AUGUST 6, 1978 JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

4 am in Times Square. Bums, crazies, and the poor camp on the sidewalk. I step over them, as if they were the dead. One wino rises his head and burbles from a flaky rotting mouth, "Gimme some change."

I drop some quarters in his hand.

Enough for two cruellers at Disco Donut on East 14th Street.

I resist asking for the coins back and pick up my pace. I still have $7 in my pocket. Enough for breakfast at Leskos for Alice and me. No sign of Hakkim.

Eric Mitchell, A B-movie star, said at Max's with this strange Apache-French accent, "The bums are colorful."

"And he was right.

BAck on the South Shore Red Tate lived in a aluminum septic tank at the town dump.

Every afternoon he traipsed through the woods to the corner store across from the church. His life was simple. He bought beer for underage kids and drank Thunderbird wine. Three bottles got him drunk. My Uncle Jack, once a Marine officer at Chosin Reservoir said Red Tate had been a hero in Korea and always gave him a buck.

Some people said bad for him.

Never us. He bought us beer.

Red Tate lies on the pavement
Helpless, flat on his back
If his mother saw him
Tears and asking, "Why?"
Red Tate drink Ripple
Sometimes he has Thunderbird
The fortified wine drowns out Korea
Soothes the shattered nerves.
Not a bum
Just someone trying to forget
A forgotten war___

AUGUST 6, 2021 NYU HOSPITAL

Joseph Cotton steals CITIZEN KANE with his performance on the New York hospital's solarium. Jed Leland is an elegant ne'er-do-well living out his last days basking in the winter sun. Even at death's door he wants a little something.

The Ultra-sound and MRI have revealed the seriousness of my condition; Hep C, Cirrohsis, growths in my liver. The attending physician entered the room with two younger doctors, who I figured for interns. The main MD explained that my body was still functioning, albeit not at top form. He put his hand on my knee and said, "Everything should be okay."

The other two said nothing and I suspeceted that the attending physician had brought them along to teach how to break bad news to a patient. I almost wanted to ask one, "What do you think?"

Not that I cared.

At least I wasn't going to die tomorrow, but I never again have a drink. Sixty years of alcohol has wasted my body and soul. I admitted depression to another doctor. "No, go right ahead. I have nothing to hide."

My first drink was in 1960. I was eight. My uncle-in-law, the head of the Boston Homicide Squad, offered a cold beer. We were at his beach cottage on Marshfield's Rexhame Beach. After a sip I put the can on the table. "I don't like it."

All the detectives laughed and one shouted, "You will, boyo, you will."

He was right.

I liked beer, wine, vodka, and gin-ginger throughout the Covid binge.

I was not wearing a silk dressing coat and foulard like Joseph Cotton in CITIZEN KANE. My ass was hanging out of a 'johnny'. I hadn't seen the sun in days and asked the nurse, if I could walk to to the solarium. It was on the same floor. She asked, "Sure, but I'll come with you to make sure you don't fall."

There was no arguing with the nurses. They were relentlessly right. I took my time and turned left before the elevators. A helicopter lifted into sight from the riverside landing pads. I sat down and pulled out Cookie Mueller's WALKING THROUGH CLEAR WATER IN A POOL PAINTED BLACK. She was three years older than me, but started the life in the early 60s with the books's first line, "I had two lovers and I wasn't ashamed."

I never saw Cookie ashamed.

They grew them tough in Baltimore.

Foto by Anthony Scibelli.

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.