Palm Beach Sunday 2008

In April 2008 I lived nowhere. My apartment in the East Village had been taken over by the faceless management company. I had lived with my wife and daughter in Pattaya until this April. We had had good times and bad times. It was home, then again I considered anyplace home once you buy a roll of toilet paper. I had been sad to leave, but my January arrest by the Thai cyber-crime police had necessitated a change in employment.

My wife and I discussed the options.

Teaching English in Thailand paid little. At tops 20,000-30000 baht per month.

My friend Lisa in Palm Beach listened to my story over the phone and said, "You can come here. I have a house for you to take care of. It's a little money, but you can get a start." Palm Beach in the middle of a recession seemed a good destination and I kissed my wife and daughter good-bye at the Bangkok airport. I had no idea when we might see each other again. The flight was long. I stayed in New York three weeks and then headed south to Palm Beach. Lisa greeted me at the airport. At fifty-five I was almost the youngest male passenger in the terminal.

"Good to see you." Lisa gave me a hug.

"Thanks for having me."

"No problems, just remember it's low season." Low season meant the rich had vacated Palm Beach for more temperate climates; the Hamptons, Duchess County, Tuscany, Switzerland, the south of France, and the more tony zipcodes of New England. "I'm not going anywhere, because I'm broke."

I had $200 in my pocket.

That evening I sent my wife half and my mistress half. Mem will be having my baby in July. I took over a house near Donald Trump's Mar-o-Lago. My job required walking the owners' Airedale. She was a crazy dog. My only social contact here was Lisa and her son Kris. They were bunkered down at her villa on Chilean Place. We watched Euro Football 2008 together, cheering on France, which didn't make the knock-out round. Life was simple. Beach. Walk Pom Pom. Go for a swim on the empty beach. Write my novel about teenage devil worship in the 1960s, eat lunch with Lisa and her loving son Krys, drink beer, then a bottle of cheap wine in the evening. Few tourists ventured this far south on the beach. too many mansions. Better that way for Pom pom, but I craved more humanity and Palm Beach ran short of that commodity any time of the year.

My friend Bruce lived in Miami Beach. Normally the writer resided was in the East Village, however he had rented out his flat to support a life in Florida. I called and invited him up to Palm Beach.

"I'd love to come up." Bruce wrote stories about his sexual adventures with young foreign men. His last book won the Prix de Flore in France. The French had toasted him at Cafe de Flores. He was considered a young artist. Bruce was a little older than me and the mirror loses its youth juice after 50. We both only regarded out shadows at sunset.

"And I'll bring some friends. Two Romanian writers and a young New York one, I think you met at my party." Bruce had hosted a party in honor of a French artist in early May. I couldn't recall the name.

"Young man."

"In his 20s."

"Too old for you."

"Fresh."

My directions were simple. Up I-95 and turn toward the ocean at US 98 after. That Sunday they arrived in a rental car. Bruce was the first out of the car. The writer wore knee-high black sox and a Romanian soccer uniform anonymously tailored by machines to flatter his XXL frame. "Stop staring at the sox. They hide my varicose veins. Yes, even gods get old."

He introduced his friends. The Romanians were my age, however Glenn was a youth. Gay too, but not in that horrible steroid Chelsea gay way.

He shaking my hand and introduced his friends. "Scottie and his wife, Sylvia. They are the best people. Glenn's my slave,"

I idn't ask for an explanation and escorted my guests inside the house. They were impressed by the swimming pool and scared by Pom Pom. She growled a little too easily to be kidding around and I warned them to keep their distance. She snapped at Bruce, until I whispered our secret command.

"Darling, you didn't tell me the mansion had a monster dog."

"Pom Pom is a little crazy."

"Crazy? She tried to bit off my asscheek. Would have had it too if I wasn't so athletic."

"More vicious than crazy."

"Vicious, hah." Bruce was fearless. "I spend twenty years with hustlers on 42nd Street. I know how to deal with tough."

He tamed Pom pom with a slice of cheese. The big dog begged at his side the rest of the day. We concocted a dinner out of my left-overs; pasta, carrotte rapee, toast with cheese. Wine was our drink of choice. Bruce whispered his desires for the driver's wife, although only in the most cerebral of liaisons. After lunch we strolled through a garden path to the beach. Bruce and I walked down to Rod Stewart's mansion. Pom Pom and Glenn in tow. The Alaskan was a good slave. Not Pom Pom.He confided several secrets to me. We had known each other over twenty years. I gave him advice on love.

"A man with a wife and mistress in a foreign country must know the meaning of love."

"I do when I hold my daughter in my arms."

"And when will you go back?"

"I don't know." The sun dropped behind the palm trees. We swam in the ocean. I hadn't been with this many people in nearly a month. Lisa came down from Chilean Avenue for a beer. She was a good laugh. Happy to be away from her Palm Beach friens. Bruce taught Pom Pom tricks. He was the master of ceremony. Palm Beach almost seemed paradise, then it was time for them to go. Bruce pulled me to the side and duked $20 into my hand.

"For some more wine."

"Thanks, I need it." Dixie Supermarket sold big bottles. $7 for 1.5 liter. It wasn't so bad with ice. for I wasn't looking for veritas in vino, but oblivio.

"Darling, everything will be fine. You were arrested. You didn't go to jail. You came here. You still speak with your wife and mistress. You'll be a father again and________"

"And?" I hope for him to say I was a brilliant writer.

"And you're living in a mansion."

"Yes, with a crazy dog." Pom Pom ran up to Bruce seeking a last favor.

"Silly dog." Bruce patted the Airedales's head. "The only cheese I have is under____"

"Spare us."

"If I must." Bruce kissed me good-night and slipped his arm around Glenn. Pom Pom barked good-bye and I waved, as they drove to Ocean Drive. Lisa beeped her horn. I walked over to her car. The sky darkened overhead.

"That was something we never see in Palm Beach. Real people. I can't wait till we get out of here."

"Me neither."

She always talked about selling her house and vacating the USA for Paris, but she like me wasn't gong anywhere, but low season in PB. She backed out on the driveway. Pom Pom and I stood outside for several seconds. Rain splattered down from the now black sky and we retreated to inside the house. It wasn't home, but I didn't need a home in Palm Beach, only a place to rest my head and this house suited that Pom Pom and my needs fine.

ps I still have that jean jacket.

Gator Hole Bar Okeechobee 2008

The world has been changing with the man's desire for mass suicide. Florida's Okeechobee Swamp has been imprisoned by interstates and poisoned by the evil Sugar Barons, such as the Fanjuls. Its water level has dropped drastically in the preceding years of drought.

"In 1970 something a flood lifted off the roof," The beehived bartender of the Gator Hole said through an exhale of smoke. Sun-bleached swamp grass spread across the arid wetlands. "Day like this four years ago we'd all sorts of boats tied up to the docks."

She looked out through the mozzie screens to the boat ramp. Thick algae covered the inlet's surface, fed by the fertilizers of the sugar fields. Dragonflies buzzed through the air. The water was about five feet short of full.

"Pretty low." I drank my Corona. It was cold, but I wished I was back in Thailand with my family.

"Before the rainy season there was no water. Only mud. Gators liked it." She pointed out two baby 'gators hiding under the dock. Their snouts were the size of size 42 boots.

Liza and her son played pool. Their mother-child rivalry was transferred from words to the sinking balls on the table. My old friend from Paris was better than her teenage son. She sunk the eight ball. Krys dropped the cue and went to the jukebox. Jimi Hendricks. Lisa hated the left-handed guitarist.

"I haven't seen a juke box in years." I couldn't recall ever running into one in Pattaya.

"You want another beer?" Lisa waved the cigarette on my face like a wand.

"Sure." She was paying.

I got a handful of quarters and played the best of GRAND FUNK RAILROAD.

"I'm your captain oh yeah."

By the bar Lisa was hugging her son. He hugged her back.

I loved the Gator Hole Bar.

It was all so eternal.

One day in the future it will be under sea water.

2034 I figure, but no one can see into the future and 2034 was a long way from today.

2008 Peter Nolan Smith

Florida’s Ten Thousand Islands

In the winter of 1975 I hitchhiked west from Miami Beach along Alligator Alley. Rides weren't easy, but finally a fruit farmer from Naples gave me a lift through the southern tip of the Everglades.

Nothing, but swamp lined the four-lane highway. No snow birds from the Northeast or Canada wanted to live in these mosquito-ridden boondocks.

The only signs of civilization were the few Indian trading posts promoting alligator wrestling and cold beer. The farmer left me at Everglade City. A sign advertised the Gun and Rod Club. The farmer had mentioned it was worth a visit.

I stuck out my thumb. A GTO took me there.

"Everglade City looks a little beat up."

There was a wide space between houses and buildings.

"We keep gettin' hit by hurricanes. They blow everything' into the Gulf and the Gulf don't give back what it takes." The driver introduced himself as 'Indee'.

"Lands seems high here."

"All old oyster bars. Indians must of ate billions of them. They wuz here before us and my family been here since right after the Seminole War. Number 2 that is." The twenty-two year old driver was the epitome of a backwoods greaser; slick hair, greasy jeans, rawhide muscles under the stained Allman Bros. teeshirt, but he had all his teeth and they gleamed like sun-bleached bones. Mine were more yellow.

"Must almost seem like home."

"Don't know nowhere else. Just this road and that." He pointed to the sawgrass Everglades. "Fishin', hunting', drinkin', whatever."

Whatever encompassed a lot of territory in the Ten Thousands Islands.

The inhabited swamps were ideal for smuggling.

Planes and boats loaded with cocaine and reefer were protected by crackers used to talking to themselves.

"I was thinking of a canoe trip."

"Good, I got one. We'll go into the 'glades."

"I don't have much money." I was heading for San Diego to visit old friends.

"$10/half day. You'll never see anything' like it and you're lucky it's cold, otherwise the skitters would suck your body dry."

"Okay. I read this book by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' THE YEARLING." Two feet off the highway was the setting of her novel about a young boy tragically adopting a deer in Florida.

"I seen the movie. Where Jody has to kill his yearling deer pet. Damn, that mighta been the last time I cried."

"Ah'll see you at 6. Sunrise and the swamps."

The hot rod burned rubber on the dirt and I entered the slightly-musty hunting lodge. It was golden cedar from floor to ceiling. I thought it was out of my price range, but was pleased to hear a room for the night cost $20. I had to sleep someplace and the motels in Everglade City were still recovering from the last hurricane.

After a lovely fish dinner and some cheap wine I stood on the veranda and stared at the darkness of the swamp.

No one lived there.

No one human at least.

I went to sleep dreaming about my canoe ride and woke at 5:50am.

I walked to the observatory at the road's end. A deep green covered the world of very little dry land. White herons flew with the dawn. A flock of flamingos ferreted through the low tide mud.

The smell of bacon drifted on the light air. Breakfast was ready at the Lodge and I turned from the swamp to walk across the trim lawn. Indee sat on the veranda drinking a beer.

A canoe was tied to the dock.

He wore a wide brimmed hat.

I pulled out a Red Sox baseball cap and upon reaching Indee put it on my head.

"Gonna be a hot one."

I bet it will be."

"You know how to canoe?"

"I'm from Maine. I have a Boy Scout merit badge for canoeing and I've shot the rapids of the Saco River."

Mostly as a human log.

"Well, don't that beat it all. We don't have any rapids, but we got plenty of 'gators. The cook made us sandwiches and I got cold beer. You good with that?"

"Very good."

We got in the canoe and cast off from the dock.

A minute later we were deep in the Everglades.

It was a mirrored sea of grass.

From horizon to horizon.

And there was lots of horizon in the Ten Thousand Islands.

THE LAST GO-GO BOY 2008

Americans judge the nation’s fiscal well-being by the rise and fall of the Dow Jones Index, even though Wall Street’s accumulation of wealthy has reaped a mostly negative effect on the vast majority of workers. Next month's bonuses will not add a penny to the buying power of consumers buried under debt and corporations will trim benefits and wages to the bone in order to maximize profit. Other than Occupy Wall Street few employees protest working condition for fear of losing their job.

The economy is still in the shitter and I ask myself what jobs are available for a 60 year-old man.

Very few is the answer.

Years before I had been lucky that Manny always reserved a place for me on West 47th Street, but this year has been the exception. Times are that tough in the Diamond District.

Last month I sold some rings for a gay writer. I flogged his family heirlooms to a black gold dealer in another exchange for the best price possible. Going through Manny would have cut into the final number and the writer needed every dollar to pay his health care bill.

My friend showed his gratitude with a dinner at an Asian fusion restaurant in the East Village. Every seat was crammed with young people enjoying the fast life in the city. These go-getters were my competition in the morning for a subway seat. Luckily these happy-go-lucky youths were not ruthless enough to throw me under the train.

“I never see anyone my age on the subway.”

“Most men our age are retired.” Bruce was a world-known novelist. The heavyweight Syracuse native had won awards in Europe. Critics had recognized his genius. Sales for his last book totaled a little over 2000. “Do you have a retirement plan?”

He ordered with his finger darting over the menu. The waiter paid attention to his every word like he was a seeing-eye dog. Bruce had a way with young men.

“When I hit 70, I'm taking a plane to Norway to rob a bank. I'm going to shoot someone in the leg too so it's armed robbery, then they'll sentence me to 20 to life. I've seen photos of the prison for armed 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?" I had been doing a little non-union extra work for TV shows. The pay was $8 an hour with a meal. Twelve hours added up to almost $85 with overtime.

"Ever think about taking steel pole lessons from strippers? You could always lose ten pounds and work as a go-go boy at the queer retirement home.” Bruce’s biting wit was best suited to attack rather than self-deprecation.

“More like twenty pounds.” December hadn’t been so cold, although a steady diet of stress had melted the fat from my bones.

“Honey, those old wrinklies aren’t so particular about the weight. They like the young flesh.” Bruce had written a book on the rough trade in Times Square. His tricks had called him Papi. None of them were under 20 and he never sunk under 250 pounds.

“A scary thought.” I felt my age and my young Thai wife kept reminding me over the phone that I wasn’t 17 anymore. Mam was 28 and my son was four years-old. I couldn’t quit working until I was 78.

"Those old fags want someone young.” Bruce was a year from Social Security. “None of those old queens in the nursing homes have seen anyone young as you in decades. You could charge the homes $100 a visit, which has to be better for the old geezers than any other medicine.”

“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 cradle. Hell, you could franchise it 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.”

“Supply and demand.” I ordered oysters with seaweed noodles, plus a glass of wine. The waiter was thin and handsome. He had to be 35 years younger than me. He wouldn't think of me as middle-aged. I was almost 60.

“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. The waiter walked away content to know that he would be receiving a 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’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?" She had been unnaturally blonde and thin.

."That's the one. You said she was over 70.”

“That was different.” The heiress had been the publisher of a Florida magazine. We had smoked reefer in her apartment overlooking Lake Worth. The address had been in West Palm Beach. "She wasn't really rich."

"But she had your number." Bruce was fascinated by the sordid.

“How?" The blonde septuagenarian spent part of a good part of her fortune on soaking her body in Botox like it was fondue cheese.

"As I remember it, she said 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 shooting a remake of SUNSET BOULEVARD.”

“It was a mercy mission.”

With the lights off, the curtains billowing with the 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 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 dude ranch college two years ago. He was lucky to have escaped the range without any charge for perversion.

“I know you do.” Bruce was in his 60s. His novels were in every bookstore in the East Village. His tales of hustlers and go-go boys were cult classic within the gay community. His name in in Wikipedia.

All that meant almost nothing. Bruce was forever broke. Same as everyone in America, for the very rich have no use for old go-go boys.

And I know, because wealth has a funny way of making an old man young, but I had a few good years in me yet and one of them would be in Florida.

Maybe Bruce was right and there was only one way of finding out and high season was only a summer away.

Palm Beach Sunday -2008

In June 1 2008 I was living on Palm Beach.

A barrier island off the Florida coast.

So many of the mega-rich had migrated to their summer haunts of the Hamptons, Nantucket, and the South of France that the Sunday night streets of this exclusive resort felt, as if the Khmer Rouge had marched the wealthy into the Everglades for greed re-education. The emptiness was only an illusion.

That evening, as the remaining rich were idling in their mansions, while I bicycled across the middle bridge in a vain attempt to wire by Thai wife $200 via Western Union. Within an hour I discovered that nothing was open on a Sunday night in West Palm Beach.

I was in Purgatory.

I phoned my wife with the bad news.

She asked if I've found a mia noi.

"Mai mee puying suay."

There were no beautiful women on Palm Beach.

Only heiresses whose skin seemed to have been dipped in a Botox dip.

Tight as a turtle's neck.

"Good man." She's happy I'm alone.

"Thanks, I'll send the money tomorrow." I hung up and wandered by bike over to a convenience store. A 24 oz. Modelo beer cost $2 or 60 baht. 5% alcohol. Actually cheap than Thailand, except you can't drink in public, so I rode the bicycle back to Palm Beach drinking from a can in a brown paper bag..

Thankfully Florida has bike paths, but I got a little worried each time the cops passed me, since DWI includes bicycles and golf carts.

I made it back to Chilean Avenue without any mishaps.

No place to buy more beers, so it's to sleep and dream of driving on the wrong side of the road with a beer in my cup holder.

Paradise.

Alligator Protection - 2017

Florida has about 1,000,000 Mesozoic inhabitants i.e. alligators and 800-1000 crocodiles. None exist on Palm Beach, except as shoes, belts, and pocketbooks for the filthy rich, however alligator attacks occur in the Sunshine State and every resident and visitor should know the proper response.

First scream.

Won't scare the 'gator, but it'll alert people to the fact that something bigger than a mosquito wants a chunk of you.

Alligators are stronger than they look, but their eyes are sometimes bigger than their stomach, so fat people can try a Sumo move of the giant reptiles to maneuver the beast onto its back.

Covering its eyes helps because then it can't see you and might forget what it's doing. Alligators have short attention spans.

If its jaws are shut, then smack it in the nose after covering its eyes. That way it won't suspect you were the attacker. Man bite dog theory.

If you are in the jaws, avoid being shaken by holding the gator's both shut, because once you're in the death roll it's all over.

"What happened to Jimmie?"

"He forgot to cover a gator's eyes, while punching it in the snout."

"Was he holding its mouth shut too."

"No, he only had two arms."

For a related article click on this URL

http://www.mangozeen.com/the-demise-of-naked-gay-discos-in-miami.htm

April 26, 1981 - Key West - Journal Entry

FOTO - Capucine and Hiram Keller in Fellini - Satyricon (1969)

Last night in Key West. Hiram and I go to the Monster, a notorious gay disco celebrating the Sexual Revolution. We drink to excess, dance, huff poppers with abandon. I strip to my undies to Sly's TAKE ME HIGHER. No one asks me to go to the toilet. Their radar tells them I'm off-limits, but they relentlessly hit on Hiram. He was the lead in Fellini's SATYRICON. The handsomest man I have ever met.. A movie star after all and a friend who shares all the drugs with me.

We go back to his place. The Bertonis are gone. I shall be gone tomorrow.

Tina, his wife, asks if we had fun.

"Too much," Hiram is a good mood. We both are. They are headed to Hollywood to audition for COUNTRYMAN and I'm going back to New York. I am leaving the same way I came. Hitchhiking.

I shall miss Key West.

The tropical flowers, the pastel colors of buildings, the scent of night jasmine, the pelicans skating on a breeze above the most aqua of waters, the waywardness of a dead-end town like Provincetown or Fire Island.

I've cured myself of my bad habits for now. All my heartaches are gone. I'm ready for more and MORE remain back north.

I will wait for answers.

Below is a postcard of Key West.

An aerial shot.

I would never see that.

I didn't go up in a balloon or fly by seaplane to Dry Tortugas. I will take a bus north to Miami. I saw plenty of subchasers arrive at the Naval Base at sunset. Protecting us some the Cubans and their Black & White TV shows. I really enjoyed to coral isle surrounded by the Gulf Stream. My psyche feels its embrace.

I heard an old-timer say that Key West gets erased every once in a while like the Hurricane of 1935. Everything blown into the sea and they start anew. From scratch. None of the houses have basement only crawl spaces. If you hide something in the Keys, it has to be in the attic. There is only coral stone below. Ah, Key West.

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.

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.

A Lone White Male From Hawaii

Yesterday a lone gunman hid behind a fence obscured by vines at a West Palm Beach golf course owned by Donald Trump, who still considers himself the 2020 president-elect. His hiding place was on the fifteh green.

According to the Secret Service, who were protecting Donald Trump playing a morning round of golf, an agent spotted shooter was spotted a rifle muzzle poking theough the bushes. Shots were fired an a white male fled the scene and escaped in an SUV leaving behind a SKS semiautomatic rifle, basically an AK 47 equipped with a sniper scope. 45 minutes later police stopped the vehicle and the man surrendered without any further gunplay. The 58 year old white male was taken into federal custody and arraigned on various charges. No bail was set at this time.

My sister called this morning to ask my take on this incident, knowing my predilection for conspiracies.

"Inside Secret Service job. Trump is facing prison time. if he goes to prison, the Secret Service agents will have setve shifts with him and none if them want that job. Si they are purposely telaxing their vigilance "

"I knew I could count on you for an off the wall explanation. Thanks."

Of course none of explainhed the financing of the shooter's trip from Hawaii to West Palm Beach, but Ryan Routh has reported a monthly income of $3000. Details are still to be constructed to declarify everything, but Vice Presidential candidate Vance said, "But you know, the big difference between conservatives and liberals is that we have — no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months.”

GOP 2 - Dems - 0.

WICKED YOUTH - CHAPTER 6

Sunny Isles belonged to Miami Beach, but the beach strip wasn’t South Beach with big hotels serving rich tourists with a view of the Gulf Stream. Budget hotels blocked the beach view and once off the strip the swamps ran west to the Everglades. The snowbirds' exodus began before the Spring Break and hit stride on the Monday after Easter end of May was low season. Most of the motels on Collins Avenue sported occupancy signs. There were few takers

Kyla Rolla woke up early for breakfast with her father and looked out the bedroom window. Her father's Cadillac convertible was the only one in parking lot. The fronds of two palms hung listless over the desolate sidewalk. Overhead a cloudless sky. Her hand pressed against. Warm glass. Everyday the weather was the same unlike the South Shore of Boston. Warm, sunny, and warmer with the morning giving way to noon.

The air-conditioner was set at an eternal 71 degrees. A fine spring day in the Blue Hills, but cold to her skin. The slim fourteen year old threw off the blankets and pulled on a thin nightgown over her pajamas. A swift regard in the mirror and her hands smoothed down her blonde hair. Opening the bedroom door she walked down the hallway to the kitchen and opened the front door to pick up the newspaper in the hallway. She placed the Miami Herald on the table.

After buttering two slices of wheat toast and brewing a cup on instant coffee, she called for her father. Several second the forty year-old appeared in the kitchen ready for work selling luxury property from Bal Harbor to Key Biscayne. His tropical suit had been ironed by Kyla as was his white short-sleeved shirt. He smiled and sat down, putting a pack of LUcky Strikes on the table.

He was dying to smoke, but not smoking in the apartment was her one condition for coming down here.

"Good morning."

"Another sunny day."

"Just like yesterday."

"Your mother said it felt like winter yesterday. Cold and rainy." He spoke to her mother every day, mostly before he or she went to work.

"I doubt it ever gets cold here."

In the winter it get into the 50s." He looked at the top of the Miami Herald and said, "Forecast today in 82."

"Just like yesterday and probably tomorrow. Can I come to work with you? I can get dressed in five minutes." All she needed was a shirt, shorts and flip-flops and a bikini and towel in her bag.

"Sorry, I have to drive around a client all day."

"I wish I could come with you."

"It's all business and you would be sitting in a hot car all day, as I deal with buyers and sellers. Not much fun."

"It's not a problem." She buttered the toast and push the plate across the table. After five days she had only been to the airport and Sunny Isles. She had not expected to be trapped in this one road beach town. "I'll go to the beach and then the library. Could I take the bus to Miami Beach one day?"

"The bus. No one rides the bus here."

"I see plenty of people in the bus." The old, Cubans, and blacks. "I know how to be careful."

"Sorry, Kyla, but I don't think it's a good idea. I have to work the weekends, but next Monday we'll go down to Miami Beach and maybe even take a trip down to Key West later in the month."

"Okay."

Satisfied with her complacency he opened the newspaper to the sports page and shook his head. "The Red Sox are going no where this year."

Kyla resisted saying, "Just like me." and saw under the headline that today was May 28. Tomorrow was Sean Coll's birthday. He had said that he would write every day and not a single letter or card appeared in the mailbox. Only bills and circulars, but she had only been here six days. He couldn't have forgotten her this quickly.

He looked up for the newspaper and then glanced down at her bare feet.

“What I tell you about wearing slippers? You leave footprints everywhere.”

“I forgot.” Kyla shrugged and sat down to an OJ and buttered toast.

After a week in Miami Beach their mornings and days had a routine.

“What are you doing today?”“Same as yesterday.” She liked sleeping in bed late, but if she stayed in bed, she would miss this time with her father. This trip was not meeting her expectations. "Finish breakfast, go to the beach, lunch, read in the shade, go for a swim, eat dinner. Watch TV and go to sleep."

"Sorry, I'm working so much." His work had been a big promotion and a large increase in salary. When her father first mentioned moving to Florida for work, she had thought her parents were having trouble, but neither her sisters or she had ever heard them fight. Her mother hadn't wanted to make the move. Her family was in Boston and she had given her blessing to the move by saying, "You go make that money. I'll come down later in the summer."

Kyla had jumped at her father's invitation to accompany him on the move. Florida had sounded so exotic and she had never traveled father than Cape Cod. She would have like to see Sean. They lived in the same isolated neighborhood under the Blue Hills. A bus ran into Lower Mills, where a trolley along the Neponset River connected with the T into Boston, but neither Boston nor Sean were going anywhere.

Now here she was in Florida. All alone all day long. Every night her father came back late from work. Initially she thought he had a girlfriend, but his clothing only smelled of him. Her mother and father had been apart, ever since his transfer to Florida, but they were separated and not divorced. Her mother as a devout Catholic did not believed in divorce.

Kyla bit into the toast.

Her father finished his coffee, picked up his cigarettes, and kissed her on the cheek.

"Have a good day."

The door was shut. Kyla was alone, but there were hundreds, if not thousands of people in Sunny Isles. And not all of them were old.

Damn les Habitants - 2011

My introduction to French was via the heavy accent of a cartoon skunk, who appeared on TV every Saturday morning during the 1950s. Pepe Le Pew never got the girl. Skunks smelled bad and supposedly the French also never bathed with soap. I knew little else of France. That country lay across the Atlantic Ocean, but another France was much closer to my hometown of Falmouth Foresides and that France was Quebec.

The largest minority in Maine was the French Canadians. They worked in the mills and logging camps. A radio station from Montreal played songs for these workers and their families. I listened to the Quebec stations on a ROCKET RADIO, Miniman Model MG-302. Somehow attaching its alligator clips to the metal frame of my bed powered the crystal. I listened to the French music. None of the words had any sense, but several evenings a week in the winter a hoarse voiced announced the hockey games from le Forum in Montreal.

The Canucks in Maine supported the Canadians or 'les Habitants and the team dominated hockey in the NHL, winning six of the decade's Stanley Cups. My father came from an old New England family. We rooted for the Boston Bruins. They always lost to the Habs just like Pepe le Pew never got the girl.

n 1960 my father moved our family from Maine to the South Shore of Boston. My ROCKET RADIO was upgraded to a Japanese transistor and I caught the Montreal station clear of static. The music was changing from smooth to pop led by Francoise Hardy, the Yeh-Yeh Girl.

I bought her 45s in Mattapan Square. The nuns at Our Lady of the Foothills taught us French. I partially understood the lyrics and plotted to meet her one day.

Pop lost favor for rock in the late 60s.

I loved the Sultans' garage rock version of LE POUPEE QUI FAIT NON.

But some things never changed.

The Bruins continued to lose to the Canadians with regularity and the Montreal team captured four Stanley Cups in a row, until the Bruins' Bobby Orr scored a Cup winning goal in 1970. The victory was against an expansion team, the St. Louis Blues, but I didn't care, because this triumph was their first Cup since 1940, plus they had been lucky to avoid the Canadians during the playoffs.

They never lost to the Bruins.

A year later the Bruins were favored to beat the Canadians in the semi-finals. The goalie Gerry Cheever had allowed one goal in the first meeting. It was Easter Week and my three friends and I were driving down to Fort Lauderdale for Spring Break.

We had rented an apartment across from the Elbow Room, famed from the 60s movie WHERE THE BOYS ARE.

Below Washington DC we entered the Deep South. We were longhairs and rednecks hated hippies almost as much as we hated the Canadians.

Our only stops were for gas and food.

Throughout Georgia we listened to WBZ's broadcast of the second game between the Habs and Bs. The Boston-based radio station had a strong 50,000 watt signal. The Bruins went up 5-2 at the end of the 2nd period. The signal died at the Florida border.

In my mind the Bruins were returning to the Stanley Cup. We stopped for complimentary OJ at the state hospitality stop and drove the rest of the night to reach our destination at dawn.

I had never been to Florida and marveled at the palm trees, the Gulf Stream, and co-eds in bikinis.

At noon I went down to the store for beer and picked up the local newspaper, opening the sports section. I blinked several times in disbelief before the printed tragedy hit me with full force.

The Habs had come back from the abyss and scored 5 goals in the 3rd period.

The series was tied at 1-1.

After the Easter break Bruins pushed the Canadians to the limit and lose game 7.

That misfortune was repeated over the next four decades, but in late Spring of 2011 with history on the line the Bruins played the Habs in another game 7. I watched from Mullanes across the street from Frank's Lounge, which does not do hockey.

The teams went into OT tied.

I was ready for the loss, but the Bruins of 2011 were not those of 2010 or 1971. We won the game and I toasted my team with another beer. I was the only Bruins fan in the bar and I lifted my glass to Pepe Le Pew, hoping that he had been lucky to get the girl in the end, because no one loses forever.

Key West 1981

A few palm trees in sight Wavering in the Key West light. High noon on Key West Even in the shade The blinding brightness All horizons so close Key West.

No sailor fears the edge of the world I know no fear I stand on Key West. 95 miles from Cuba.

Swim out South from Straw Hat Beach A hundred yards. Still no fear Stop swimming My feet rest on sand. The sea chest-deep

My tread careful Not to awaken sea monsters Nor tread on a dead fish Nor the drowned bodies of coke pirates Nor sea monsters Are they there? Lurking beneath the waves Asleep beneath a azure sea.

America’s Godzilla A hundred feet of fire breathing monster. Waiting Awakening Burn Miami to ashes. Spare Key West The queers, The conchs, The snowbirds, Fishermen, Tourists, Drunks at Sloppy Joe's Bar and me. Saved from death From a monsters.

We are safe From Strange monsters at the end of US1. Forever asleep.

Florida Postcard 2/28/78

This is a postcard from Florida dated Feb 28,1978. Hilde was on a road trip with her extended family; four of her younger siblings, two step siblings, two dogs, her mother Kate and Joe All in a van. My friend Andy was living at the family's Brookline compound with Hilde's older sister, Therese. He can't recollect that trip, which took place after the great Northern Blizzard of 1978, which buried the Northeast from Buffalo to Boston in over three feet of snow. I lived through that winter in a West Village SRO. 27 WEST 11TH STREET. A single room with linoleum floors warped by too many bare feet. Oh Florida.

Hilde - Dear Peter, I just tramped through the Everglades with sighting a single reptile. Palm Springs is very quaint. Florida is --- Dirty, ugly ( like New Jersey ), boring, and rainy. Cold and rainy. THe Hartnett girls are having a fashionable vacation. Luxury all the way. The van unbearably smells of dogs. Winnie and Damion are restless. Mother and Joe are ____we should have known better. Pray for us. Hilde.

April 24, 1981 - Key West - Journal Entry

Only another three days in Key west. My strength has returned, mostly because I haven't been drinking so heavily and stopped snorting cocaine. Drink and coke were my basic diet while I was working at the Jefferson Theater. Right now I'm sitting on the end of a wharf, watching the sun set into the Gulf Stream . It's flattening as it approaches the horizon. A hippie's flute floats over the distance from Mallory's Pier, where everyone comes to watching the demise of the day's sun like they were extra's in a Thomas McGuane novel.

I shouldn't be so dismissive of the hoi polloi. I am no one and recognize that I am no one.We are all no one's together. The breeze is unbelievably balmy. Wispy clouds are polished silver by the dying rays. Night is coming fast. I am alone. Behind me the stars are popping from the gathering black. I wait for all light to cease, then I go into town.

Last night I ran into Tina and Hiram at the supermarket. I was with Giuliana and Alice. I didn't recognize the star of Fellini's SATYRICON. He looked excessively healthy. He had stopped doing blow. Tina is excessively pregnant. We were mutually surprised to see each other, since we hadn't seen each other since September, when they were living in 256 East 10th Street. One floor above me. They had left to act on a film in Jamaica.

"We were talking about you the other day." The movie star pointed to his wife.

"I was telling how we broke into your apartment with me squeezing under the window gate. I couldn't do that now," she said patting her belly. "Hiram and I are having a baby."

"So I see." I introduced them to Alice and her mother. Guiliana was star struck as would have been any Italian who had met a Fellini star. Alice just thought he was handsome, which was the truth. one of the most handsome men I had ever seen. "How was Jamaica?"

"A war broke out after Seavey won. Manley's gunman from Frenchtown refused to accept the results. "But why don't you come over and we'll talk later."

I went off with my friends to Hilton Haven road. I read a book and planned on meeting Hiram tomorrow. Gianca and I watched TV. He lies on the couch and I rest on the floor with a pillow under my head. Comfortable and sleep came faster than a tropical sunset.

Softer than soft A Key West breeze Carrying the breath of the sea Through the palms To a milk box On which I sit Watching Apollo finish his day's race With the Sun A peace, a crazy peace, touches my soul Creating a Satori state My senses cocaine dead rise from the grave The clouds catch fire Dusk shadows stretch down Duvall From the East Dusk turning to night On the Gulf Stream Soon it will be night.

Key West Light - April 1981

Palms wavering in the Key West light. High noon I hide in the shade My eyes blinded by brightness Maybe it's the light Making the horizon so close As if it were the edge of the world Sailors fear the edge of the world I have no fear I stand on land. Key West. I swim out a hundred yards. No fear The water is only chest-deep My feet rest on sand. Key West of the past I will not awaken any sea monster Nor tread on a dead fish I am scared of sea monsters Lurking under the waves They could be America's Godzilla Waiting awakening to burn Miami to ashes. One must be scared of sleeping monsters Monsters in strange waters at the end of US1.

April 22, 1981 - KEY WEST - JOURNAL ENTRY

Life goes on endelesly on the Key West. I spend my day sunning on the small beach at the end of Duvall Street, ignoring snowbirds' racist conversations and strangers' nasty gossip about distant friends and family. It's the end of Spring Break, so thankfully there are less of them. The color of the Gulfstream cures the senses.

I worry about what I'm going to do upon my return to Manhattan.

No job, no woman, but a million future friends and I'll wander from bar to bar freeloaading vodka and telling everyone that the Jefferson will reopen, although I sincerely doubt it.

Damn, I wish the hick in front of me lathering suntan loition on his tattooed flesh would shut his hole and also that I was deaf, but then I couldn't hear the gentle waves lapping at the beach.

"...you know what I mean, Linda?" he says for the hundredth time.

"Sorry, Billy, but sex is no longer the main drive in my life. If I want to get off, I get myself off. I found masturbation late in life. If I had known about it earlier, I might still be a virgin," said his blonde bikinied companion. The skinny teenager's conversation was why I didn't move down the beach.

"I discover jerking off at 12," the oaf started, until I saw my moment in interject myseslf into their life and interjected, "Hell , it's better than sex and there's no men mess."

"That's right. Only sweet pussy juice." She laughed and the hick scowled at me, asking, "You want to repeat that?"

"I'm not a tape recorder. You heard it the first time," I realized he hadn't understood my words. Dumb as a fence post. Me too, because Linda was so cute. Slightly anorexic, but like Twiggy in a good way, not that I had ever seen a photo of Twiggy in a bikini or in person. I rapped on about being a poet and a drifter and a doper."

Key West used to be home to pirates and smugglers, I don't see any around here."

"There are plenty of smugglers smuggling people and drugs, but they had a big bust here and now everyone is hiding until the DEA go someplace else."

Fuck them and all the Feds," said Billy and I agreed with both of them. This island should have been unindated with cocaine and reefer.

"We're from here and we don't know where to cope," she smiled at me and I thought she might be Peggy Lipton stand-in from THE MOD SQUAD and Billy her Pete. Narcs came in all shapes and colors.

"Probably for the best, becaue i came here to clean up. No drugs, just the sun and the sea." I picked up my things and moved down the beach. Paranoia is a terrible thing to waste.

APRIL 19, 1981 - KEY WEST - JOURNAL ENTRY

It's Easter and I search the streets of Key West for a kindred lost soul. The Bertonis have gone on a snorkeling trip to celebrate the Nailed God's rising from the dead. Giuiliana suggested this was a family outing and I stayed ashore.. I see no one like me. Only soulless tourists. I go into the Sands and have a Daiquiri. Double strength and it's not even noon. After another I show up to an early gay tea dance and grind against hard bodied queers and do poppers. I am a sinner on Easter holiday in the Keys. Fucked up into the bright sunlight without sunglasses. I buy a cheap pair for $5 and stager into Sloppy Joes. Another legendary Daiquiri. I wander over to the fenced Naval base. Mariel boats are piled on each other like the dead. The well-dressed Navy family walks in a row. I was once one of them.

I drink more at the tea dance and resist being queer.

It's easy after a few lines of blow.

It's getting late.

I crossed the bridge over the Garrison Bight and watch the sunset away from the conch madness.

Everything is so flat in Key West.

Flat island, flat streets, flat Gulfstream.

I am so fucked.

DIRTY LOVE BOAT - KEY WEST - APRIL 18, 1982 - Journal Entry

The dirty love boat beached at Duvall Street's eastern end. All its voyages everywhere The Final stop. Key West. Castro refugees fled Havana Keeping boats afloat with prayers, curses And a lot of bailing.

Not one didn't abandon ship Once the dirty love boat stuck sand Not one them are here now And where are these pilgrims?

Not here. Key West The southern terminus of US 1 Two thousand miles south of Ft. Kent Just ninety miles north of Havana.

The Mariel Boatlift ended in the autumn. There never is an autumn in Key West. The refugees came by the thousands. Their abandoned boats are piled Atop other boats in the Navy Yard.

The hippies, homos, and tourists ignore the newcomers. They were transported by immigration to parts unknown Free at last To be detained in Arkansas. Deep inside the Land of the Free.

Key West is a hole in time. The town exists in many decades. I wander the flowered streets Flowing through times beyond my senses. Glad to be away from Manhattan And the cold.

My only conversation are with bartenders. They have had enough of tourists I stand at the end of Duvall Street I sit on the stern of the love dirt boat The wooden wreck smells of hope. I gaze beyond the bikinied teenagers On the beach To the oil tankers on the Gulfstream I stay to myself Stranger to all the strangers Ever watchful for an opening.

April 17, 1981 - Key West - Journal Entry

The Bertonis' rental house in Key West is cool. I have my own bedroom and Guiliana and here daughter cook our meals. Giancarlo, the NYU's head anesthesiologist, chills at the beach reading and smoking weed we buy off the street. It's nothing special, but he likes it that way. I devote my early afternoons to drinking at the Green Parrot and Sloppy Joe's before the tourists flood the legendary bar.

After three days I come to a series of conclusions; firstly this end of the road island is filled with hippies drawn to the myth of an end of the road town closer to Cuba than America. Key West has clean air, a metaphysical sea, a welcoming air of transiency, but the long hairs are stuck in 1968-1972 wit the Summer of Love locked in their hearts. There is no punk music on the juke box, plus these hippies are aging as badly as their ragged clothing like they had just been released from Drug rehab in Kansas to recover their battered senses. I wish them luck.

Secondly the women are unattractive. Locals, transients, and tourists.

The gay community are as time -locked into the haydays of the Haight. None of them seem aware of the killer stalking their clan. having seen James Spicer died of an unknown disease in 1978, I filly aware of the future and am scared for my brothers. This will be bad, but why not dance before Sodom burns.

Next A-15s and Phantom Jets rip off the Naval Air Base tarmac to patrol the DMZ straits separating the USA from Communist Cuba. The Cold War full-tilt. Strangely for such a heavy military presence there are no whores walking Duvall Street.

I've drunk at all of Duvall Street's bars and dives. Hemingway's fishing locals work his myth to the bone without a single customer smelling of fish stink, although tens of boats set out every morning with sports fishermen searching a fighting sailfish on the reel. I don't talk with anyone, but the bartender and that's usually just to order a drink.

I came here for relaxation. Swim in the sea, watch the sunset, get drunk, and be with the Bertonis. I sleep like the dead and my body is recovering from the excesses of the Jefferson Theater. No cocaine for a week now.

The only beautiful females are Midwest high school teenagers on holiday with their obese parents. Happy now unaware of their fate.

The police presence is heavy. They regard every tourist as a potential criminal ready to be hauled into the justice process. NO TRESPASSING and NO HITCHHIKING signs are everywhere. I obey them, but if some hick local seeks trouble, I will help him find it. Damned the jails.

Lastly there are hardly any beaches here. The locals tell the tourists of sharks. I haven't seen a single dorsal fin, but the hotel at the end of Duvall Street barracudas rule the flood-lit water at night. Strangely there are no tales of 'cudas attacks from these vicious sea creatures.