Journal Entry - June 22, 1977 - Gaslight Pub - Park Slope

Last night the improv class at Hunter College was crazy, as Chuck, Carla, and I created another version of STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE about trannys. Carla went home with her ex-husband. I headed back to Brooklyn. No one from Manhattan wants to bridge or tunnel to that borough.

At the Gaslight Pub the crowd was in full swing. Robert, a lanky blood, and his Italian cohort, Rabbit, were fighting over the split of a stolen IBM typewriter.

"60/40." Rabbit offered without a smile

"70 for me and 30 for you. Truthfully I don't know why I'm giving you a cent. I stole it."

"Because I carried it here."

"How much you want?" I asked knowing they cost about $500 brand new.

"$100," Robert said quickly. "They cost more than that."

"This one is used. $55 is my one and only offer."

"Fuck that, I'll smash it the street before I let you rob me."

I plugged in the typewriter. It worked like a dream.

James slumped against the bar. It was 2 AM. He had drunk like it was 6pm. I told him the story. He gave me $100. "Get it. Try and get it for less. Those two are junkies. It's late. They need a fix."

I approached with money in hand.

"Rob you. Go fuck yourself. I'll give you $60. Are we down?"

"Yes," they said as a team. I cuffed them $60.

Can you make it $80."

"Not a chance."

They gave me the typewriter.

We drank till closing and every moment Rabbit was jealous of James hitting on Robert.

They might have been junkies, but they were still in love adn love will conquer all for a junkie except for desire.

And a desire not for love.

Journal Entry June 11, 1977

I sleep phenomenal lengths of time. 2AM to 1PM. My dreams cascade into more dreams. A sign of definite depression. At first I liked the refuge, but I can't stand wasting so much of the day, taking me further and further from writing and making me a bullshit artist.

James Spicer drinks too much has to stop his nightly excursions into my bedroom, otherwise I'll leave his Park Slope apartment. Fletcher fears for my sexuality and alludes to James' wanting me is the same as my wanting Ro, despite her unrequited love. In either case I hold no guilt or cast any blame on James or Ro. I wish I could speak with her to protect me from my somna addiction.

Work at the executive dining room normalizes some of my days. To be nothing and if I write I will be accomplishing something.

The last two days I have done nothing.

What am I doing in New York?

Damned if I know now. This city owes me nothing and I am alone. A few months ago I wanted that, but solitude is a pathetic route to cut off my past, but I won't return to Boston. I am here and should work on staying here, for as long as I need to be.

Only the acting lessons on Tuesday and Wednesday offer any importance in my life, but if things don't work out here, then I do have an out. Nona has offered me a place in California. I need $500-600. I wish she had contacted me before I came here.

Journal Entry June 11, 1977

James' drinking hasn't lessened a single degree, in fact it has worsened over the last few days. Mark Amitin said that James was terribly infatuated with me, which was the main cause of his insane drunkenness. Looks like I'll have to head north or west sooner than I thought, because of this unstable environment. No way I will submit to his lust. Moving will suck, but there's little else I can do for both our sanities.

Fletcher was right.

I have been living on unemployment, but need to get a job. Mark and I are trying to work out something on his ALBEE DIRECTS ALBEE project. I need something now. James' obsession is intolerable.

I'll write a story about it and then beat feet, if I get enough money to go west.

Arggh!!!

Everything I do is so fucked up.

No, the world is fucked up.

Me too.

LATER

Ro and I meet on Brooklyn Heights, our first time since her return from Paris. She and I explained how we feel, and then argue. Two counter-forces easily able to pull away from each other. Ro can be as vicious as she wants to be, however it's not as effective as before, when whatever she said crippled me.

"Why do I always have to define my relationship with you. I never have to do that with Kirk."

"That's because Kirk is gay."

"His being gay doesn't make me not love him. I don't need sex from him. Only love."

She is content within his circle of friends and it's obvious that there's nothing sexual between them, which should make me accept her dependence on those, who don't threaten her.

"Unlike me."

As we stood before 51 Remsen Street, I told her that I would try and not see her again. She answered, "I don't know why, but I've always seen you whenever you asked to see me."

She was right, but we continued to fire salvos at each other and I said, "After our first month you became unapproachable. Any movement to get close to you was doomed to failure, but in that hopelessness came freedom to do as I chose, regardless of my losses. I was hurt, but too used to being hurt had its advantages. I see the blows coming before they hit or hurt and I can live with that."

She climbed the stairs and said, "Masochist."

"I'll be back for more. Promise."

May 26, 1978 East Village - Journal Entry

Tonight is the big Gemini party. The four of us invited everyone we knew in New York. Not everyone likes everyone and Kim is scared there will be fights. I tell her not to worry. I'll be the birthday bouncer. I think she was worried about me fighting. My guests are Bruce, Lewis, who couldn't get into CBGBs last night, Ro, Alice, William Lively, RR, Pud, Klaus Sperber, Anthony with Cookie, Willem, Clare Hartnett, Michael Stumm, Fred and George from the SRO, I invited more men than women, but not everyone is 100% straight. Should be fun,

LATER

I was momentarily saved from temporary destituition by Mark's timely letter saying that an unemployment check arrived from the Boston School Committee. James Spicer had lied to me and Mark Amitin said, "He stole several checks, so it looks like you don't owe him any back rent for that place on Park Slope, but he asked if you still have his typewriter."

"Fuck him. He stole over $250 and lied every inch of the way. Plus I repaired the typewriter.

Mark took my side, at least to my face and said, "Then it's yours."

"We both got what we wanted."

"Not really, James wanted to sleep with you.

"Not a chance." James was still attractive. In the 50s he had fucked James Dean. All he got from me was to drunkily oil my feet like Mary Magdalene did at the Last Supper for Jesus according the the New Testament."

James has gone from moderately heavy drinking to serious drinking and Mark said, "He's headed to drunk's grave. He's looking like shit. The curse of the Irish."

We Irish do drink to exces, although I don't know, if it's a genetic curse or how we dealt with the British oppression. My drinking worries me, but I'll stop worrying, when I stop drinking.

My first drink was with Paul Keenan. Dry Vermouth samplers from his father's liquor stash in their basement. In sixth grade he and I raised our desks to take a slug under the noses of the nuns. I never really got drunk until freshman year at Xaverian. Dave Quann drove his family station wagon down to Horseneck Beach. It was packed with us two, my brother, my next door neighbor Carl, Phil Milan, Kenny Doyle, and Charlie Carr. At the beach we mixed Bourbon with pepto-bismol. I got so drunk that they had to secrertly carry me up my stairs to my bedroom like I was a wounded soldier fleeing the victors. Inatead of bleeding I puked pink for three days. My father knew what ailed me and patted my stomach. More puke.

After that adventure I drank in moderation until I left high school. Those last three years were so pure. CYO and Surf Nantasket dances, school, never any homework, track, no friends, Janet Stetson as my girlfriend, the Smith-Menconi feud over Ava Gardener, church every Sunday to hide my atheism, dry humping Janet, we never went all the way, I lost my scholarship failing German and religion, but my mother wanted me to go to a Catholic school. I hated it.

But I didn't drink.

Recently I wrote my mother a letter. When I went up to Boston we sat at the kitchen table and she said, "I read your letter. "I'm so sorry. I didn't realie how unhappy you were. I feel like I was a bad mother to not have seen it."

"You weren't a bad mother and I hide my pain from everyone. I never told anyone about it. The one place I felt safe from here. With my family. Outside was very different. I was never safe there except for with Sister Mary Osmond, Brother Karl, and Janet. Everything else dangerous."

But I had books as my refuge.

With them I could go anywhere other than here.

LATER

Today is the first summery day; high cloudless blue skies and a warm wind from the south carrying the scent of the sea deep into Manhattan. I am tempted to hitchhike up to Cape Cod and crash in the dunes south of Provincetown. Take the subway to Pelham Park in the Bronx and stick out my thumb on I-95. I could be in Truro before sundown. I haven't been there in two years. I ask Alice if she wants to go.

Her reply, "You must be crazy."

No, I'm not crazy nor beserk nor mentally challenged. Most of the Cape is very white. Very unfunky. I doubt if there are any punks there. BC students off-seasoning as a summer cops. BU coeds serving fish to old tourists. Mashpee Indians, the Silent Minority, glowing in the sun like martini drunk lobsters, Points of interest tourists on holiday for two-week holidays away from the rut of the work cycle, hackneyed scenery artists selling seagull paintings, homos and dykes in P-town, hippies and the really rich on Martha's Vinyard and Nantucket. Miles and miles of beaches covered by teenage sunworshippers happy tobe where they were at this stage of their life as long as it wasn't raining,

Cape Cod was not Times Square. No hustlers, whores, runaways, pimps, narco pigs, and thieves, or junkies. I feel comfortable in either place. I can't go anywhere. The Gemini party is tomorrow. I am a new me in New York, still a New Englander, my accent is unmistakable and my thirst for violence comes from teenage battles with everyone from Southie and beyond. My friends here regard me as an anomaly. Rough trade James Spicer once said.

Who cares? .

Maundy Thursday

In 1977 I lived in Park Slope with James Spicer. The silver-haired jazz impressario representing several jazz stars only charged me $120 for a room in the spacious townhouse. We drank up the street at the Gaslight Pub. James thrived on the streetwise clientele and I sparred with a Frenchman for pinball supremacy. Michel the French bartender was better with the flippers, while I mastered the machine's bump and grind without tilting the ball. James drank hard and heavy, hitting on the young Irish thugs frequenting the old school bar. It wasn't unusual for him to get up in the morning with a black eye. He had a thing for rough trade.

Late on an April night I woke in my room. James knelt by the bed, anointing my feet with oil.

"James, what the fuck are you doing?"

"I thought you might like this. It's Maundy Thursday."

"So?"

"You're a bad Catholic." James disapproved of my atheism. "The word comes from the Latin Mandatum, ceremony of the washing of the feet."

"By Mary Magdalene?" I didn't recall her having anything to do with Jesus' fatal visit to Jerusalem.

"No, no, no, that was early in the New Testament. "Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair." That was that time, but this is before the Last Supper. The washing of feet was by Lazurus' sister."

"James, thanks, but I really would like to go back to sleep."

"Sure, I understand you have no traditions." The forty year-old New Yorker stumbled from my bedroom and I wiped the oil from my feet.

I haven't had my feet oiled since, but across the world Catholics and Christians annually celebrate Maundy Thursday, on which Jesus hosted the Last Supper and washed the Apostles' feet to demostrate the sanctity of humiity."

In Luxembourg children wander the streets with wooden clappers calling the faithful to church.

Throughout Western Europe and America bishops bless holy oils for the sacraments.

None of these rites can compare with the ablution of a drunken gay man.

It was an act of love.

World AIDS Awareness Day

In the Fall of 1978 I was hired as security at an uptown punk disco uptown. The job paid $100 a night and free drinks from the gay bartenders. I came home from Hurrah smelling of cigarettes, beer, and perfume. Alice slept on the bed. I crashed on the couch.

Late one night a doctor from NYU Hospital called our apartment and reported that James Spicer was dying from pneumonia. Alice had never met Jim and she was angry that I was leaving her alone. I couldn’t blame her, mostly because I had been seeing a blonde model from Buffalo. My promise to come back soon sounded phony even to my ears.

Arriving at NYU, I discovered an empty hospital ward and that the nurses were reluctant to enter Jim’s room. An Italian doctor explained in the corridor, “Gay men have been dying of pneumonia. We can’t say why. The nurses call it ‘gay men’s disease’.”

"It's the first I've heard of it."

"You want to wear a mask?"

"No, I want him to see my face." I sat by James' bed without any fear, as he coughed like he was giving birth to a lung.

He opened his eyes at midnight and said, “You?”

“Who were you expecting? Cecil Taylor?”

"No, he’'s scared of what I have and I don't even know what it is.” ” His skin was drawn tight to his bones.

“Well, I’m here.”

“Yes, you’re here. Old what’s his name?” He drifted back to sleep and I whistled jazz lullabies during

the long night. As the eastern horizon offered a dark silhouette of Brooklyn, Jim asked with a startled horror, “Where am I?”

“In the hospital.”

"Am I dying?" His eyes asked for the truth.

“Not right now.” It was as much the lie as it was the truth. “I’m just here to keep you company.”

“You weren’t much of a writer, but you were a good story teller. Tell me one now. Something with a happy ending.”

I recounted breaking up with Kyla, trying to make it funny. Jim laughed at the right and wrong places, his lungs hacking out bloody phlegm.

“What about the happy ending?” he asked with a rasping breath.

“Pal and Kyla had kids. They’re still married.”

“And you have me.”

“We have each other.” I patted his hand and upped his morphine drip.

At dawn his mother and father arrived from Florida. His parents were good people with a loving son unable to live in a small town. Jim nodded for me to leave them alone. He had things to tell them.

I descended to the basement cafeteria for chocolate milk and a bagel. Nothing had ever tasted so good and when I got back to the ward, Jim’s parents sat crying on plastic chairs. I was sure that he had passed at my moment of delight from my breakfast. I touched his cold skin and left the hospital.

It was good to be alive.

“Where have you been,” Alice asked, as I entered the apartment. She had been up for a long time.

“I told you at the hospital.” The smell of dying was on my flesh.

“James.”

"Yes."

Three days later I attended Jim’s funeral memorial on Washington Square. Merce Cunningham eulogized him. Cecil Taylor played a dirge. Hundreds of people showed up. No one knew the real cause of his death.

It was 1979.

The next night I stayed over with Lisa. I didn’t call Alice. She was gone by the time I returned to our apartment.

James Spicer was my first AIDS death. Many others followed through the years. Funerals were regular reunions for the living and we wondered who was next to fall.

The disease took my baby brother in 1995.

Michael Charles Smith lives in my head and sometimes in my dreams as do my friends.

No Guns For Me

When I first arrived in New York, a gay jazz pianist friend of James Spicer, offered me a .38 on Christopher.

"No, thanks."

"No, thanks?" CT was small. He carried a piece for protection. New York in 1977 was very dangerous for man, woman, and in-between. "Someone like you needs a gun."

CT thought of me as rough trade, but I was planning on being a poet.

"If I had a gun, I would shoot every skell on the street." I lived in Park Slope. Thieves outnumbered citizens after dark. They were violent, but I came from the West of Ireland and every young thug in Boston was taught to fight. Running was never an option. "I've never broken the 5th Commandment and I don't plan on doing so in this city."

"Suit yourself." CT slipped the pistol into his leather jacket and walked off toward the river. The bars along West Street had a bad reputation. Sex was hard-core and a .38 wouldn't make anyone kiss and hug. I headed off to the Bowery. The Ramones were playing at CBGBs. Merv checked everyone for guns. The punk club was as safe a dive as you would get on the Lower East Side and no one shot anyone there.

And that was a good thing.

Letter To A Legend

mr. cecil taylor I was walking down the street the other day and found myself engaged in conversation with the construction foreman renovating the house next to yours. Having worked in metal we spoke about scrapping rust from the ironwork on the stoop as well as our health. Both of us are in our early 60s and still work blue collar jobs. I live on South Oxford between Lafayette and DeKalb and we discussed property prices. I told him that in 1976 I had lived over of Berkeley Place. We rued not having the funds to purchase a house back in those days and he mentioned that a pianist was living next to the construction site. “Cecil Taylor. He plays jazz.” “I’ve heard the name.” I didn’t say much else, but I’m writing this letter because I had met you back in 1976-77 through James Spicer. I had shared that apartment on Berkeley Place with the silver-haired impresario until a friend of mine from the Gaslight Pub robbed too many banks one weekend. I found less unsettling digs in the East Village, but remained in contact with James. One night in 1978 I received a phone call from NYU. James was very sick. I sat with him for hours, singing songs. The doctors had no idea why he was dying from pneumonia. He wasn’t scared, except at the dawn, then he calmed down as I whistled FAVORITE THINGS. Probably off tune. I recall you being a big Knicks fans. I came from Boston. I’m still a Celtics fan, but I have a nice Knicks bag for you. Good for carrying sheet music. Last time I saw you play was at the Ocean Club. Please get in touch, otherwise you can find me at Frank’s Lounge and ask for Pete the Boston white guy’. They know who that is. Peace Peter Nolan Smith 347-822-7001 ps listening to "Imagine the Sound" I finally get it. To view IMAGINE THE SOUND, please go to the following URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP5L8tjnB6w