HUNG 1979

“They always told me it was the greatest life if you don’t weaken... and I never did, fans. I never did”. - Marc Stevens

The Village in New York had always attracted a kaleidoscope of radical, deviant, and various other characters considered abhorrent by mainstream America. Homosexuals, lesbians, trans-people congregate in the West Village. Reds of the 40s gave way to the beatniks of the 50s, who 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 in a three-room railroad flat on East 10th Street with Alice, my hillbilly girlfriend. My faux-sister Pip and her sister, Pud, had an apartment off Bleecker Street over the jazz club, the Village Gate. She called me Pud. We had met at CBGBs, which was punk's version of the uptown Lincoln Center. Hilly, the owner, couldn’t figure out how the four of us got so drunk on one drink. It wasn’t magic. Pip and I smuggled bottles of vodka past Merv, the giant bouncer, at the door. No one seemed to care. Not even Hilly’s vigilant wife. Karen was more worried about marijuana, since the 9th Precinct always were on the take for bribes.

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 drank it neat without ice.

The Ghosts played a blistering set and closed out the show with RICHARD IS A FORKHEAD,. Richard Hell was our idol. The song was a low blow at Richard’s ragged coif. I tried to imitate his. Mine was a suedehead. The lead singer of the Voidoids was loved by every woman on the scene and then some. There was no encore for the Ghosts and the band’s juvenile guitarist came over to our table before heading to the dressing room.

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

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

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

“Thanks.”

“Good show.”

“We tried.”

The sixteen year-old guitarist threaded 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 wasn't a good liar. She had a crush on most of the musicians on the scene and many of the women and girls at CBGBs suffered the same affliction. This was the late 1970s and not the 50s. None of us were going steady, and I struggled to be faithful to my girlfriend, 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 the famous porno Mr. 10 and a Half.”

The well-hung actor was John Holmes’ rival in the XXX film industry. Both had thick cranks, although Marc was renowned for his gay sex performances

“Mr. 10 and a Half?”

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

“Oh, that’s big.”

“He was the star of THE DEVIL AND MRS. JONES.” The John Damiano XXX film had been shot in a Pennsylvania apple-packing factory and was considered chic porno.

“I don’t know that film.” Pip majored in English literature at NYU. For exotica, 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. Having haunted XXX theaters in Boston and New York, I gave Pip a 10-minute course in XXX films from DEEP THROAT to BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR. Her eyes shone with joy. She loved celebrities, especially since Mr. 10 and a Half lived right next door.

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

“Jill’s is a trans-woman. She had an operation to turn her penis into a vagina. She’s the first trans movie star.” I had see none of here films. I wasn't really into porno movies.

“No, I can’t believe I didn't see that she is a transvestite.”

“Transsexual.”

Transvestites and Transexuals were two different creatures. I had heard from friends in the XXX industry that Jill had gone past a smooth bum. All the way. The operation was the best big step for someone trapped in a body not of their choosing. I didn't explain the difference to Kim. 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 since my youth I had haunted XXX bookstores in Boston's Combat Zone and since my arrival in New York the Times Square peep shows in search of arcane films. My hillbilly girlfriend had no idea about my research. It was a secret I held close to my heart.

Later that spring, Pip announced she was throwing a party for a quartet of Geminis. She one. Me one too. Her best friend Cyrena and a heartthrob, Amos. Sean, an underground designer of nightclubs, decorated her apartment. She invited a two hundred people. That night over a hundred crammed into the duplex. I knew many of them.

“I heard 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 critiqued gay porno films, as if he was voting for the XXX Oscars. He love going to the Adonis THeater on Eighth Avenue. Never missed a new movie and cooed, "I loved Michael, Angelo and David."

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. He was Marc Stevens and he said, “I thought she would never leave. My name is Marc.”

“Pip mentioned you.” I looked through the crowd. His better half wasn’t in the room. “She mentioned you too. Her brother.” 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. To them, they considered everyone potentially gay. No one was 100% straight. “Not here. There are too many coke 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. Pip leaned over to Klaus and pointed out my departure. The singer gave me the green light with a wink and shouted, “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.”

“Klaus likes you.”

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

“I bet they do.” I had seen nudes of him in Swedish Erotica, the best straight magazine in Times Square’s porno shops. He was big. Not John Holmes big, but big.

Marc tiptoed down the hall.

“I don’t want any of the neighbors seeing us. They are busybodies. Always peeking through the peepholes. Like this hallway was in a porno movie. My wife is very jealous.” He opened the door and pushed me inside.

“My girlfriend is never jealous.” She didn't have a jealous bone in her body, as if our together was just killing time, until she met David Bowie.

“Everyone is jealous. I don’t believe she isn’t. Not about you. 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. I thought this was going too fast, but he opened the jar filled a white powder with a pinkish glow.

“Bolivian flake from one of my admirers.”

"I've never tried it." I had only heard of it

"You'll love it."

We sat on the soft module 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 X-Ray Spex’s UP BONDAGE UP YOURS.

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

“I’m a punk.” I had been since seeing the Ramones play CALIFORNIA SUN in the winter of 1976. 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 belly button 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 through my veins with an avalanche of euphoria. I fell back into the sofa with my bones sizzling on Andes Barbeque.

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

I obeyed his command. The coca sizzled my senses. I heard motorcycles running on my blood and the universe shimmered out of focus. I was in no condition to resist Marc’s advances. He undid his zipper. Out flopped his cock.

He was a veteran of porno movies. Millions of XXX viewers had seen him in MICHAEL, ANGELO, AND DAVID.Klaus one of them. Hundreds of thousands wanted him. I gripped his thick member with the tenderness of a butcher preparing to cut a steak. The photographer Robert Mapplethorpe had immortalized this penis in a black- and-white shirt 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. I 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. His hand smoothed my staff.

"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 zipped my jeans. A statuesque brunette entering the apartment had a couple inches on us in her stiletto heels. She regarded the coke and then the two of us. Her smile held none of the unease of seeing her man with another man. Marc introduced us.

“Jill, 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 with 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. She was a sexual adventurer like all of us in the Sexual Revolution.

“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.

“What happened?”

“His wife came home.”

I poured myself a vodka. There was no ice left. The party was losing steam. It was time to go.

“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. All men were the enemy.

“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 hearing 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.” The phone was by the bed. Pip must have called her. “Big and thick.”

“Too big for me?”

Yes.”

“And you?”

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

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

She was a good actress to pretend that she believed me and 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 and Mr. Ten and a half even more so.

Klaus and me at the party.

Foto by Kim Davis.

THE RULES OF KLAUS photos by Anthony Scibelli / Story by Peter Nolan Smith

In 1978 Anthony Scibelli and I created a foto-roman of his photos and my story

The story was one of my detective poems and the cast featured the Eighth Wonder of the world, Klaus Nomi, Jon Waters Starlette, Cookie Mueller, Club 57 Impresario Andy Reese, A texas runaway, Clover Nolan, and me along with several other people whose names are locked in the past.

Scibelli's eternal black-and-white photos appeared at MoMA's CLUB 57 show 2017-2018.

MoMA's photo experts had digitally improved each image, which are classic reminders of a time when New York belonged to us and not them. We all know who them are.

18"X14" prints are available as are larger and smaller versions

To purchase the 18"X14" prints, please go to this URL

https://www.ebay.com/itm/THE-RULES-OF-KLAUS-featuring-fotos-of-Klaus-Nomi-and-Cookie-Mueller/164117217701

Thank You

Peter Nolan Smith

September 25, 1978 - Journal Entry - East Village

Living in the shadow of the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory during the 1960s I was obsessed with the weather on the long chain of hills south of the Neponset River. Snow filled the winter woods, spring rain flooded the streams running across the overgrown farmland in the Neponset River, the bogs buzzed with mosquitoes in the sweltering summer, and soon the trees in New England sprouted colors through the autumn. Then it was winter. Winter was winter even here. Cold, but Northern Europe was colder and I was surprised, when Clover said she was planning to leave New York for Poland. No one from our scene traveled to Communist countries and I asked, "Poland?"

"Krakow is supposed to be beautiful and cheap."

"I've never been farther east than Bar Harbor." I visualized a coal-stained medieval city. I had thought about going to Paris in the late 1960s to find Françoise Hardy, the Yeh Yeh Girl, famed for her haunting love songs. Supposedly there was a plane flying lobsters to Paris in exchange for freshly baked croissants. I had roamed Logan Airport without finding it.

"I have never crossed the Atlantic. In truth, I've never seen the ocean."

"Not even here."

"I've never even been to Brooklyn." Clover came from Texas. Flat as far as the eye can see and more. "But I want to see Poland more. I have more than enough money after selling the door Jean-Michel Basquiat painted for me. Will you be my big brother?"

"Of course. Any Polish people give you a hard time, buy me a ticket and I'll save you. But you have Brad." Not really her brother anymore than I could be her brother. We were all strangers in this city. Families here tended to not come from birth.

"Not all queers are soft and Brad knows how to take care of himself. He certainly does look happy." Brad was earning good money dancing in a jockstrap at the Adonis Theater in Times Square. He was in love with one man, while fucking scores of men every month. No one was a punk as long as you were getting paid.

Brad's Mexican boyfriend beat him regularly. Jose was a surfer stranded in New York and frequently quoted the Tradewinds hit - NEW YORK'S A LONELY TOWN. "I hate the surf in New York."

Clover's packed bag rests by the apartment's doorless entrance. She pulled me into the bathroom. We had only made out. We had never made love. She wanted me to violate her. I couldn't do that even as pretend.

"This is your last chance."

"Maybe I'll met you on the other side of the Iron Curtain."

"Forget it." Clover was angry. "You have to leave. I have things to do."

I wanted to go with her, but whatever we were, we weren't anymore and she was headed to a country, where fields of wheat ran all the way to the Ural mountains. I was good in Geography.

ps 2026 Clover vanished completely that year. I did receive two post cards dated 1979; one from East Berlin. Another from Krakow. I have them to this day. She seemed happy from her writing. I have searched the Internet for years without finding a trace of her, but Clover is with me forever as are her postcards

September 2, 1978 - Journal

Alice and I are stuck in the East Village. No one has invited us anywhere. No picnics. No barbeques. Nothing. The telephone has not hung with any invitations. At noon Alice checked it to make sure it was on.

There was a dial tone.

I turn on the fan and the black and white TV in the living room. It's warm, but not hot. I ask Alice, if she wants to go to Coney Island. She shakes her head and sits next to me. I want to ask, if she wants to have sex, but she's still recovering from her bourbon bash two nights ago, spending all yesterday puking. I give her ginger ale.

"I don't like ginger ale."

"No one does, but puke taste better, when it's part ginger ale."

The TV reports no fatalities at the Speedway bombing during the Indianapolis 500, but hundreds of people are crashing across America. Over two hundred deeda already. I have survived two totals. One in a VW at 17 and another in a Boston Checker Cab in 1976. But more than a few sideswipes and fender benders. Driving drunk was my sin and a good reason to move to New York. I haven't touched a wheel since our trip to West Virginia. I was a careless driver in the city, but an ace on the highway, although in June 1974 driving cross-counttry with Andy Korfeld, I fell asleep at the wheel of a For Torino stationwagon in the dead of the night. Iowa. Skating across the meridian strip. I righted the car back onto the Interstate and relingquished the driver position, but I wish I was on the highway somewhere out west. Alone or with Alice with her hard on my lap.

I years before I succumbed to the call of the road and hitchhiked far from where I started. East West, north, rarely south.

Today I'm trapped here and pulled Alice closer. She knows what that means and rubs my cock. I know she hopes fucking will clear her head. I aim to serve and we fuck until she cums twice. I fake mine.

Photo by Peter Bennett.

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Space And Beyond - Bad Poetry - August 18, 1978 - Journal Entry

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

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AUGUST 15, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY

I spotted Alice in a Greek dinner on 2nd Avenue. I sneaked inside and snatched her pocketbook. Her arm was hooked in the strap and she turned to confront a thief. My dear little hillbilly was more city than I had imagined and she swore, "You asshole."

I rubbed my hand. I had hurt my fingers on my attempted joke and sat at the table.

"I guess I wasn't cut out to be a purse-snatcher."

"It wasn't funny."

"I was just testing."

I hate tesst. You know I do."

"I wasn't testing you. I was testing me to see, if I was any good."

"You sucked, but sit down and have some coffee. It's all that I ccan afford."

THE PENULTIMATE SOCIETY

New York City became a metropolis in the 1880s. The gentile class robbed all the money from the immigrant masses happy to have fled persecution in the Old World. They even imagined themselves free.

Nowadays the rbber barons have destroyed the city and are cashing in their century-old chips.

The neglected parks have detiorated to crime wildernesses, the sidewalks are buried in uncollected trash, dog shit paves the streets, and the burst water mains flood the gutters. Squat new condos rise over the detriorating tenements, which had houses the construction workers of the lastd century. Not a single ship is moored to the waterfront docks on the Hudson, populated at night by rats and queers seeking sex. There is no middle-class in the East Village and the creme de le creme elite's quarters of the Upper East Side are protected by the NYPD who act if they had 'shoot to kill' orders from the mayor.

The Soviet Empire and the Red Chinese restlessly await the collpase of Capitalism like the Huns on the Roman Empires borders adn the Turks before Constantinople, although the Russians have been financely bled dry by the Arms Race trying to figure out how to build $10,000 trench shovels and $40,000 toilet seats for strategic bombers. There are none to be found in the Amry-Navy Surplus stores on 42 Street. The Chicom Army hasn't enough mechanizations to transport their troops farther than the frontier and are still licking their wounds after a border was with Vietnam.

There is no threat of revolution from within. Our wage slaves have been infected with addictive drugs and their bodies poisoned by cheap junk food. The White Race has total control of the police and governemtn and army as well as schools and churches, but lacks any urge for equality.

I reject everything. I have no followers, No believers. Bible-Belt Christians pray for the Second Coming of Christ to achieve spiritual rapture and escape the sins of the 1970s; homosexuality, atheism, hedonism, and race mixing. They are too lazy to protect their values and I told my CBGBs sister Kim about my fears for our freedom.

"They will try and change us back to who we were."

"Most people accept the status quo, because it doesn't chanllnge their way of life; hot dogs, baseball, and White Power. The failure of the struggle is like rolling the perfect bowling ball and only achieving a 7-10 split. Getting a spare is almost impossible."

"What about a Civil War?"

"One Civil War was enough." The north barely remembers the battles, even though the impact of those five year has determined our history for over a hundred years. The South refuses to believe in defeat and worships the dead and fallen of Petersburg and Gettysburg as saints.

After ten years of the Vietnam War our country's unity is very fragile. The Right has battered the Working Man with the anti-communistic rants of Joe McCarthy, the corruption of Nixon, the betrayal of democracy with Watergate, the voter repression, and political assassinations of anyone calling for peace or liberty or the pursuit of happiness. Southerners want to secede and many northerners have been brain-wahed into the same mind-set. A national dissolvement fueld by internal dissent and external threats transform America into a giant stature fallen into the sea. The first thousand feet don't hurt, but like the USS Thresher the pressure will collapse steel or stone.

A time for national resurgence is in order, although without the purge of commies, faggots, drug dealers, and poets. THe purge is mandated for the Rich, who have everything to lose. This call for National Unity appeals to my friends; Ro was an immediate recruit to the crusade, but wants it now. It can't be now, becasue none of us have lost everything and no oen will risse until they realize everything they love is gone.

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AUGUST 13, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

Last night while we lay naked in bed, Alice requested to bind her hands behind her back. I went to the kitchen and found a ten-foot cord under the tub. Light seeped through the curtain over the airshaft winow. Not much. She lay on her back like a starfish. I forced her onto her belly. She stretched her arms back and I looped the rope around her wrists. I entered her with a steely hardness and we fucked for thirty minutes. Neither of us came and she asked, if she could masturbate.

"Yes, slave."

"But you can't watch."

"You want me to take off the rope?"

"No, I can reach me." Alice had been a gymnast in high school. She could tied her body in knots and always said that if she failed as an actress that she could make it in the carnival as a contortionist.

I believed her and went into the living room, listening as her whimpers became moans.

I sat on the sofa feeling like a Wehrmacht soldier trapped in Stalingrad; no more bullets and nowhere to run, but to death.

This morning I did a wash-dry of the sheets at the local laudromat on 1st Avenue.

I can't believe I'm writing something so banal, but most of life is banal and in most cases that is a good thing. Mark Amitin's theater venture fell apart on the road. I have no money, no job, and no future. Rent is due in less than two weeks. TS Eliot wrote that 'April is the cruelest month of all'. The poet had never spent an August in New York. Everyone is going on vacation. Only the dead, dying, and desperate remain in the city

Highways carry metal semi-trailers, 1967 Buicks and 1970s GTOs
Hector hitches Indiana-bound
The army private is AWOL from Fort Dix
The conscript buzz-cut betrays his rank
The grunt's ironed khakis are government issue
His tee-shirt pressed creaseless
"Damn, it's so strange in boot camp,
But it's only another two hundred miles to home
Everyone stops for a soldier in uniform
On the run from the MPs__

In the 1960s and early 1970s army deserters dotted the interstate's shoulders either heading to Canada or into hiding at a hippie commune.

"Ain't no way I'm going back to Vietnam. Let the general fight with the blacks."

Afro-Americans constituted a high percentage of combat troops and casualties through the Long War. My draft number was 91. I avoided service by attending college thanks to a $10,000 grant to avoid shooting at strangers and Viet Cong shooting at me in villages foreign to teenagers on the South Shore. I started as a Math major, failed two subjects, but remained at BC. I saw no jungles or rie paddies. I heard no bullets whizzing past me or thudding into fellow soldiers. I studied THE MYSTERIES OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST. A Boy Scout uniform was the only one I have worn other than an altar boy's cassock and surplice forever faithful to atheism.

Alice lies on the futon, complaining about being nothing. She is in a rush to be an actress and their clock ticks fast. Still being nothing is better than being a bullet-riddled corpses in Vietnam, although the only fighting in Indochina is between the Khmer Rouge and the PAVN (People's Army of Vietnam). I have guilt about not fighting for my country. Not much, but some.

Alice looks out the window of the back bedroom.

"It's raining."

"What else is new?" After a heat wave the city has been deluged by rain for the past eight days. My kitchen faucet also drips endlessly.

Rain - the life-giver of water The Johnstown Flood 1889 The Little Conemaugh River The South Branch dam failure The flood washed away the helpless Like the mighty Mississippi through a valley. Forty days and forty night. No, just one torrential night And the next day Johnstown was gone.

AUGUST 13, 2021 - JOURNAL ENTRY - CLINTON HILL

About fifteen years ago in Pattaya, Thailand I learned that I had somehow transitioned to 'Vanilla' status by a visit to an S&M parlor. Nik, an English friend wanted to pay me back for a favor and suggested we go the THE CASTLE. MY wife was curious about how the club's goings-on and gave me permission for bad boys night out. 'The Castle' sas right across the street from our regular THE BUFFALO BAR. We told the girls there about our intended destination and they joked how we were going to be whipped like 'Kwaii.' or a stupid buffalo. The bouncers yelled we were 'sadique' and Nik asked me at the door, "Are you top or bottom?"

I don't know. I guess top."

"Me too, but I might try some bottom as a test." I wouldn't have expected any else from an Englishman. "Remember this is all on me."

The black-clad mama-san gave us a list. Top and bottom fantasies.

"Yeah, I'll do that and that. What about you?"

"Nothing really strikes my fancy."

Nik and the old lady read through the menu.

"No, no, definitely no."

The dominatrix and slaves enacted rough sex routines. I shook my head in disappointment. "Mai mee faaen-dah-see."

"Good enough for me," said Nik and two slender sadistic witches dragged him into a back room. The lash of a whip. Scream. "More."

After an hour Nik emerged chastened by the experience and said, "Damn, that was something, but I don't think I'll go bottom again. Are you sure you want nothing?"

"Nope, I'm vanilla."

When I was in the hospital I didn't look at any porno online or have a asexual fantasy. My libido had to be damaged along with my body by my years of excessive drinking, but I thankfully don't have any DTs. My roommate at NYU was a black lineman. I had overheard him tell the doctor that he had fallen in the street. Both of us so strong and now invalid. The doctor says I'll get better, but it will be a fight.

And I didn't forty-two years ago.

PS THE CASTLE is still open 24/7. Muang Pattaya, Thailand Hours: Opens at 6PM - Closes at 3AM Phone: +66 91 052 2671

Hand Bondage Foto by Joana Kruse

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JOURNAL ENTRY - AUGUST 5, 1978 - EAST VILLAGE

AUGUST 5, 1979 - EAST VILLAGE

No sign of Hakkim on East 10th Street, but the two young boys, Flacco and Manny, warned, "He ain't done with you. Hakkim a stone cold junkie, but he's stone cold baddd too."

"Fuck him. I fucked him up once. Next time will be worst," I boasted,but walked around the ower East Side looking over my shoulder, especailly in the morning taking Alice to work at the yogurt shop.

Last night Rick Guadacanal, the Heartbreakers' roadie, turned me onto cocaine. We snorted blow in CBGBs toilet. Cocaine is everywhere in New York City and the USA. Last month I dealt a little. It's easy money, if you keep your nose out of stash, a feat for men stronger than me.

Living on East 10th Street means cooking at home instead of eating at Greek diners, although there's nothing like bacon, eggs, and toast at the Kiev after a night of punk music.

This morning I woke up in a hospital. The only time I stayed overnight was at birth.

May 29, 1952.

Sixty-nine years ago.

It's forty-two years upstream from my first days at that apartment at 256 East 10th Street. Alice is living in LA with her husband. I haven't told her that I ave been hospitalize at NYU; my blood count in low after the surgeon stoped the bleeding from my cancerous liver, my blood sugar count was 450, and the doctors have scheduled an ultra-sound for tomorrow.

With all the tubes in me, I can't move around too much. Just to the toilet. I called Guadacanal to keep him the loop. I had visited the punk guitarist in Jersey City during his COVID quarantine. He was now home with his wife in Kansas City. Rick listened to the news and said, "Don't worry, you'll be fine. I got what you probably have ten years ago. No cancer, but my liver was shot. Medicine has advanced since then."

"Yeah, right," I said with the enthusiasm of a hypochondriac. My belief in eternal life had been challenged by the fact that I was wore a shameful 'johnny' with my asss hanging out on my truips to the toilet.

"You'll be out soon enough, but no more drinking."

"No more, unless the doctors tell me to get my affairs in order, then it's back to the 169 to imitate Dylan Thomas body and soul. THe poet had drunk himself to death at the Whitehorse Tavern.

Oh, the glory.I researched on the internet for John Thunders.

AUGUST 4, 1978 JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

The Red Sox break out of their slump adn take two games from the Yankees. Jim Rice looks slow, but they are playing in 95F weather. The weather is no better in the East Village. August air hsa been exhausted by summer. I've only been to the beach once. Riis Park. Naked with the wueers and trannies. In comparison to my beach bum days of 1975 in Miami Beach and on the West Coast; Encinitas-Torrey Pines-Matzatlan-Esquinapa-Puerto Vallarta-Gloucester-Provincetown.

I don't have the money to go anywhere now.

LATER

Alice and I wake to birds singing in the alley and make love on a dusty futon. The two of us shared a bath in the kitchen tub. Alice washes me and I shampooed her hair with the sun streaming through the willows in the alley.

After I go to buy groceries at the bodega and on the way back and the domino players across the street greet me with a wave.

Hakkim sits on a stoep farther down the street, sporting a bloody head bandage. George has a black eye and a swollen cheek. Their eyes follow me, but neither man tries to attack me. I enter the apartment. Alice has cleaned everything for the tenth time.

"Do you want to wake up at 9 tomorrow morning and take me to school?" she asks, touching my hand.

"I don't know." Her acting classes are on the Upper West Side. The other side of the world from the East Village. Some of the streets were as bad as these, but Alice was worried about Hakkim.

"You don't have to be so mean."

"I know, but you get up at 6 to be someplace at 9."

"I don't expect that from you."

"Then I'll be your bodyguard." I came from the South Shore. We fought everyone no matter what the odds. "And I'll do it in the winter, when the city is dark."

"My hero."

I looked at the collapsible steel guard gates.

She only wanted one thing.

To be safe.

We put up the gates on the fire escape window and painted the walls. After one coat I thought we were done. Alice held up another can.

Ivory white.

I've have had lovers before, but never lived with any women than my mother and sisters. This was just about sex and one month ago Harriet the thin nurse from Boston said, "Fuck me anytime you want."

We lasted a month then Alice came back to town.

After leading the American League East most of the summer the Red Sox have collapsed into a slump and surrendered First Place to the Tampa Bay Rays. I hate every team from the Gulf Coast city. The Rays win too much.

I watch nothing on the TV. I look at my journal a little. Mostly I surf the internet for my condition.

This morning the surgeons sealed my stomach lesions. The anesthesiologist gassed me with propofol. I said, "Tell me go and I'll see if I can count backward from ten."

"Okay. 1-2-3 go."

My consciousness disappeared along with reality and I woke in a blinding whiteness. I have been an atheist since age 8, but I am a true devotee to nothingness and that coma was nirvana. was it.

As for sex.

I've been faithful to Mem.

I know she loves me.

Journal Entry August 3, 1978 - East Village

Last night I dreamed of a submerged Soviet nuclear missile sub silently gliding towards Norway and NATO has any defense against such a threat. The siloes open and H-Bombs torpedoed to the surface. MAD. Atomic winter. The end of Mankind.

I woke in a sweat on the futon of our East 10th Street apartment. It was day. Alice lies within arm's reach. She murmurs with an educated hillbilly accent and spreads her legs.

"Now would be nice."

And I obeyed her sleepy command.

AUGUST 3, 2021 - NYU HOSPITAL - MANHATTAN

On May 29, 1952 my mother gave birth to her second son.

I was named after her father.

The next day we left for home.

I hadn't spent a night in the hospital since my birth.

Yesterday the attending doctor told me, "We have to operate on the lesions in your stomach to stop the bleeding."

The nurses are readying me for the trip down to the operating room.

I remember this dream and making love to Alice.

I never cummed in her. She was frightened of birth.

Even coitus interruptus can be nice.

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Much more to come.

AUGUST 20, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

Alice is down in Chinatown, plotting the dramatic take-over of the East Village with Tom Scully and his scrawny girlfriend. I don't like the way Susan looks at Alice and she doesn't like the way Alice loves me. To her I'm a thug. The coke deal is back on and I'm waiting on Guadalcanal's call and he's waiting on his dealer's call. His dealer is a friend on Johnny Thunders. A junkie and like the Velvet Underground sang, "I'm just waiting for my man."

A common plaint in the East Village.

Once Guadalcanal calls I was planning on cooling off at the St. Mark's Cinema, but the temperance has fallen into the high 70s and I don't like the double-bill of two Robert Alda films; MASH and FOUR SEASONS.

My older brother Frank and his bride are down in New York for a wedding. Patty is shocked by the squalor of East Village. I've become blind to the burnt-out buildings,, the junkies, the bums, lack of trees, and the obvious atmosphere of moral depravations. Frank feels the same way as his wife having only lived in the suburbs.

"What are you going to do if Mom and Dad come to visit?" ask Frank inside my tenement apartment.

My father regularly travels to Basking Ridge NJ to meet with Bell Telephone engineers as an executive to New England Telephone.

"I'll save them from worry by meeting them in a better neighborhood."

"New York has them?" asked Patty, shutting the car window to avoid any contact with the urban blight of the Lower East Side.

Not many, but a few with good restaurants too."

Frank parked the car.

"Are we going inside?" Patty was scared.

"Yes, how bad could it be?"

"You'll see."

We climb three flights to 3E. The Lower East Side was a slum. This apartment was a wreck. Alice kept it clean, but not clean enough for suburbanites.

"Mom wouldn't like it here," interjected Frank.

"I know Nana used to say better a dump on a good street than a palace on a bad one." My Irish grandmother had only lived in Ireland as a child and Jamaica Plains. This apartment was no palace.

"Mom probably wouldn't like my living with Alice."

"I lived in sin with Patty."

"It wasn't sin."

I restrained from saying that Frank and Patty had been seeing each other when she was still married to someone in Washington.

"You have any protection?" Frank had a .38 at home.

I reached under the table.

""Just this." I held up a stiletto.

"You need something more than that."

I didn't mention Hakkim the Junkie. He was more dangerous than anyone on the South Shore.

"Alice wants a .25. She's from West Virginia. She grew up with guns."

"Always good to have something that can make a hole in someone. I don't really need my .38. You want it?"

"Want what?" Alice entered the apartment in her waitress drag. She had met Frank and Patty up in Boston. My brother had joked how she didn't shave under her arms or her legs. I hadn't like that comment and never mentioned it to Alice.

"A gun," answered Frank.

He has a .38. I told him it was too big."

"I could handle a .38 just fine." Alice sat next to me. She smelled of yogurt from the yogurt shop.

"Most weapons are used against someone you know. What if you shot Peter in a squabble?"

Just because I'm from West Virginia doesn't mean that we go around killing lovers. Heck, your home town Pittsburg is tougher than any Appalachian hollow." Alice was proud of her mountains and people there.

"Alice doesn't have much of a temper."

"Well, if you want it, it's yours. Just come up and get it."

"Okay."

We ended that subject, but the main reason I didn't want a gun was that I might actually use it and in the East Village I would run out of bullets before reaching the end of the hit list. Better I had an AK-47 and a pile of banana clips. A machine gun might make a difference on the Lower East Side. It certainly would take care of Hakkim.

AUGUST 20, 2021 - BROOKLYN

I still speak with Alice in LA, although I have bothered to tell her about my cancer. If fact I haven't told that many people to avoid my condition being the only topic on the menu. I just left NYU Hospital after a Co-vids Test prior to next week's procedure. It's a long walk to the Lex Avenue and I decided to travel over to Brooklyn via the East River Ferry under gray skies. I spoke with a Hassidic father of many. Like me all that mattered in life were his children and the Torah. I don't tell him about my plans to write the TORAH II. It's on the back burner. After getting off the ferry I sat under the Brooklyn Bridge. My body has run out of energy. I haven't had a drink in three weeks. Dakota told me if takes about two month to shake the withdrawal symptoms. Thankfully I don't have DTs or sweats or any desire to drink. Not yet and hopefully never.

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Much more to come.

July 20, 1978 - Provincetown - Journal Entry

Provincetown is packed with cruising homos and hippies retired from the world. P-Town is the end of the world. Thankfully beyond the end of US6 and a ferry ride away from Boston. Ann suffers from motion sickness after a morning session of sit-ups and yoga. I feel for her, but we are free; fresh sea air, a morning fuck, some money in our pockets, New York and its problems hundreds of miles away. I almost feel like getting a job on Commercial Street. We both love of tge town is so fey. I used to come here in the early 70s with my friends from the 1270 disco and have orgies in cheap hotel rooms. We were so free. Some queer restaurants must need a butch dishwasher. Ann could work in a sea taffy shop. Certainly a better holiday than the stifling heat of West Virginia, the smog canyons of New York, and the overbearing familiarity of Boston. We head out to Race Point, where Ann rants a wicked version of Pattie Smith's GLORIA. She is so very very funny and cute.

Did Jesus have a younger brother?

Or was he the Only Holy Child. Mark 6:3 of the New Testament refers to his brother James. Nothing of anotger Immaculate Conception. I tell Alice my theory that Christ was thr red-headed bastard of the Celtic legionaire. No mention of this soldier in the Bible, but when Ann and I had sex the first time, she cried out, "Oh God."

Blasphemy is considered a deadly sin by the Catholic Church, but at death I fear not the lightning of a Myth. I shall not ask for the Last Rites. I shall not shake with fear for the loss of my immortal soul. I shall be dead.

Jimmy Jesus lived past his thirties
The sole son of Mary Magdalene
His father had survived the Crucifixion
To seek refuge in the Himalayas
Where he had spent in youth.

Kashmiris said, "You look like your father."
Jesus, Mary and Joseph had fled there
After the disgrace in the Temple___
Kashmir
A holy child
The son of Yuz Asaf
Wandering Jews begged for forgiveness from the only son of the Holy One.
But Jimmy was gifted with visions.
A stutter
A stammer
A lisp
No one could understand him
Not god-struck
Just a little gob-struck__

Mary took him every day
To his father's grave.
Screaming, "Why Jesus? Why Jimmy? He has no sins."
The Heavens remained silent to all.
Except Mary Magdalene heard a voice.
"I told you not to call me here."
Jimmy Jesus calls out, "Jesus, Da-da."
A bolt of lightning struck him.
Dead for want of a father's love.

Minor Blasphemy.

Still at the beach. The water cold as ice. Windblown sand whispers against our naked bodies. Creepy men saunter along the strand. White bodies hidden by white shirts, black shorts, high white sox, loafers, binoculars hanging from the neck. More unneeded feet on these secluded beaches, crushing the fragile ecology, although the Park Service allow dune buggies to furrow across the sand. I stand up naked. My swimming suit dry. I would so like Alice to suck my dick now.

Dunes everywhere I look. Angles of sand topped by sea grass and more voyeurs. Damn them, but then so what. They have their own pervy lives to live. Honest citizens hiding their wicked ways fifty weeks a year to being themselves for a two-week vacation in P-Town. Next Saturday they will return home to be replaced by others of them. The beach calming the homo-erotic cravings they can't feel at home.

I saw Jeff Berger, one of my old lover's at a bar. A go-go boy cutie fighting off early old age. Alice and I made love twice tonight. She asked, "What was it like fucking a man?"

"Different from you."

"How?"

"Savage versus vicious."

I show her how,and then what it was to be fucked in the ass. Not queer. A sexual adventurer.

Damn, my wisdom tooth is fucked.

Foto by Monroe Wheeler, Provincetown, 1947

July 16, 1978 - Providence - Journal Entry

Centuries are divided into decades. Ten Year stretches. This 20th Century began with European global domination, except for Tibet, Thailand, Ethiopia, and the Ottoman Empire. The flags of Russia, England, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Italy and the Vatican flew over conquered peoples, but the status quo was slipping from the grasp of monarchs. The 1905 Russian Revolution signaled the end to the Romanov Dynasty. Te Slavs fought for their freedom from the Turks and Austrians. The Irish seethed under British rule. This has been the American Century, but Vietnam taught us that we ain't all that.

On a train to Boston with Alice.

Amtrak is the third worst way to travel. The bus and hitching are #2 and #1. The Greyhound bus seats are designed for corpses and the dead never complain, only smell. Hitching is almost impossible with the cops harassing travelers and drivers are fearful of murderous hippies.

Providence.

Amtrak stop.

A black boy, Maurice, fakes retching. His older brother plays possum and starts snoring. Their older sister tells him to be quiet. He remains in the snoring state. Alice wants off the train. The hillbilly hasn't had her period. She is motion sick and needs fresh air.

Another forty minutes and the train will arrive at Back Bay. These past two months I have spent little time in New York. Weeks spread across the East Coast. This is Alice's third trip north. I too will be glad to get off the train.

Ann says, "I think my breasts are getting larger."

I check them. "They are the same size as always."

"I wish I had bigger."

"Not me, I like them small."

"Because then you think you're fucking a boy."

"Maybe."

My sexual urges have shut down for homos. I get my most satisfaction from females. Actually gay men were only a substitute for women. Some some reason picking up females was difficult for me. Now I am ease. At least whenever Alice is not around, but I don't need to be promiscuous in my life. Last night I dream of Alice assaulted by my past girlfriends turned fiends and I fucked them all in the dream. Faceless women licking my balls and asshole, as I fuck Alice.

The dream is a product of last night's too many beers at CBGBs.

I even forgot that I need to fuck.

Foto Old Union Station - Providence

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July 3, 1978 Journal Charleston West Virginia

I arrived in Charleston late last night via a direct flight from La Guardia.. I experienced apprehension coming down the gangway. Do I love Alice? I think so. I have said the word to Alice on innumberable occassions. We have never lived togethr, only shared a crappy bed in my SRO hotel room. Should I have called it quits after she graduatred from college and returned home.

No, I do love her, even if I don't know what love is. Her exile from New York was demanded by her divorced parents. She had no idea what she wanted to do or live. Neither do I, but I love living in the Village. It has become my home.

I entered the terminal. I had no photo of Alice. In the weeks since her departure I lost memory of how she looked, although I recalled a cat scratch scar on her cheeks. Inside I see her. Dirty blonde hair, a warm smile, cute in her white cotton thigh-high shift. Very much like Patricia Neal in HUD. Yes, I am in love. We kissed and embrace with tenderness. Seemingly we have missed each other.

"I'm so glad you're here."

"Me too." I'm actually aglow in her presence and traced the cat scratch scar with my finger.

Alice pointed at my leather bag. It hasd been my father's during WWII.

"Is that all there is?"

"I travel light." I had learned fhat gift from Alan Lage, an Iowan hippie vagabond who espoused that all we needed in life could be fit into a single bag. He also possessed a guitar.

Alice hooked my arm and we left the terminal as a couple. So far this reunion so good. We walked to the car. A Cadillac. A lawyer's car.A pickup was more authentic in Appalachia.

LATER

The interstate descended from the airport into the State Capitol. It was late and few cars wee on the road and even less people in the city itself. After the last four years in New York. Charleston seemed so small. Then again so does my hometown, Boston. We crossed the Kanawha River to her suburb South Charleston. The river was lit by the chemical factories providing an alrernative employment to the city other than the coal mines. Both deadly.

"How has it been here?" We have only spoken a few times on payphone calls during her absence from the city. My SRO room has no phone.

"Not much gong on in Charleston. All of my friends have left. Even the ones in college. My parents want me to stay, but I can't stay here. I want to live in New York and I want to be with you," she added almost as an afterthought.

"Same in my hometown. Nothing there." Milton south of Boston had three traffic lights.

The car radio played a country-rock station. WKAZ. Dolly Parton's JOLENE. CBGBs had the 45 on the jukebox. I was in the South. Alice and I sang along to the hit tune. We entered her neighborhood only lit by streetlights. All the houses. It was the same in my hometown. The only sign of life. the blue glow of TV.

"My brother Bobby is asleep already. My father is waiting for us." Alice drove the Cadillac into the driveway of a split-level ranchhouse. Alice parked the car and we stood on the lawn. A ladder leaned against the front. A tarp covered the plants. The shingles were smooth, but flakes of paint were peeling from the house.

This was a big job, but doable, if Alice helped as my assistant.

Her father came out of the house. Bob was tall. We shook hands.

"What do you think?"

"Doable, but we need more drop clothes. I'll start tomorrow, weather permitting."

"Then come inside. I'll make some dinner and you came get washed up in the besement. I got a fold-out couch down there."

Alice and I looked at each other. Separate rooms came as no surprise. She snuck in around midnight.

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Much more to come. t

JUNE 30, 1978 JOURNAL ENTRY

THe first half of 1978 ends today. It's 10:30 and I'm ready for the new half-year. Tomorrow morning I depart my departure to Charleston, West Virginia, where I will paint Alice's father's house. As a teenager I painted two houses in my neighborhood in the Blue Hills. Ten years ago. My parents' and a neighor's split-level. All the houses on my street with split-level. My older brother and I were a team. The job took us two weeks. My hand hasn't touched a brush since. So many of my friends here are artists. I asked Ro for advice.

"Put down a drop cloth. Start at the top and paint with up and down strokes. Wear a hat and long sleeve shirt to protect yourself from splatter. And don't do it by yourself."

Alice says she will help.

A ticket on Piedmont is waiting for me at JFK. I have $70 in my wallet. Her father will pay me $500 for the job. At present I'm lucky to earn $100 a week. I hope to finish in two weeks. Alice says it is not a big house. Her father is a lawyer. It has to be as big as my parent's house, but it is not a split-level. At least it isn't a hillbilly shack up some hollow with moonshine running down the creek. Chareleston is the Capitol of the Mountaineer State. I know nothing about it, but I suspect her home is in the suburbs up a creek.

This afternoon I asked Ro what I should buy for a gift.

"Perfume. Opium by Yves St. Laurent. It's a natural scene with mandarin, jasmine, patchouli, and vanilla. Very sensual."

We made love at my place and then I went up to Bloomingdale's. Matthew worked in the perfume department. He wants me badly enough to give it to me. I trade a kiss for the perfume.

Alice doesn't wear any. She is a hippie. She smells good without any I sniff the perfume. Patchouli. She will like that hint. She's a hippie. I open the box and spray on a little. The attar warms on my skin. It reminds me of smoking opium and I wish I had some.

I pack a bag. Jeans, tee-shirts, and an old seersucker jacket. Alice says it's hot in the mountains. I'll bring a bathing suit. Maybe I'll swim in a moonshine creek. I haven't flown since Chuck and Jackie's Philadelphia wedding in 1975. I was in the wedding party. They moved to Cinncinati. It's not far from West Virgina. Maybe I can find their phone number by dialing infomation at 555-1212.

The New York Post featured a report about a Miami voodoo priest who creates Baron Samedi dolls of victims by gathering his victims' nail clippings and hair with water and a little rum and then puts them into a Waring blender after which the finished product is poured into a small doll. Supposedly the victim wakes thinking he is a doll.

La Guardia-Charleston flight departs at 1:30. I'll get there two hours before take-off. An hour flight to DC. A three-hour layover. Then an hour to Charleston. 7-8 hours with the subway the first stage of the trip. A distance of 500 miles. Ten hours by car. Longer by hitchhiking. West Virginia is the original hillbilly country. They hated hippies. They must hate punks even more. I'll soon find out.

Later

The musicians at CBGBs only talk about music, drugs, or other musicians. My world has fallen into a world of drum, guitars, and bass. Their only goal in life. Hit the Top 10. Even Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Hard-driving noise band with Lydia Lunch singing. My fav song EVERYTHING. It is so radically un Top 10 with James Chance on sax, but in their eyes I see the collective dream of opening for the Rolling Stones. All the girls on the scene think Richard Hell is cute. No one thinks that of Teenage Jesus. They sound like they're covering Lour Reed's Metal Music Machine, whihc is almost unlistenable. Cecil Taylor loves them.

OPIUM
Black tar
On tin foil
Stuck into a pipe
A match
Fire
Smoke furls in the air
Suck
Suck
Suck
My mind stalls
Into a dream
Of nothing
A land of Nod
So sweet nothing
So nothing at all
In a sleep smooth as glass

Teenage Jesus and the Jerks

I woke up dreaming

June 29 1997 Fire Island Journal

The waves from Africa 
Break on the Pines beach
The sea froth surging up the sand
With a lisping hiss
The final reach of the Atlantic
Swirling around my ankles
To retreat from
'Neath my feet___
Three seconds later
Another wave ripples around my feet
My soles sinking into the sand deep
My balance threatened 
By the tug
Of the sea___
Overhead a Westbound 747
Crew of nineteen
300 plus passengers
From Europe on the approach 
To JFK
I am invisible ___
This autumn I will be westbound 
Aboard a jetliner to Heathrow 
To Paris
To the South of France
And then Ireland
But I am here now
Fire Island
Haunted by the ghosts
Of boys of summer
Their names
Countless as the sand disappearing 
'Neath my toes___
I close my eyes
I see them all
The boys of the Sexual Revolution
Soldiers
I open my eyes
I see none__
I fight to remember 
All
The boys of summer
On this beach
Within reach
1978
Before
Before 
Before__
I see us all with my eyes open
Naked 
Young
Tanned
Laughing 
Naked
Alive___
Not  
Old Polaroids  Not in my hand
Of my mind
Oh the nakedness
Now
Today
I strip naked
No longer young
Alive
Naked___
Dive into the cold sea
This moment 
Like all those gone
And those to come
All of us
Together 
Never to flee
Our nakedness then
Or my nakedness now__
The smell of poppers in the air
Ah, the Pines__ Thanks for your support. In order to avoid ads, please donate to blogger.com.mangozeen through Venmo. Any amount will help us. I do have a large family. Even $1 will help. My Venmo account is @Peter.Smith.18

July 20th 1978 - Provincetown - Journal Entry

 

In Provincetown with Alice. Commercial Street is packed with fey homos and hippies retreated to this end of the road refuge. Both can be who they acre without pretending to be what the rest of America wants them to be. I look for any old friends from the 1270 in front to the afternoon Meat Rack. I recognize none of the face, but hustlers' etes scream, “Lose the fag hag.”

Alice yogas on the beach like she was Isadora Duncan. A bull dyke shoots fotos. Alice obliges her. It’s a lovely pas de deux. Alice loves the attention. I wander off to the Atlantic Bar. More gay men. I know one. I recall fucking him on Newbury Street. An apartment with brown decor. Gary buys me a beer. We talked who knows who. He comes from Boston. He knows my good friend Donny Ward from the 1270. We both love the black dancer extraordinaire. We huff poppers at the bar. He strokes my cock. It gets hard. I touch his. A huge cock. P-town is hot. Gary says, "Lose the girl. I want to fuck your ass and you piss in my mouth."

He is hard as steel. Me too. I reject his offers of sin. For some reason I don’t queer any more. Sexually.

Alice has finished her session. A bull dyke scowls at me. She’s not Alice’s type. She likes them femme.

We go back to our hotel room. She throws up in the shower. A sensitive stomach. I stand on the deck naked. The Atlantic air medicine. Alice has recovered from the nausea. We fuck. I feel great. Away from New York. Away from the sullen summer of West Virginia. The pollution of Manhattan, and the imprisoning familiarity of Boston. Our problems two hundred miles away. We both have money in our pockets from my painting her father’s house, even in thought I got paint on some of the bushes. Alice is in a good mood. She’s singing a parody of Patti Smith’s HORSES with Race Point in view. So very funny.

I love the dead end on the Cape.

Later a naked gay man with a small penis approached us and said I looked like Jesus’ brother.

“No bearded.” He eyes my crotch.

I laugh and he drifted away to the dunes with a backward glance, as if he expected me to follow. Alice shrugs like she doesn’t care. I stayed with her.

Suddenly think of whether Jesus had a younger brother or a son with Mary Magdalene. She was no whore, although the nuns taught she was.

I wondered if Jesus had a brother or son. Blasphemy. A mortal sin for the Church. Worthy of eternal damnation, unless I ask for a pArdon from Hell. Atheists don’t fear an afterlife.

Rain on East 77 Street - June 5 1978

Midnight
June 5 1978
East 77 Street
Outside
Rain
Thunder
Inside the foyer
My finger
On the buzzer
No reply____
Last winter
Lisa left
To be a model
In Europe
No letters
Since April___
Her face
Never on French Vogue
Nor Italian Vogue
Nor inside any fashion magazine.
Gone___
Inside the hallway
My finger on the buzzer
A last time___
Past midnight
She not here
The last words
In the last letter
Love
Lisa___
Where did the love go?
All I see are ghosts
Of her
All I have
Ghosts and the rain__
I walk away
Into midnight
Into the rain
With
Only one destination
Away from here
To someplace else
And out of the rain

May 31, 1978 - East Village - Journal

Everybody was watching Clover at the party. Her youth. Her beauty. Her reputation. She had told Anthony that an older man pays her rent. The Texan oilman visits twice a month. He pays for sex. Andy Reese of the Serendipity 3 crowd said that she was a prostitute. The ballet dancer tricked out of Cowboys on 53rd Street. I had figured the North Carolinan for just being catty. Her fucking for money doesn't matter to me. I wish someone would pay me for having sex. I guess Alice does, since I pay no money for the rent

Later

Alice's play is soon. She'll be leaving to gtraduate from an Ohio college and then her father will drive her to West Virginia with no plans to come back to New York other than she can't stay in Appalachia and she does have desire to be here, not necessarily with me, but in the East Village.

At Dojos I spoke to Anthony about his upcoming exhibition of our photo roman with Klaus and Cookie in Bridgehampton. He said, "The prints were all mine it's my show. I'm calling it Clover and Nolan."

Sounds good to me. If you sell any photos, do I get a cut?"

"I'll split it with you, although I don't know why"

"Because I came up with a story and casted Clover and Klaus and everybody else in it."

"I got Cookie."

They were lovers and dope fiends, although Anthony was a day to day junkie. It suits his laconic demeanor.

"I'll give you that." I loved Cookie. The Baltimore native was real unlike most poeple on the punk scene, having starred in John Waters films with Divine.

"Okay we'll split it once I pay for the expenses The prints and everything else and we should give 10% each the Clover, Cookie, and Klaus

"Agreed.

This was Anthony's first show and he was planning a beach party. Punks at the Hamptons.

Later

I got paid for only 2 days this week had Ebasco. I'm barely working at the executive dining room. The executives are starting summer holidays early. The Boston School Committee is sending my last unemployment. $100 check should be in the mail.

Why can't I find a job? Thankfully entertainment and drink are basically free. Kyle, Kim's sister works at Yogurt Delight. Kim at CBGBs. Cyrena at Cornelia Street. To DeMastri at McBell's. Like Henry Miller I don't need money. Just friends. Right now I'm on 6th Avenue dodging the rain at Dazzle on Columbus Avenue, watching the young ballerinas with their tight buns and dance tights coming from a dance class. I don't stare at them or follow them. They have enough of that from every man in New York.

At the Cornelia Street Cafe Kyle doesn't invite me to a champagne party to meet Sean Hausman. "You people are always free loading."

The Red Sox in first___

Post Vietnam America has retreated from the world stage under Carter. China tried to invade Vietnam to save Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Eritrea and Ethiopia are battling over a desert. Russia and China have exported revolution to Africa, latin America, and Asia. Leftist revolutionaries battle the States of the Free World in Europe. The while word hates the USA and out threats of nuclear war to defeat the workers' paradise.

As for Cuba the USA should normalize relations with the island by offering Havana a major league baseball franchise; the Havana Bananas or Reds. Cincinnati Reds would have to surrender that name for purpose of international peace.

I love food, but have been starving myself. My body is thin. My muscles are taut. I want to eat, but I have no money. More I want sex. Masturbation is not sex. Just release.