about moving to Hoboken, as if he was abandoning the city. I was bound to the East Village. I wasn't leaving until it was time to leave and today that felt like never.

Haverstack gave way to West Haversack without a struggle. George Washington might have retreated through these lands after the military debacle in New York over two centuries ago. The towns were replaced by farmland and then tenth-growth woodlands. Michael hit 80W for a few miles before we exited for West Point.

US 6 spanned the Hudson River on the Bear Mountain Bridge. In 1948 Jack Kerouac started his trip across America here. That trip inspired ON THE ROAD. I wanted Michael to stop, so I could stand where the Beat writer had stood thirty-two years ago. The bridge dated back to the 1930s. America really began here. I had last hitchhiked across the continent in the winter of 1975. I stood wishing I was on my way to the Coast, instead I sat back on the bike.

We descended into marshes. Railroad tracks were strapped to the western bank. A sign WEST POINT 10 MILES stood at attention by the roadside. My father had driven here on our Ford Station Wagon in 1966. I had been almost fourteen. My mother had wanted me to be a priest or a cadet.

Michael and I entered the academy by Thayer Gate. The graduates of the the 1960s and 1970s had served in Vietnam. The power of the world's strongest army. Defeated by rice farmers. Now five years after the Fall of Saigon the cadets of the 1980s in their dress uniforms showed no defeat. Their stiff posture marked their dreams of America's future glory. Vietnam wasn't their defeat, but it was our victory. Michael and I were both anti-war leather punks.

A sign announced NO PARADE TODAY.

"It's a good show." Back in my youth I had wanted to be a cadet. Anything to get out of my hometown on the South Shore of Boston. I would have looked good in the uniform.

We stopped at the military graveyard. Home eternal for thousands of officers. We stood at George Custer's grave.

"He's no hero."

"And neither are we."

We saddled up and the Kawasaki climbed the steep two-laner to the top of the Storm King Highway, 420 feet over the Hudson. We stopped at the precipitous vista point. The Hudson ran north between the Berkshires and Catskills. Both mountain ranges had been shorn of their height by the glaciers.

"You know I might have fallen in love with Vickie." Michael had been seeing the redheaded fashion student for a few months. I was still recovering from Lisa's desertion. My blonde girlfriend had disappeared into Europe to be a fashion model. I had seen her in a German lingerie ad. Michael had been a good friend. His wife had left him last summer.

That's a good thing for you."

"But not you?"

"It's was bound to happen. I'm happy you're in love. I know how to drink alone."

"Really?"

No, but better you than neither of us."

"What about you and Elizabeth?"

I had been seeing the lanky Virginian for a few months too. We had even met each other's parents.

"We're going nowhere."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah I'm too haunted. I don't felt anything for anyone. Not even myself. It's better that I break up with her before I really hurt her."

"Or yourself." Michael straddled the Kawasaki. "Too bad, she's a great girl. By the way you should look at your jacket."

"Why?"

"Look."

I took off the Levi jacket. The back tire had thrown up a oily rooster tail to splatter the back of the white jacket.

"Damn. That ain't gonna come off."

"Your jeans match."

"Double damnit."

I got on the bike behind Michael. If I had a motorcycle, I wished we were bound for the West Coast and a sore ass, but we crossed the Hudson at Newburgh and drove south to New York and our lives.

April Fool's Day 2022

My older brother was born on April 1. His profession is the Law.

Five years ago he told my sister, also an attorney, that he would have no problem defending Satan or any other client as long as they paid his fees. My nephew was in an Ivy League. His tuition cost more than I earned last year. My brother needed clients and a lot of them, including the Brockton Police, who were more wicked than Satan.

This morning I phoned his office to wish him 'happy birthday, but couldn't resist playing a prank.

"Can I speak with one of the partners? My name is James Steele and I represent Phillip Morris."

No one is more evil than the tobacco companies, except the CIA torturer Jame Steele and the Catholic Church.

The secretary transferred the call and my brother came on the line.

"Your brother lost a court case against our firm. He didn't even bother to show up for the trial."

"Trial for what?"

"Copyright infringement." My brother had no idea about my business in Thailand. "The judgment was $550,000."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"Well, it's your birthday and I thought I'd give you a scare."

"Being my age is scary enough." My brother recognized my voice and cursed me out. "Happy fucking April Fools Day."

Actually some of that story was true as are the best lies.

A little true and a little not and you have an April Fools prank, of course no one in America can explain why 4/1 was a day for stupid pranks. Some people theorized that after the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar May 1 was the day designated for planting your crops. Anyone doing so before that date was an 'April Fool'.

April 1 had also been the first day of the year in France.

Back in the past people had to depend on kings and priests for the right dates.

And there was no trusting those higher-class types in the Dark Ages.

Not now either, which is why each year I mark the calendar for my brother's birthday.

He's a year older too.

Thirteen months to be exact, but who's counting.

Certainly not this Irish twin.

Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday commemorates the last day of freedom for Jesus Christ. The Man from Nazareth spent his final hours of freedom with his thirteen apostles and at this Last Supper the Messiah predicts his betrayal. The date for Holy Thursday has been argued by scholars for centuries, but is generally conceded to have occurred between 30-36 AD in the Jewish month of Nisan, which would make it in April. According to Wikipedia Annie Jaubert argued that the Last Supper took place on the evening of Wednesday 1 April 33.

There was no April Fool's Day back then.

April Foolishness

Back in the last decade a friend called to tell me that a business associate had been trampled by a herd of deer on his Easthampton property. I didn't question the story and immediately phoned Billy O.

"Are you okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be okay." Billy O was a realtor of moderate wealth. He was in love with his beautiful wife and two daughters. His voice was free of pain.

"No reason." I realized that my friend had played a practical joke for April Fool's Day. "Have a nice afternoon."

I hung up the phone and sat on my bed slightly angered by my friend's prank, but it was April Fool's Day and my landlord got a good chuckle upon bushwhacking about my gullibility. He was also friends with Billy O.

"It's an April Fool's tradition."

"And my brother's birthday." I had contacted Frank early to wish happy birthday. "The tradition comes from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales with merry-makers celebrating March 32th by sticking a paper fish on the backs of friends and family."

"That's silly," AP's son commented from the next room. James had good hearing.

"Yes, it is, but back in the Middle Ages the New Year was celebrated on March 25th to match the Spring Equinox, then the Pope changed it to January 1st by the Edict of Rousillon."

"You know a lot of stuff." James attended an expensive neighborhood school. His parents expected him to excel in his classes. He fulfilled their wishes every report card.

"I'm a vast abyss of useless knowledge. I read a lot." Not as much now as earlier in the year. The world was doomed to end on May 21, 2012 according to the Christians and they don't joke about the Apocalypse. "James, there's a dog on your head."

"No, there isn't." His hands went to his head.

"April Fool." Six year-old boys are easier targets, but so are fifty-nine year old men.

And that's no joke.

The Hoax of Hypocrisy - 2011

Many years ago the BBC announced that the Vatican Library was publishing its collection of banned manuscripts and books online.

"Fans of antique erotica, rejoice. The world's largest collection of pornography is about to be published on the web. Just make sure you have a credit card handy.

The Vatican Secret Archives announced yesterday plans to digitalize a previously unacknowledged collection of prohibited materials.

Kept hidden by an act of pontifical secrecy, the items, once decreed obscene, are being unveiled as part of a new papal directive on transparency.

The collection includes tens of thousands of drawings, frescoes, engravings, artifacts, and ephemera dating from the Renaissance back to classical antiquity.

>Included in the materials available for a free but censored preview are an illuminated manuscript depicting the Song of Solomon and several illustrations of Mary Magdalene.

Profits to Defray Bankrupt Dioceses.

Costs and pricing for full access to the online collection have not been finalized. Income generated from paying subscribers will be set aside in a special account administered by the Catholic Church.

The account will be used to reimburse losses by churches that have declared bankruptcy to eliminate their obligation to pay court judgments in sexual abuse cases.

Government, Industry Experts to Oversee Project

Funding for the collection's digitalization has been procured via an executive order from Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, who has expressed a strong interest in "protecting our priceless cultural heritage." Berlusconi has appointed a confidential liaison to oversee the process.

Age verification, credit card processing, and account maintenance will be run by adult entertainment magnate Larry Flynnt."

The Vatican and BBC-News quickly disclaimed the announcement as a hoax, for despite constant rumors of the Secret Library within St Peter's Basilica the Papal Office has denied the existence of such a treasure trove of trash.

Of course it was an April Fool's Hoax, which comes from the pagan holiday of Hilaria.

March 25 instead of April 1.

Next year I'll be ready for Hilaria as will the rest of the pagan nation.

Looking Seaward

The next day The end of March No sun A misty cold wind ripped over the bluffs The Atlantic roughing the shore___ To the Eastern horizon Of ocean The rise of Block Island From the depths Of the Sea Bottom__ All land All 360 degrees The remnants Of The Great Glacier Melting 15000 years ago___ Now Barriers to the sea To spare the mainland Earth's fury___ Montauk point The end of America The waves Washing away the stray footprint Dropping Jetsam at the high tide mark Dragging back Flotsam on the shore break And the wind cold wet and from the Northeast With a sole New Englander Buffeting by breezes Standing Like a captain by the helm on a continent Out on the North Atlantic 110 miles from Manhattan Eyes seaward Dreaming Of lands around the world No longer land bound Free Found Free

The End of ALMOST A DEAD MAN

o ALMOST Yesterday I typed THE END to ALMOST A DEAMMAN 348 pages. Then spell check. Only seven typos I first wrote it in Ireland in 1997. I showed the novel to Shannon Greer who read it in a single night. I sent the manuscript to a few publishers and then left the USA for Thailand where I wrote three more novels sending them overseas to the US. Nothing, but I kept writing. I rewrote ALMOST A DEAD MAN in 2016, but was too broke to send it anywhere. When my diamond job ended in Christmas in 2024 I decided to clean up THE 2016 version. Two and a half months rewrite. 348 pages. Last two words. THE END. Now the hard part Finding and agent or publisher. Next a synopsis and outline and talk about it all the time. Along with everything else. I'm hoping to fly to Bangkok and Hong Kong next month. I start selling jewelry in Montauk this weekend. It was a long wintah. Mary Heaton Vorse reportedly said, "The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Today Recovering from post partem OF THE END. I woke this morning, thinking, "Are you mad?" A novel about pimps and whores with XXX sex scenes, BDSM, and violence and love and redemption and a woman's revenge against man, and fairy tales. Off the food stamps to see if I can get more. I had told them months ago that I was homeless, because I feel homeless. Insecure. Adrift. Apart. Like always do I'm comfortable that way. Wish me luck. Opening paragraphs of ALMOST A DEAD MAN Hamburg 192 The scurry of claws across the filthy floor startled the woman on the battered chair and she lifted her black stiletto heels in horror. Rats were the least of her problems. Over the phone her lover had suggested a nocturnal rendezvous on Kaiserkai. No one came to Hamburg’s harbor at night. The woman had driven down to the warehouse district alone for rough sex with her Willi. Instead two men had been waiting on the unlit dock and dragged her into an abandoned warehouse. Now in a damp basement she pleaded, “Please let me go, I haven’t done anything wrong?” "Nothing wrong?” The black man in the spotless jogging suit circled the chair. Aviator sunglasses hid his eyes. He swatted the dusty 40-watt bulb dangling from the rafter, then tapped the woman’s gaunt face.  “Are you a saint?” “No, I am far from a saint.” The expensive wig flopped onto a folded lap. "Saints are only saints, because they are dead. You on the other hand are alive, because you are a sinner." Cali is still with us.

Senator Charles Schumer - Traitor

Last week Senator Charles Schumer from New York joined several Democrats in voting for the Trump regime's spending plan to dismantle LBJ's Great Society programs as well as allow the President non-Elect Musk to ax thousands of jobs without any oversight, except for his cadre of Ketamine flunkies following their leader's theory that if we break it, we don't own it.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's decision hit like a shockwave among House Democrats.

"I think there is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal and this is not just progressive Democrats — this is across the board, the entire party," According to NPR New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters Thursday night at a party retreat in Leesburg, Va. "I think it is a huge slap in the face."

This morning I wrote a note to the NY senator expressing my disappointment in his vote. Even one GOP senator had the balls to stand up to MAGA, but then his personal wealth is $81 million and I understand he has to protect the rich. He is one of them.

TRAITOR.

All of you.

We are watching.

October 18, 1978 - Journal Entry - East Village

Alice's trip to West Virginia was five days long. She returned Tuesday morning fifteen minutes before I went to work as a waiter in the Ventron Executive Dining Room off Wall Street. Somehow she looked different and acted the same. It took a full day until Alice became the love of my life again, although she spent most of that time with the unlikeable witch Susan Hanneford.

NRP MEMBERS : Peter Smith ------- ( founder ) Alice ------- ( Culture ) Kim Davis ------- ( Secretary ) Kyle Davis ------- ( Loyalist ) BG Mitchell ------- ( Loyalist ) Anthony Scibelli -- ( Possible snitch or rat ) Clover Nolan ------ ( Spy ) Michael Selbach --- ( Architect ) Andy Reese ------- ( Loyalist ) Grant Stitt ------- ( Gay Coordinator ) Lowell Murphy ----- ( Loyalist ) Besides these members there are interested parties beset by lapse in life purpose.

What started as an in-joke is now viewed observed curiosity, ridicule, or interest today. Alice told me, "A reported from the New York Post wants to interview you about the NRP."

Interest in the Party forced me to confront my lack of desire to be in the public eye. I want o bail, because some people are taking this serious. No one can see the humor. Aren't I funny?

LATER

The Damned Yankees have won the World Series after dropping the first two by blowing out the Dodgers in four games. Bucky Dent, aka Fucking Bucky Dent was awarded the Series MVP for his hitting and fielding. He saved him with a home run against the Red Sox in 1978 and now he's a hero again.. I hope he doesn't get a candy bar named after him. The victory parade drew two million fans to Lower Manhattan. I ran into many of them after work. They were happy, drunk, and victorious. The red Sox haven't won anything since they traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees.

"Wait till next year."

The battle cry of Fenway.

"And you'll wait too."

August 18, 2021 - Brooklyn

Last night the Bosox crushed the Astros gaining a 2-1 lead in the American League finals. I was surprised to read in my journal than Bucky 'Fuckin' Dent was the MVP. Supposedly Don Zimmer, Red Sox manager, once rented a house from the Yankee shortstop and everyone room in the house had a large photo of his third home run on 1978 in Fenway.

Very funny."

"When I hit the ball I knew that I had hit it high enough to hit the wall. But there were shadows on the net behind the wall and I didn't see the ball land there. I didn't know I had hit a homer until I saw the umpire at first signaling home run with his hand. I couldn't believe it."

Bucky 'Fucking' Dent.

As for the NRP, Scibelli did turn out to be a rat at Hurrah.

Portrait by Parker Delany

TIPS FOR THE OCCUPIED

In July 1940 according to Ronald Rosbottom's WHEN PARIS WENT DARK about the Nazi Occupation of Paris in June 1940 a mimeographed flyer hit the streets.

TIPS FOR THE OCCUPIED.

The City of Light had been stunned by the collapse of the French army. 80% of the population fled Paris fearing the worst much like many of us under the Trump regime. The tips were non-violent, but acknowledged that the Resistance was coming some day. This is an abridged version.

Don't be fooled by German with camera. They are in uniform and they are not tourists.
They are conquerors. Do not be friendly. They will not reciprocate. Take your time giving them directions.
If they address you in German or MAGA, act as if you don't understand them and ask if they could repeat themselves more slowly.
If they ask you for directions, you are not obliged to tell them the right way.
If they attempt to draw you into a conversation, tell them you are not interested in anything they have to say
If they ask for a light, offer them your cigarette. No one refuses eeven the enemy a light.
If a store posts Nazi or MAGA signs, don't shop there.
She that you are indifferent to them. There will be a time to show more.
This list will not be on TV.
Share it with those you love.

Everyone in Paris was stunned by the Nazis marching down the Champs Elysess, as we are from the busybodies dismantling the government. Anther suggestion is to always address MAGA as non-binary. L'Hermaphordite Des Borghese shall lead the way to revolution.

Times Square 1978

Times Square 1978

No tourists

Clover is the only slightly vertical image in this foto. Of course eyes are drawn to a seventeen yo Texas runaway. I'm a no one in an English suit. Times Square at the height of the Sexual revolution. I like the stride of the man behind her right shoulder. He has a destination and it's not the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Foto by Anthony Scibelli

THE LAST GO-GO BOY by Peter Nolan Smith

Americans tend to judge the nation’s fiscal well-being by the rise and fall of the Dow Jones Index, even though Wall Street’s accumulation of wealth has destroyed the spending power of the middle-class. Next month’s bonuses for the hedge fund managers will not save a single consumer buried under debt, after which the corporations will trim benefits and wages to the bone to maximize profit.

Few employees protested the low pay in fear of losing their jobs with good reason.

In 2013 the nation's economy was in recession and I asked myself what jobs are available for a sixty year-old man in Newe York City.

Very few was the answer.

Years before I had been lucky that Manny had reserved a place for me on West 47th Street after my yearly global circumnavigations, but this year has been the exception. Times were that tough in the Diamond District.

Early in December I flogged a gay writer's family heirlooms to a gold dealer at another exchange.

Later that evening at his East Village apartment I paid Bruce $4000 minus my commission.

"Now I can pay my health insurance." The heavyweight writer sighed with gratitude and invited me an Asian fusion restaurant on Avenue B. Every seat was crammed with young people enjoying the approach of the holidays. They were immune from the desperate times, unaware that their future had been hocked to the banks by college debts.

“I never see anyone my age on the subway.” These go-getters were my competition for a subway seat in the morning. Thankfully none of them were as ruthless as an old Irishman.

“Most men our age are retired.” Bruce's finger darted over the menu. His thinning hair was bleached blonde, so he resembled an aging beach bum. The fey waiter paid attention to his every word. Bruce was generous with young men.

"Or dead."

“You're not dying anytime soon."

"I'm too healthy for that." My health care plan involved the practice of never get sick.

"Do you have a retirement plan?” Bruce was a world-known novelist. Critics had recognized his genius. Sales for his last book totaled a little over two thousand, but he owned his apartment and next year he will be old enough to receive Social Security.

“When I hit seventy, I'm flying to Norway." I ordered oysters with seaweed noodles, plus a glass of wine. The thin waiter had to be thirty-five years younger than me. He deemed sixty year-old man as neo-senior.

"Norway?"

"Yes, I'm going to rob a bank with a gun, then they'll sentence me to twenty to life for armed robbery. I've seen photos of Norway's prison for violent offenders. The rooms have computers and are furnished by IKEA."

“Ten years from now the Norwegian prison officials will have instituted euthanasia for the elderly, so robbing a bank in Oslo is not really an option."

"You have any other suggestions?" Supporting my family in Thailand had wiped out my savings.

"Ever think about taking steel pole lessons from your stripper friends?"

"What for?"

"If you lost ten pounds, you could work as a go-go boy at a queer retirement home.” Bruce’s biting wit was best suited to attack rather than self-deprecation.

“Honey, those old wrinklies aren’t so particular about the weight. They like the young flesh.”

“A scary thought.” Just yesterday my Thai wife reminded me over the phone that I wasn’t seventeen anymore. Mam was twenty-eight and our son was four years-old. I couldn’t quit working until I was seventy-eight if I unlucky enough to live that long.

"Those old fags want someone young.” Bruce had written a book on the rough trade in Times Square. His tricks had called him Papi. None of them had been under twenty and he never sunk under two-hundred-fifty pounds.

“Those old queens in the nursing homes haven't seen anyone young as you in decades. You could charge the homes $100 a visit, which has to be more beneficial for the old geezers than any other medicine. And you could do lap dances.”

“Thanks for the idea, but I'd rather rob a cradle than a grave."

"Times change and people like you and me have to change with them, plus graves are richer pickings than a cradles. Hell, you could franchise the go-go scheme in Florida. How many retirement homes you think are in the Sunshine State? Thousands? There has to be a demand for middle-aged men from the elderly queers.”

“Supply and demand.” Middle-aged ended at sixty-five.

“And who knows? You might be able to sex them up for a little more money on the side.” Bruce caressed the waiter’s behind. He was a regular here and the waiter smiled with the anticipation of good tip. Bruce liked to pay for sex even if it was merely a grope.

“No way. I barely wanted to have sex with myself let alone with someone else.”

“Why, because you think you're too good to have sex with someone older than you like me.” He frowned at this unintended insult. “What about the woman you had sex with in Palm Beach?"

"Helen?" The Palm Beach heiress had been unnaturally blonde and fashionably thin. We had been introduced by my longtime mistress at the Breakers five summers ago.

"That's the one. You said she was over seventy.”

“Closing on seventy-five.” Helen published several magazines extolling the good life on the Gold Coast. She had invited me to her house on Lake Worth. The fragrance of her garden had overwhelmed by the reefer she smoked in a diamond encrusted hand.

We had spoken about sex. Helen knew the world; past, present, and future.

"Seventy is officially old."

"She didn't seem old." The elegant septuagenarian spent two months a year at a Swiss clinic rejuvenating her aged body in Botox like she was fondue cheese.

"She had your number." Bruce was fascinated by my sordid encounter.

“How?"

"As I remember it, she said that she hadn’t had cock in her mouth in ten years. She had begged for it and you gave it to her like you were remaking SUNSET BOULEVARD.”

“It was a mercy mission.” I slightly resembled that move's star William Holden in the shadows of her bedroom. A failed writer selling his soul.

With the lights off, the curtains billowing with the evening breeze, and Helen wearing sheer lingerie and satin high heels, I imagined that she was Paris Hilton in the year 2040. On her knees the mirage had performed fellatio like she was entering the Porno Hall of Fame. Thankfully she had never said, “Ready for my scene, Mr. DeMille.”

Maybe the first time, but what about the second time?” Bruce sat back, as the waiter delivered our appetizers; fried calamari for him and raw bluepoints for me. “Gore Vidal said about orgies that once is experimentation, but twice is perversity.”

“The second time was because I was drunk.” Two bottles of wine and a joint had loosened by inhibitions and she had had her way with me. “There was no third time.”

"Only because you saw her with another man at the Chesterfield.”

“She was in the Leopard Lounge.” The other man had been in his late 60s. He had once been an Elvis impersonator. I felt cheap.

“And you heard her use that ‘haven’t tasted cock' line on him, so don’t tell me you can’t go-go boy anymore. We all have a price.”

“I’d rather rob a bank in Norway.” I sucked down an oyster tasting of the Atlantic.

“And end up a stick boy in a Viking prison.” Bruce was enjoying himself. "You don't look like you'd like being a bottom."

"Never." I never would be a bottom, except with my wife Mam. She got off better that way.

“You do what you have to do to survive. Believe me. I know.” He had taught creative writing at a Wyoming dude ranch college two years ago. He was lucky to have escaped the high plains without being charged for with any morality crimes of that cowboy state.

“I know you do.” Bruce was forever broke same as everyone in America, but maybe Bruce was right and the only one way of finding out was by a repeat performance in Palm Beach.

We clinked glasses.

“To go-go boys.”

“And Florida.” I felt lucky as would anyone with high season on the Gold Coast only a month away from December.

Biloxi Wintah January 1975

A gray Monday morning in Clinton Hill reminiscing of a drive across the Southern USA.

Biloxi Wintah January 1975

An hour after sunset we passed through Ocala. Old Bill was the co-pilot. I was at the wheel. The cowboy town looked mean and I drove the speed limit. Florida was a big state at 55.

We joined the Interstate after Lake City.

Old Bill drunkenly bitched about the trucks.

"Not many other options." I wasn’t keen on driving through the backroads of the Panhandle. “This is cracker territory.”

"I know, but those trucks sound like giant frogs fartin’." The blind piano turner stuffed wads of wet paper in his ears and fell asleep until we reached Biloxi around four in the morning. He lifted his nose to the open window. They were as good as eyes for him.

"There’s a good crab shack before the Biloxi Bay Bridge. The second one. My wife liked it. We'll eat there." Old Bill was from Blatimore. She liked his seafood.

We entered the shack with me leading Old Bill by the hand and sat by the window. He tucked a napkin into his collar and spread a handkerchief on his lap and tucked another into his shirt collar.

"Only have one damned suit." He was on his way to from Miami Beach to Texas to visit an old girlfriend east of Austin. I was the driver.

Old Bill’s choice was on the money.

The crabs were big and juicy.

The other diners watched him crack the shell and stuff the succulent meat in his mouth.

Shells and crab meat scattered all over his side of the table. I averted my eyes from the horror of his enjoyment. At the end of the meal Old Bill wiped his mouth with the napkin.

“I get anything on my suit?” He stared down with an inquisitive sniff.

“Nothing." I didn't have the heart to tell the truth to a blind man.

"I'm a lucky man."

We returned to the Olds.

"How so?" I felt good too.

"My belly's full of crab and I got a hippie diving me to Texas.”

I guess I'm lucky too." I opened the car door and hesitated for several seconds. A warm wind blew off the Gulf. Winter was up north. I pulled the keys out of my pocket and sat behind the wheel. The traffic over the Biloxi bridge was light and the road was open to LA.

April 27, 1981 - NYC - Key West - NYC - Journal

April 27, 1981 - NYC - Key West - NYC - Journal

Leave the Mudd Club
Bag in hand
A cab ride
To the Holland Tunnel
A warming from a Transit Cop
I ignore him
A ride into Jersey
To the Vince Lombardi rest stop on I-95
Another ride from a trucker
To another truck stop___
Snow___
A ride to a shitty exit.
A ride to a shittier exit The snow turns to rain___
I shelter beneath an overpass
Cold and wet
Jets overhead
I am close to the Philly airport.
I hail a taxi
The driver takes me to the terminal
I
Cold and wet
Buy a one-way ticket
Air Florida
Plan on hitchhike back to New York___
A two-hour plane ride to Miami
Outside
Sunny
I still wet
Not cold___
A bus to the edge of Miami.
A bus to Florida City.
A ride to Key Largo
Another to Marathon
The last to Key West___
Not wet
Only a little damp
A walk to Hilton Haven road
Friends waiting
One week in Key West
Pina Coladas
Weed
Drinking on Duvall Street
Swimming in shallow water
Watching the sunsets
A subchaser descending from the sky
Warm so warm___
Seven days later
Hitchhike to Miami.
Catch a stand-by flight to JFK.
A limo bus to 59th and 3rd
A taxi to the Mudd Club.
A walk home
I crash into my bed

Drunk and tanned
Dreaming on Key West
I will always___
Oh so warm
In my East Village bed___

I think this was during the Mariel Boat Lift and the nearest navy base was visibly packed with ships and boasts piled on top of each other. Sitting at the beach at the eastern end of Duvall a derelict boat hoved into sight and rammed into the beach. A hundred-plus refugee jumped ship and ran into the scenery. The only sign of them after a minute the boat.

Spring Equinox 2021

This year was a so-so winter.

Snow came late in March and bitter cold was a rare visitor to the City That Never Sleeps.

On several occasions I exited from the 387 Commune in my ski gear, which was good for -20 Fahrenheit.

Today the thermometer hit 60 and I celebrated the Spring Equinox by packing away my parkas, fleeces, gloves, scarves, sweaters et al.

Flowers should blossom in Fort Greene; magnolias and tulips.

This day was as long as the night.

The equinox or Alban Eiler in Celtic commemorates the equality between night and day and my tribe regards the 'Light of the Earth' with great veneration, since the feast signaled the time to sow crops with the sun high over the equator.

I honored Alban Eiler with sobriety, having drank more than my share of beer and whiskey on St. Padraic's Day.

It will be good to be warm again.

The Quiet of the Equinox

This afternoon I will travel up to the Cloisters to visit Professor Ollman at his rest home. to the hospital for my monthly blood work. Afterwards I take the M4 bus to the Explorers Club and while away the afternoon in the members lounge. Quiet, dark, and warm. Reading the Zen poems of Ryokan.

When asked to live at the temple of a nobleman, Ryokan sat before his humble Hermitage and wrote for the lord. "The wind gives me enough leaves to make a fire."

Hopefully before the cool climes cease a blaze burns bright at the club___a spring equinox haiku

Twelve hours of sunlight.

Twelve hours of night.

Rain, Sleet, and Snow - North Fork Virginia 2012

Back in 2012 St. Padraic's Day was blessed with spring weather. The next day Sunday was even warmer, as I traveled south to the Northern Neck of the Potomac to meet with Ms. Carolina. She was not faring well and wanted to see me one last time. Her husband Charles thought it was a good idea.

I flew to Ronald Reagan airport and rented a car. Once free of the Beltway I-95 the traffic eased on the interstate. It was smooth sailing to the Fredericksburg, where the 20th Maine had been massacred by the Rebels attacking St. Marye's Height. I turned east onto Route 3 headed to Ms. Virginia's beach house. This was the South under the reign of Barack Obama. Confederate flags hang from the poles in the town squares. That was to be expected in Dixie, but it was peaceful.

Charles and Ms. Carolina's summer house was on the Neck's northern shore. Ragged Point Beach lay on the Potomac. Maryland began at the high water jetsam on the sand. I pulled before their house. The two were waiting at the end of a dock. No boat in the water. A super-sized moon rose over the eastern horizon of the Chesapeake Bay and the equinox sun set to the west below a screen of yellow pines. The lilting breeze promised an early spring. Ms. Virginia did not look well and she moved with pain. The blonde huntress confided that she might not make the autumn.

The cancer had torched her body and she showed me how bad.

"Guess winter is over." I stared into the Potomac. The temperature was in the 70s. The water had to be much colder. The spring equinox was two days away. There was no backing out. This was for Ms. Carolina.

"Hush your mouth," Ms. Carolina's dog, Spot, barked at her side. Her husband and she had lived in Virginia over thirty-five years. Her childhood was spent in the Adirondacks, where winter holds onto the cold and snow for a month longer than anyplace else in the North, except Fort Kent, Maine.

"I have a good feeling for new season." I flexed my knuckles. They had been weapons in the hundreds of fights waged over the decades. No cracking meant dry weather. Snap, crackle, pop was a good indication of wet.

"You goin' in now, Yankee?"

"Naw, but tomorrow for sure."

"You hungry?"

"Very."

Mrs. Virginia was a great cook. She went to bed early. Charles and I drank whiskey. We didn't say much. Men like us were good at that.

My knuckles were right about the moisture, however the temperature had dropped through the night. Frozen dawn dew glazed the lawn. My better judgment argued against the plunge, but after a suburb breakfast of sausages, eggs, and grits, Ms. Virginia, Charles, her dog and I walked to end of the dock. Maryland was across the Potomac. I lifted the thermometer from the river.

39 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cold

I stripped to my bathing suit. Ms. Virginia held a towel for after my swim. Charles a glass and a bottle of Dewars.

"Are you going to do this, Yankee."

"Hell, yeah." The Maine side of my family had fought in the Civil War. Where I didn't know.

He filled the glass and I down the whiskey. It burned down my throat. I returned the glass to Charles.

"I want another once I'm out of the water."

"It will be waiting." Charles was a friend. We never talked about Ms. Virginia and me. He was a gentleman that way and I was happy to see he wasn't carrying his .38. leapt off the dock.

The water was more than cold. My fingers went numb.

My arms scratched frantically at the water. I scrambled up the dock. I had been in the water

Ms. Virginia laughed, Spot barked, and Charles , who had timed my immersion, said, "Crazy Yankee, you lasted seventeen second." I scrambled up the ladder and Barbara handed me the towel. Charles was quick to offer the whiskey. It went down even quicker.

"You one crazy Yankee," repeated Charles.

"Anything for a laugh."

"How long you think you could have survived in that water?" Charles had been an officer in the Navy during WWII. His friends had cruised the North Atlantic in warships. Not all of them returned home to Newport News.

As a child I had lived on Portland Harbor. Fishing boats docked at the and of my street. Every winter the fleet lost a boat. I had heard tell of some people lasting up to forty minutes.

My grandfather had a friend on the Titanic. He drowned in the Atlantic. My grandfather traveled to St. John’s to identify the body. It had been battered by the sea.

"I think I might be able to last five minutes, but not today." I shook off the chill from my core, but the extremities were still cold.

"Once was more than enough."

It had been worth seeing Barbara laugh and she said, "Be my eyes on your travels."

"That I will." It wasn't a promise. Only the truth. The following day I drove back to DC on Ms. Virginia's suggestion up US 301 across the Potomac. Maryland wasn't Virginia, but it was still the South. She was a good traveling companion during out affair in the 1990s. Wyoming, Montana, the Blue Ridge Mountains, Death Valley, Guatemala and Peru.

Back in Fort Greene, Brooklyn the sweep of the season reversed from spring to winter. Snow fell on Tuesday night and Wednesday evening was a melange of hail, snow, and rain. I wore heavy tweeds impervious to the cold and wet. Even my knuckles were safe from the chilly damp in cashmere-lined gloves. Ice pellets bounced over my Donegal cap. I was ready for more winter, but not another two months of it and the next weekend the forecast was for more snow.

Barbara lasted till the autumn. I asked if I should come down. She said no. That as the last word I heard from her. Charles lasted longer. I visited him in 2015. We went to her grave. We said nothing and that night drank Dewars.

"You crazy Yankee."

"That I am."

We spoke on the phone every week. About football. His Redskins and my Patriots. He passed in 2017. I miss them both

But not that damn cold.

To see my plunge

Nude Modeling Day # 1

On Canal Street
In Chinatown
Seven minutes to 1
On time
Climb three flights of stairs
First floor a wonton shop
Second floor a Mah-Jong parlor
The clack of tiles
Third floor a massage parlor
A faint aroma of tobacco
One more set of steps to the drawing studio___
Seven older artists before easels
Sitting in folding chairs
Fluorescent lights overhead
I say hello
No hello back
They are here to draw
I am here to be naked
Three hours
$75 cash___
Strip in a corner
A green robe
Ralph Lauren
Twelve years old
I older
72___
Stand on the platform
The wood clean to my feet
Robe off from my shoulders
I now officially a nude model
Timer on
Twenty minutes pose
Five minute break
Three hours
Sit in a folding chair
Take the pose
Not Rodin's THE THINKER
$25 an hour
Legs apart
Hands on my knees
Eyes straight ahead
I see no one___
They see my body
Wonder how they see me
Doesn't matter
I am only a naked body
Lines, curves, shadows
I look at none of them
Eyes ahead
To the brick wall across Canal Street___
Strange to be the object of no desire.
Thirty years past my prime
Skin hangs off my bones
Muscles shadows of ruin
A long scar across my abdomen___
No one talks
Pencils scratch on paper
Electric heaters moan
I am naked
Not cold___
No phone in my hand
No music
No talking
My mind runs rampant
Seeking to land somewhere
I pick prime numbers
1,3,5, 7 ad 1001
1001 is divisible by 7 and more
It is not a prime
I did the math in my head___
Change focus
The Sexual Revolution.
So long ago
So forgotten by the followers of the Nailed God
I sit naked
Twenty minutes pose
Five minute break
My pose
Legs apart
Hands on my knees
Naked
Exposed
Dream of the Sexual Revolution
1964 to Now
Michelangelo's David
I am bigger___
More reminescences
1967
Finding Steven Hammer's THE ITCH
The stroke book had all the answers
Atop Nahanton Hill
Glossy sex magazines in the Combat Zone
The smell of Pine Sol
XXX double-bills in Times Square
Sticky floors
Libbie in the hallway of the Ritz Hotel
Alice crying God in a swimming pool
Beer little Beer on Soi Six
Elena under the Brooklyn Bridge
Candida at the Piscine Deligny
Sharon everywhere
Ro
I was her angel under candle light
She got me this job
Nude modeling
Three hours
$75 cash
I look down
Not a rise
A flaccid penis
Just like Michelangelo's David__
Twenty minute pose
Five minute break
Furious strokes from one artist
They are all older than thirty
Two women
I turn off my wicked thoughts
Resuming the pose
Legs apart
Hands on my knees
Eyes straight ahead
I fall on Tinoretto's drawings
A revelation
At the Morgan Library
The bare bones of paintings
All starts with pencil and paper
Light shadows form lines
Filling in the space
This is not Magic, only Art ___
Once again my gaze on the brick wall
Across Canal Street
The bricks yellow orange___
Two more sessions to go
Legs apart
Hands on my knees
Eyes straight ahead
Twenty minutes pose
Five minute break
The Adonis theater
On Eighth Avenue north of ShowWorld
Naked, but for a jock strap.
A little stiffness
The Sexual Revolution
Is not dead
For in me
It is alive
Simmering in our veins
Awaiting the awakening___
Last session
Twenty minutes pose
Five minute break
Legs apart
Hands on my knees
Eyes straight ahead
My mind blank
No thoughts
No erection
Across the street
The bricks yellow tan
Only four artists left
One leaves
Rolls up his drawing
Color pencils
Good work
Looks nothing like me
I am only a naked body
My mind blank
No erection___
Maybe next time
I'll take Viagra
Viva le Sexual Revolution___

A Hotel Room Off The Highway 1985

A little after midnight
I pull the Pontiac LeMans
Off the interstate
Before Flagstaff
Onto Route 66___
Kyla sleeps against the door
Not knowing we are stopping for the night
At a motel
The Flamingo Motel Hotel
Red sign bright neon
I pull up to the office
Get us a room
Kyla wake
"Where are we?"
"Flagstaff, Arizona. A motel."
Park the Le Mans before room 109
Same number as the address
of my family home
On the South Shore of Boston
Thousands of miles away___
Tonight
No more driving
I want to sleep with Kyla
In a double bed
On clean sheets
After a shower___
Kyla goes first
I go second
A long shower
Wash off three days of the road
New York to here___
I come out dry and clean
Kyla already asleep
The only light from the motel sign
Trucks diesel on Route 66
I step outside
Barefoot
Towel around my waist___
Truck fumes on the high desert night
The Le Mans the only car in the parking lot
Ours the only occupied room
Ours the only bed
We're not making love tonight___
But maybe in the morning
Another day's drive to LA
Unless we see the Grand Canyon tomorrow
It's worth the detour
Especially after a stop at the Flamingo Motel Hotel
And greeting the Arizona dawn
Naked
Together___

Opening paragraphs of ALMOST A DEAD MAN

Hamburg 1982

The scurry of claws across the filthy floor startled the woman on the battered chair and she lifted her black stiletto heels in horror. Rats were the least of her problems. Over the phone her lover had suggested a nocturnal rendezvous on Kaiserkai. No one came to Hamburg’s harbor at night. The woman had driven down to the warehouse district alone for rough sex with her Willi. Instead two men had been waiting on the unlit dock and dragged her into an abandoned warehouse. Now in a damp basement she pleaded, “Please let me go, I haven’t done anything wrong?”

"Nothing wrong?” The black man in the spotless jogging suit circled the chair. Aviator sunglasses hid his eyes. He swatted the dusty 40-watt bulb dangling from the rafter, then tapped the woman’s gaunt face.

“Are you a saint?”

“No, I am far from a saint.” The expensive wig flopped onto a folded lap.

"Saints are only saints, because they are dead. You on the other hand are alive, because you are a sinner."

Hamburg
>Howaldtswerke Deutsche Werft (HDW) Hamburg,
1972

I wrote this novel in the autumn of 1997 while living several months in Ballyconeeley under the Connemara Mountains or the Seven Pins. I returned to New York and only showed the finished work to Shannon Greer. He read it in one night. I never showed it to anyone else, although in 2016 I revised it another time.

Last Christmas Winick Diamonds, the jewelry sore in Montauk, closed for the season. With no job I went on the hustle for money and filled my spare time writing a new version of ALMOST A DEAD MAN. I'm nearly finished. First destination. Shannon Greer. He's a great photographer and has a better than good eye.

ps Calle Schwensen survived the Gross Freiheit of the Reeperbahn.

If you find him there, give him my regards.

Hamburg 1982

The scurry of claws across the filthy floor startled the woman on the battered chair and she lifted her black stiletto heels in horror. Rats were the least of her problems. Over the phone her lover had suggested a nocturnal rendezvous on Kaiserkai. No one came to Hamburg’s harbor at night. The woman had driven down to the warehouse district alone for rough sex with her Willi. Instead two men had been waiting on the unlit dock and dragged her into an abandoned warehouse. Now in a damp basement she pleaded, “Please let me go, I haven’t done anything wrong?”

"Nothing wrong?” The black man in the spotless jogging suit circled the chair. Aviator sunglasses hid his eyes. He swatted the dusty 40-watt bulb dangling from the rafter, then tapped the woman’s gaunt face.

“Are you a saint?”

“No, I am far from a saint.” The expensive wig flopped onto a folded lap.

"Saints are only saints, because they are dead. You on the other hand are alive, because you are a sinner."

Hamburg
>Howaldtswerke Deutsche Werft (HDW) Hamburg,
1972

I wrote this novel in the autumn of 1997 while living several months in Ballyconeeley under the Connemara Mountains or the Seven Pins. I returned to New York and only showed the finished work to Shannon Greer. He read it in one night. I never showed it to anyone else, although in 2016 I revised it another time.

Last Christmas Winick Diamonds, the jewelry sore in Montauk, closed for the season. With no job I went on the hustle for money and filled my spare time writing a new version of ALMOST A DEAD MAN. I'm nearly finished. First destination. Shannon Greer. He's a great photographer and has a better than good eye.

ps Calle Schwensen survived the Gross Freiheit of the Reeperbahn.

If you find him there, give him my regards.

As for Kurt he never left Paris.

Body Parts 2 Reading - 3/19 Peter Nolan Smith

I'll be reading yesterday. I still am.

I have a new life
After death
Not my first time dead__
Last month Alex was sweet___
She lied About my odor___
Not only I do smell old
I smell of Lazarus
Risen From the grave__
I need a new smell
An old bottle of perfume
For Lazarus II
A new smell
Even Alex knows the truth

Makers Ensemble
13 Grattan St #408
March 19th, 8pm (doors 7:30)
$9 venmo or cash, all profit split to artists

VENMO for a ticket

@emstrictly

DIRTY OLD TOWN by the Pogues 2009

Today several hundred bands will parade up 5th Avenue in New York in honor of St. Padraic. Not one of them will play DIRTY OLD TOWN. I love the Pogues and what about Spider's teeth. real stumps they are.

So for a good lift give this a listen

And if you don't like it, Go hifreann leat!

QUEEN OF THE PLAZA by Peter Nolan Smith

St. Patrick’s Day promised to be another disaster for the Retail Collection of the Plaza Hotel. Hordes of green-clad spectators streamed down the escalator into the basement. Their eyes averted the luxury goods on offer, as their destination was the hotel’s public bathroom. Within the first hour I had given directions to the toilet over a hundred times.

Most of the visitors said ‘thank you’.

“Why don’t you just print out directions?”

My co-worker pulled off her glasses. Janet's eyes were out of focus like someone waiting to be informed by a doctor that they were blind. Most people with reading glasses had that look.

“Firstly, because Americans can’t read maps and secondly we might get lucky.” I was wearing a leprechaun tie and a forest-green Donegal Tweed suit jacket.

“Lucky how?” Janet refocused her eyes on the parade-goers.

“Someone might buy something.” My mother’s Irish mother came to America at the age of fourteen. Nana said that she was lucky and I bet on the survival of the luckiest over the fittest every day of the year.

Today was no exception.

“Buy what?” Janet put down her People magazine. She would take most of the week to read it. “We have no crosses, no NYC charms, no Claddad rings. That’s all these people buy besides beer and something green.”

“Nothing wrong with drinking beer.” My grandmother had brewed beer in her Jamaica Plains cellar during the Prohibition. I celebrated Beermas at least once a week and Guinness was good for pregnant moms.

“My father said whiskey was invented to keep the Irish from ruling the world.” Her prejudice against Spirits was distorted by her tribe’s love of God. Jews weren't known for aspiring to shitzkahdom.

“We ruled the world long before your Yahweh wrote the Ten Commandments of Don’t.” Moses’ tablets had created a land of No and I lived in more of a yes world.

“Stop being so negative, Janet.”

“Not so negative? Our store is in a basement. Only three things function in a basement; bar, a brothel or a boiler.” Janet’s morning Valium was wearing off faster than mascara on a crying whore. Her hands shook with desperation and she pointed a long fingernail to the bathroom for the benefit of an older lady in distress. “Plus our merchandise is dreck. Who staying at the Plaza would buy this crap?”

“A blind man might.” My friend Richie Boy had partnered up with two losers. One was a thief and the other was broke. Janet and I hadn’t made a sale this month and only two in February, but I had a shot at selling a million-dollar ruby to a Detroit schmatta businessman. The commish would pay off my debts and buy a plane ticket to Thailand, so I could see my kids.

“We might get lucky.”

“2009 is not a year for luck.” Janet's hair had been blown-dried so many times that her coif resembled a thatched peasant hut. One session at the upstairs beauty salon to repair the damage was out of her price range.

Last year she grossed $200,000.

This year she’d be lucky to hit 50K.

2009 was not 2005.

“It could be worse.” Rain was the norm for most St. Patrick’s Day. The Neponset River in Boston had flooded its bank on Evacuation Day 1968. In Lower Mills Station only the tops of the trolley cars had been visible. Today's forecast was blue skies and fleecy clouds. It was a good day to be Irish.

“That’s what’s scaring me.” Janet plucked a Valium from within her purse. A doctor friend had put her on the suicide watch. I made sure she only ate one.

Within ten minutes she achieved her desired level of apathy and stared at People Magazine’s photos, as if the young girls in pretty clothes mirrored her present.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I left the store and signaled the security guard to keep an eye on Janet, because while there might not be customers, however the previous week two thieves had clipped three store with bad credit cards.

I had a coffee at the Austrian pastry shop and then made the rounds of the Retail Collection.

Every salesperson had the same story. Not a single one of the day’s walk-ins had purchased a gift from the luxury stores.

No musk-ox sweater, no Sea Island cotton shirts, no imported alpaca blankets.

St. Patrick’s day was shaping up to be another goose egg and I returned to our store infected by Janet’s pessimism,

“It’s your friend, Richard.” Janet handed over the phone and buried her face in the magazine.

“How’s it going?” Richie Boy was in his store on 47th Street.

“Lots of green going for a pee. It's as if someone was handing out flyers on 5th Avenue advertising PEE IN THE PLAZA."

“Any sign of Arabs?” St. Patrick’s Day on 47th Street was as dead as the Plaza.

“None.”

Several hundred Saudis were encamped at the Plaza.

Yesterday one came down to the Retail Collection and looked at an emerald ring belonging to Richie Boy’s partner. The asking price was way off base for a stone filled with resin. Hopping for a second shot I had memoed two exquisite emeralds from an Afghani color stone dealer. Both were gems and locked in our safe.

"Maybe they'll show in the afternoon."

"I'll be waiting." Be-backs’ were rare at the Plaza.

“Is anything ever going to happen there?” Richie Boy was losing sleep over this store.

“I’d like to say yes.” It had taken four-hundred years for Ireland to free most of the island from the British, but the prospects for Retail Collection were worst.

"It is the Plaza."

The Plaza had been a destination for over a hundred years, however the new Israeli new owners had trashed the legendary hotel to sell condos and they had invested nothing in advertising for the Retail Collection, plus the sound system was stuck on same nine insipid world songs. Sometimes I felt like working here was like being subjected to monotony torture at Guantanamo Bay Lite and I said to Richie Boy, “This place is a lost cause.”

“I’m going to give it another couple of weeks and then pull the plug.” Richie Boy’s father had been against the deal from the start. Closing would prove him right and the old man never liked being in the wrong.

“Just keep my partners from ripping me off.”

“You got it.” I hung up the phone.

Janet’s eyes were stuck on the same page. Many bosses would have fired someone in her condition.

Victor McLaughlin’s stunning performance of betrayal in THE INFORMER had forever prejudiced me against snitches.

Her mental condition was our secret.

The five hours to closing threatened to stretch their length beyond three-hundred minutes, until an elegant woman in her early 40s descended on the escalator.

Cherry-red hair framed a face as white as an equinox moon. Her slender body had never borne an extra ounce of weight and her sophistication was derived from life and not designer clothing. The woman stepped off the escalator and the salespeople snapped to attention, as her stiletto heels clicked on the tiled floor.

Janet put down her magazine, took off her reading glasses, and rose from her chair. Years of experience had honed her radar for a potential customer. Her eager smile was a masterpiece of Park Avenue dentistry and I hated telling her, “Janet, she’s coming to see me.”

“You?” Disappointment tremored on her face.

“Dove’s an old friend.”

I left the store to embrace the redhead. Her taut body was a testament to good living and her face retained the youngfulness of a thirty year-old, except for the world-weary grey eyes. The injections of her Swiss rejuvenation clinics bordered on magic.

I released Dove and introduced her to Janet.

“You two are friends?” Janet couldn’t believe that someone so ‘fabulous’ was my friend.

“We've known each other since CBGBs.” Dove and I had met at the bar during a Ramones concert. She had been a rail-thin blonde desperate to become the second coming of Nico. Several punk groups promoted her as tomorrow’s darling.

Back then Dove lived too much for today to be anyone’s tomorrow and opted for a career as a Senator’s mistress. She had been a woman so long that most people had forgotten her life had begun as Dave.

“Over thirty years ago. I once saved his life.”

Dove’s husky voice recounted her revenge on a thug from New Jersey who had beaten me with a baseball bat outside of a Paloma Picasso party. He had acquired a permanent squint after she stuck a cigarette in his eye. Janet watched intently, as Dove surveyed the jewelry under glass.

“If you see anything you like, I’ll be happy to show it to you.” Janet had a tendency to step other salespeople’s toes. This practice was considered bad form and I admired her lack of shame. I wasn’t much better at starving my fellow workers.

“When your friend Richie Boy told me that he had opened a store in the Plaza, I had expected South Sea pearls, Burma rubies, and pink diamonds.” Dove wrinkled the delicate cartilage of her nose. Her taste ran toward Madison Avenue and Place Vendome.

“We have some pretty crappy stuff.” Richie Boy’s busted partner had loaded the cases with second-hand merchandise from Iowa pawn shops and out-of-style closeouts from bankrupt jewelers. Subsequently our inventory was an unavoidable embarrassment, but I had two aces in the hole.

“I have something in the safe that might interest you. Emerald green for St. Patrick’s Day.”

One emerald cost about $200,000, but the other was in her price range and I held up a 5-carat Sea-Green Emerald surrounded by a micro-pavee of diamonds in an 18K gold and platinum ring.

"Very nice." I slipped it onto her finger. She was a size 6 same as the ring.

"The color reminds me of the Connemara Hills after an afternoon rain." I had spent the wet autumn of 1997 within sight of the Seven Pins.

“Nothing greener than Ireland where it’s either raining, stopped raining, or about to rain. Wetter than a bucket of beer.”

Hearing Dove laugh made me realize how much I missed her, although not enough to give her the ring for free.

We haggled on the price like two old nuns over the baptismal name of an abandoned baby.

“$32,000 and not a dollar more.” I whispered into her ear. This was my sale.

"I love it when you play tough." Dove dipped into her pocketbook and withdrew a clutch of c-notes. “Green good?”

“Even better on St. Patricks’ Day.” I eyed Janet. This was 100% my sale. I wasn't giving the loser a dime. It was bad luck.

I called the emerald's owner and beat him down an extra $1000, insuring Richie Boy got his cut. His partners got nothing and at the end of the day I had have almost enough to get out of town.

I counted out the money. It was about an inch thick and stuck $4000 in my pocket.

“So now that’s out of the way.” Dove glanced at her delicate Audemar-Picat watch. I had seen an identical model on 47th street for $120,000. “I think it’s time for a drink.”

“Drink?”

"You haven't stopped?"

"I'm no quitter." I liked drinking in the afternoon. The bars were empty then.

“It’s St. Patrick’s Day. You’re Irish. I’m Irish.” Dove turned to Janet. “You don’t mind if I steal your partner for a few minutes. We have a little catching up to do. How’s the Oak Bar these days?”

“It isn’t what it used to be.” Janet had stuck her head in the famed bar once.

$16 glasses of wine were beyond her means.

Mine too, but $9 Stellas were affordable and we went upstairs. The Oak Room was packed with businessmen at table. We sat at two stools at the bar. The bartender remembered Dove from long ago. She ordered two Jamesons from Orlando.

“A little heavy for the early afternoon.”

“It’s St. Patrick’s Day. It’s never too early.” Dove clinked my glass.

She held her drink like a woman, but drank like a man. Some masculine traits were harder to lose than others.

“Never too late either.” We hadn’t seen each other in eight years. Holding her hand bridged that chasm of time. Her model's life revolved around the fashion seasons in Paris. I amused her with my tales of Thailand, my two wives, four children, an arrest for copyright infringement, coming back to take care of a crazed dog in Palm Beach and finally opening the store in the Plaza.

“I thought the Plaza would generate big sales. I’d work four years and retire again. I couldn’t have been more wrong. We’ll be lucky to last out the month.”

“These are tough times bound to get tougher." Dove eyed a table of politicians in the corner. One nodded to her with respect. Her US senator had been dead for more than twenty years, but his power remained on her skin. “You could go back in Ballyconneely. Your mother wanted you to find someone like your aunts and sisters to marry, so you rent a house from Sir Robert Guinness. Not cheap either for off-season and you end up in a haunted cottage.”

“It used to be a schoolhouse.” The cold house was situated on edge of the Ice Age bogs. The winds off that primitive plain wrapped the walls with dying voices. "There was something there."

“The ghosts of the beaten boys.” Dove signaled Orlando for two more Jamesons. “And the only women you found out there were knocked-up teenagers and lesbians.”

“I’m glad you find it so humorous.”

“No one really laughs at their successes. Failures alone are funny.”

The veneer of elegance slid off her skin after the third whiskey and she laughed with the haughtiness of a whore regaining the best corner at the Holland Tunnel.

“Are you staying at the Plaza?”

“Not a chance.” She admired the emerald in the early afternoon light filtering through the Oak Bar’s wide windows. “I’m strictly a St. Regis girl.”

“I like the King Cole Bar.” I hadn’t had anything to eat today and the whiskey was rotting my belly. I slid off the stool. “Dove, I have to get back to work.”

“Not before we see the parade.” Dove hooked her arm over my elbow. She had always been stronger than me. “You worried that that girl working with you is going to steal the store?”

“No, more like she’ll have a nervous breakdown. Janet lost her money with Bernie Madoff." The sixty year-old Jerseyite had no idea how to pay for her next Botox payment, but Janet was no thief.

"She's not the only one."

"You?"

"I don't travel in that circle. Now don't worry about Janet. She’ll survive without you for another thirty minutes.” Dove had just bought an expensive ring and the customer was always right. “You’re seeing the parade whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t like the parade.”

“Everyone loves a parade.” Dove led us down the marbled hallway to the foyer.

Muted drums muttered louder with every step. A high school band performed Michael Jackson’s BEAT IT. The playlist had expanded during my absence from America, but I had other reasons for shunning the parade than music.

“I’m from Boston. This parade has nothing to do with me.” The march through Southie had been a riot waiting to catch fire at the end of Broadway. Marchers had congregated at the dozen bars in that odd intersection. By mid-afternoon the orderly procession had devolved into a milling donnybrook. Fisticuffs had been the rule and a plastic shillelagh filled with sand had finished most fights. Broken noses and black eyes had marked a man's honor for days, but that pugilistic mirth had soured after the Bussing Riots of 1975 and I had left my hometown for New York in 1976.

“Are you talking about gay people not being allowed to march?” Dove checked our reflection in the mirror.

Other eyes were on us.

"That's exactly what I'm talking about?"

The security man at the hotel entrance sensed something amiss with my partner, but Dove passed for a woman, because she had been just that gender for most of her life.

"Hard changing the way the Church tells people to think." Dove ignored the guard’s scrutiny. There was nothing left of the boy from Queens. She was 100% upper-class and a lady to boot.

“Don't I know it.” I pushed my way through the revolving door. A high school band was stalled in front of the Sherry-Netherlands. 5th Avenue was packed twenty deep. The sky was blue to heaven and the temperature was a balmy 50 for March.

“Are you coming out of the closet?”

Standing on the steps, Dove's mouth softened to a smile. Twenty years in Europe would never change her being a New Yorker.

"I’m a sexuak adventurer. Straight sort of, but I don’t like exclusion in the Land of the Free.” Gays and Lesbians have fought for the right to express their Gaelic spirit without success.

“Land of the Freaked is more like it and especially with our brethren."

"Yes, Sex is a taboo subject. No one talks about knocked-up teenage girls or predatory priests."

“Because we’re all Irish.”

"I'm half."

"You love touting that thin Yankee bloodline, but you're as green as a four-leaf clover."

"Doesn't mean I have to support the ban on gays or lesbians marching in the parade." My younger brother's radio show in Boston had crusaded for acceptance by the straight world. He died of AIDS without the battle won and I carried on his struggle in my own way.

I don’t understand why anyone gay would want to associate themselves with this crowd?”

"Because you're straight so you say."

“Most gays think everyone is gay.” The crowd applauded a troupe of prancing Irish dancers. We walked off the steps. The senior doorman greeted Dove. She had been a guest at the Plaza many times with the Senator.

“They’re not 100% wrong. You're a little twisted in your own way."

"Not really." I wasn’t gay. I wasn’t bi. Outlaws had no sexual designation.

"Never?"

“Except with you.”

Dove had attempted to seduce me many times and she had succeeded the night she stuck the cigarette in my attacker’s eye.

“I wanted you so much. Still do.”

“I’m an old man now.” I was flattered by her desire, but I was faithful to my Thai wife. “And I'm set in my ways.”

“The parade is over a hundred years old. It’s set in its way too.”

No woman liked ‘no’ for an answer and she strode into the crowd.

“It’s the only parade to march up 5th Avenue. The others head downtown.” I held Dove’s hand. Her fingers and palm were teenage soft. I regretted my stubborn ways. I hadn’t been with a woman for months.

“And that too will never change.” Her words rang hard. She was a mean drunk.

“And neither will I or how I feel toward you.” I pulled her closer.

We made a good couple by the admiring looks from the crowd. They actually envied us. I peered over their heads at the marchers. The mayor waved to his constituents. A few drunks cursed him for tearing down Yankee Stadium. Coming from Boston I was glad to see the House that Ruth Built in ruins.

The older man next to him swung his eyes in our direction, then narrowed, as if he recognized Dove. He waved to her, as the parade halted for another his photo-op on 5th Avenue.

”You want me to ask the mayor about including gays in the parade?”

“He’s looking for a third term not political suicide.” He was a mayor of the rich. “There’ll never be a gay contingent in this parade. The Ancient Order of Hibernians are scared, if they let in the gays and lesbians that there’ll be a float dedicated to Ireland’s most famous homosexual, Oscar Wilde.”

“Or banners honoring Roger Casement.” The revolutionary had been martyred for his politics by the British not his homosexuality.

“Or bands playing songs of Sinead O’Connor.”

“That might be too much to ask.” The singer had told the Pope to fuck off on TV and her statement had branded her as dangerous to the Church, but they were a greater threat to the young than a shaved-head pop star, who had suffered from the abuse of the vicious nuns at an infamous laundry school of Dublin. “Although I wouldn’t mind hearing JUMP AROUND by House of Pain.”

The video had featured New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Bands, politicians, majorettes, the crowds.

Cops, drunks, and fights.

The latter was another reason to avoid the parade. The brawls turned very ugly fast and the cops rarely intervened before someone got bloodied.

“It could be arranged. After all I know people.”

Female parade-goers gazed at her forest green Armani suit cut two inches over her knees with envy.

The outfit cost more than most of them earned in a year. I could live off the price of her high heels for a month. Several pedestrians whispered to each other, thinking that she was famous without realizing the source of that fame.

“I think they want your autograph.” In my clothes I looked like her driver.

“I’m not famous.”

Dove posed for her admirers, as if she were a French actress or a retired ballerina. Her poise had been perfected after years of practice.

“You were always famous for me.”

“More infamous than famous.”

“Less of either than you could imagine. Paris is such a small town for the wicked; same faces, same stories. All the time thinking of New York.”

“You could have stayed here.” Her senator died in her arms during sex. His family hadn’t contested the will to avoid a scandal. The deal had been for Dove to stay out of the limelight. The dead man had had to raise money for build a memorial library in the Deep South.

“Things would have been bad for me here. Too much money and too many bad friends.” She basked in the detoured memory of that path. “It would have been glorious.”

She pulled me forward to the police barricade. Two officers turned to stop her forward progress. Dove whispered to one. The young cop glanced over his shoulder to the distinguished-looking man in his 70s. The man motioned the policeman to open the barrier for Dove.

“You want to come?” This was her show, but it was nice of her to ask.

“No, I’m going back to work.” I pointed to her ring finger. The stack of hundreds filled my jacket pocket. Some of it would go to my wife. “Thanks for everything.”

“My pleasure.” She held up her hand. The emerald shone in the afternoon sun like a pagan god’s eye. It was that good.

“Call me at the St. Regis tomorrow. We’ll have drinks.”

“Consider it a date.”

She blew a kiss and approached the older man, who greeted Dove with a kiss on the cheek and linked his arm with hers. He was her yes-man for the day. They made a nice couple too.

I returned to the Plaza, planning to close the shop, send Janet home, pay the dealer for the emerald ring, pass by 47th Street to drop off Richie Boy’s share, and then go to drink in the East Village with friends at a small Irish bar. I’d buy a few rounds and we’d tell stories about haunted schoolhouses and kissing Catholic girls. Most of them would be true.

I stopped at the top of the steps of the Plaza.

The parade had resumed its uptown progress and Dove had disappeared from sight.

I smiled to myself thinking that there were gays in the parade. Not just Dove, but men and women from all walks of life. We were all Irish or wanting to be, because on St. Patrick’s Day everyone loved the Irish.