June 13, 1978 - Journal

This morning a knock on my SRO door.It was Ernie the porter for 27 11th Street. An eviction notice in his hand. He was about fifty. I had never saw him outside the building. No one had, almost as if he were in hiding, but he always said hello. Friendly.

"I have nothing to do with this. If you pay right away. There's no problem. This is an SRO. The owners are used to people having no money."

"Will they change the locks?" I owed three weeks. $45 per week. $135. I had $63 in my pocket. I already had borrowed from everyone I knew. Alice had given $60. She only earned $120 a week. No one at CBGBs was rich.

"Can I pay one week."

"Yes, that will buy you a few days."

"That's all I need." I shut the door and sat on the sagging bed. This SRO was bad, but not the bottom. Flophouses like the Palace Hotel over CBGBs were worst. Drunks and junkies crashed there. Here the residents had jobs. Not in banking. Not union. Just jobs like mine. A waiter in an executive dining room on Wall Street. Worse was the street.

I sat with my nerves jangling, wondering where I was going to get $75 more. I had my last unemployment check from my teaching job in Boston for $110 coming. Not tomorrow and probably next week. I could ask my boss at Ebasco for an advance. Until then I'll have to avoid the manager. Arthur hates all of us. Like we were to blame for his having a crappy job. George, who worked as a dishwasher at a hotel, said the manager had been fired fom the Plaza for stealing. No jail, just sentencing to sit in the office at the door. Like Ernie. He never left the building.

S*** this does wonders for my nerves. My boss at work get in advance on money. He doesn't know, it said to ask Arthur this afternoon. I avoided him yesterday, cuz I thought this wouldn't be a problem. I was wrong it is a problem

Work isn't going to answer this problem. Hustling 53rd and 3rd to get some money. $20 is my soul worth up there. I have to get a new job

Later standing at the windows the dining room 27 floors above Wall Street. Jersey across the river behind that the monster continent of America stretches in some 3,000 miles. For the last month I've been confined to this island. 2 miles by 15 Mi is all I know. I have no idea. Concrete sidewalks asphalt streets and steel skyscrapers cover Manhattan except for 4th Central Park. I crave real nature

Later

The end of the road in Seattle I-90 Hobos under the bridge This is Skid Row Nowhere else to go Alaska to the north No roads go there Only ferries No money Stay in Seattle On the continent's edge.

CBGBs was really boring last night I need a break from that place hang out at a bar without having to inhale one the smoke from other people's cigarettes. I couldn't hear what anybody says the light is poor your senses deprived by the punk rock drunk. I should just give it all up and headed west. America's first step from here is New Jersey. And that thought is enough to make me go nowhere.

Later

I get my check early from Ebasco.

Hopefully Ernie will let me back into 11 West 11th Street very sweaty. There are tramps camping kind of Bleeker Street. One has a Barcalounger. A lamp plug into nothing. He so comfortable I wish I could be as comfortable. He needs no money. I have no money. I should just hit the road. The bum is cultivating a rock garden. He doesn't take his boots off. Many bums do and put them under their heads don't get stolen sleep drunk. This one is different his name is Jim. He comes from Kansas. He hasn't been back there in over twenty years.

The highway is lonely play tonight. Strangers driving westward. Maybe leaving their wives, homes, jobs. I have nothing. Last Chance on the Interstate bar girls beer booze all you want open all night to all the lights nowhere Nevada. Sounds like paradise. Free.

Later

And over the phone at the SRO dropping quarters $3 for three minutes. We both express our love and she told me," "It was a mistake to come back to West Virginia. Maybe you should come back and teach school again in Boston."

It was a solid plan. I was going nowhere, but friends live there anymore. Alice isn't coming nack. I have nothing here, but so does everyone else.

May 22, 1978 - Journal

This afternoon after finishing the lunch shift at the Ebasco executive dining room high above the Trinity Church, I changed out of my white shirt and white jacket and black pants into my punk outfit. Juan and the rest of the Latino staff changed out of standard uniforms and shook their heads at my clothes. I am the only gringo in the dining room staff. They were friendly, but generally kept their distance, figuring me to be a spy for the engineers of the nuclear power plant division. The workers only speak in Spanish and the executives have mistaken me for a Spainard. The bosses talk about how to secure the nuclear plants in foreign countries around the globe.

"Best to create a zone of fire around the plant," said a senior broadmember.

"No warning shots. They take that as a weakness. Shooting to kill stops them dead."

One of the execs noticed my listening.

"What's the probelm?"

"Nada, senor."

I hated all of them. Vicious capitalists. I could poison them all, but I needed this job.I said nothing about the conversation to my co-workers. They had all heard various version from these murderers protecting their profits. We all needed this job, especially since my fellow employees were mostly illegal migrants. Thankfully they hid my gringoism from the bosses. The manager was German and like speaking his native language with me. I rarely understood hom, but nodded out 'genau' and 'exactly' worked as a response in any situation and any language.

In the subway I waited for the uptown 7. Its approaching rumble announced its impending arrival. An attractive pale raven-haired vixen in black leather sat on the bench. Skin and bones. No breasts under her laced vest. I suspect she is a dominatrix. She read Carlos Castenada's The Teachings of Don Juan. The book about shaminism was dog-eared, either from other readers or she read it so frequently that her fingers had tattered the pages.

Back in 1972 on a hitchhiking tour of the USA with a college friend, Peter Gorr, we met Diego Santos, a hispanic fakir in Haight-Ashbury, who claimed to understand eternity. Peter and I were both majoring in mathematics. I understood the power of zero better than eternity. Diego had reefer and offered us a place to crash, which was gratefully accepted since we only had a couple of hundred hundred dollars and still had to hitch up the coast before heading back from Seattle to Boston on I-90. That night after several hours of ranting Diego claimed to never sleep. Never. Two minutes later he nodded out. Peter and I were grateful for the silence and we left before the dawn to head up the coast.

I had never read The Teachings of Don Juan. So much for Shamanism. I didn't interrupt the vixen's reading. I know nothing of life. I am only a waiter for the lunch shift in an executive dining room overlooking New York harbor.

Presently I'm reading KEEP THE RIVER ON YOUR RIGHT by Tobias Schneebaum. A tale of cannibalism in the junlge of South America. The train stops at Christopher Street. The vixen and I get off. I follow her at a distance. She stops and turns around. I stop and she writes something on a piece of paper. I follow her out of the station down 7th Avenue in the opposite direction from my room at the Wesst 11th Street SRO. Her leather jeans. Tight. I imagine her naked. Then tragedy. Her boyfriend meets her. She looks at me, as I go by and turns to pass her the piece of paper. Her parting glance says at another date. Farther down the block I opened the paper. A number. A name. Sharon.

Later

Sitting in Yogurt Delight, where Kyle Davis works as a waitress. The boss has a camera on the cash register. I pay for my coffee and sit by the window, opening the Times to the Sports section. The Bruins beat the Canadiens 4-3 in overtime with a goal by Bobby Schmitz. Stanley Cup Finals tied 2-2. Could this be the year the Bruins beat the Candians? I get an erection thinking of Sharon. Not in a bed. At night. In a alley. I walk back to my room.

Mars the red planet is 30,000,000 miles from Earth, If one was to comunicate with someone there a radio signal traveling at 186,000 miles per second takes several minutes to reach Mars. No immediate gratification even on Earth. If I call Sharon on the phone, there will be a delay of almost no time, but still a delay as the call goes through the wires to the telephone excgange and back. Time travel to the past is impossible, but when she answers the phone it will be the future.

Only two words.

"Meet me."