September 2, 1978 - Journal

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

There was a dial tone.

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

"I don't like ginger ale."

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

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

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

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

Photo by Peter Bennett.

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AUGUST 13, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

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

"Yes, slave."

"But you can't watch."

"You want me to take off the rope?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alice looks out the window of the back bedroom.

"It's raining."

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

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

AUGUST 13, 2021 - JOURNAL ENTRY - CLINTON HILL

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

I don't know. I guess top."

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

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

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

"Nothing really strikes my fancy."

Nik and the old lady read through the menu.

"No, no, definitely no."

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

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

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

"Nope, I'm vanilla."

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

And I didn't forty-two years ago.

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

Hand Bondage Foto by Joana Kruse

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August 3, 1994 - East Village - Journal Entry - Dmitri Turin

When I caught a ride with my sister Pam to attend Debbie Greer's funeral, I didn't tell anyone in New York where I was going. After the service we went to her house in Virginia. Her husband, an Army artillery major, was rightly distraught as was my sister-in-law and her family and friends and CIA co-workers. Her boss, the CIA director suffered from the same disease and there were already rumors that their illness had been caused by radio waves aimed at CIA headquarters by the Russians. The CIA agents huddled in groups and spoke secretively amongst themselves. I avoided any contact. They all looked like squares and I couldn't imagine these Ivy Leaguers skilled at anything other than transforming cocaine into crack to finance the Contra War in Central America, ordering assassinations if Muslim militant leaders, and the torture of those damned to know something about nothing. We left before the arrival of President George Bush, for whom Debbie has also worked as secretary. She was a good soul.

Her mother Zsa Zsa thanked me for coming and I said my goodbyes.

It rained all the way back to New York.

My sister dropped my at the George Washington Bridge and I caught the downtown A train.

Arriving at my East 10th Street apartment I checked my answering machine and heard calls from Rick Temerian and our Tante Jane asking me to call them. I thought that maybe Jane's step-mother had passed in Maine, but a phone call to Rick told more tragic news.

Dmitri Turin had ODed and already been waked and buried up in New Hampshire across the Connecticut River from his famed stepfather's residence.

"Dead?"

I had thought that Dmitri like myself were immortal, despite our self-destructive behavior. His had been a demon on a bike. The Russian-born son of a KGB colonel had survived numerous motorcycle accidents and had been clean for months. Dmitri was cut out of a 1960s biker movie, but never sought to join a gang, although he was friendly with the Hells Angels and every other biker in New York and Beyond. The English bike enthusiast even let me ride along with his Scottish partner Hugh on my Yamaha XS 650. He was a benevolent soul.

I met him through my East End friend Nickie Banks, a true Cockney lad, when the East Street crowd formed across from the burnt out blocks below 6th Street. My stripped down to the bones dependable Yamaha was a English bike wannabe. We called it the Road Warrior. Its top speed was 86 MPH on the after midnight rides from my place of employ, the Milk Bar, down the Westside Highway around Battery Park and north up the FDR with the East River on my left. I was free.

Inspired by Dmitri's long rides to Deadwood and bike rallies, I solo drove up to Maine on several occasions, keeping off the highways. We were all bike Buddhas, although none more than Dmitri, whose faithful canine bitch, Wilbur, rode atop his Triumph's tank.

One night the bike crew arrived at the Milk Bar minus Dmitri. Several minutes later Wilber showed up in a state of distress. Hugh jumped on his Norton and roared off to retraced their path to find Dmitri and his bike sprawled on a nearby street. He was uninjured, except for a few scraps, and blinked himself into awareness. Everyone laughed at Hugh's recounting the story, especially about his asking about Wilbur. They were inseparable.

I retreated down into the bar and drank myself into a drunken state. I drove back to the East Village the short way, right across 10th Street. I wasn't taking any chances. Indestructible or not.

In the winter of 1989 I left the faithful Road Warrior in Florida and sold my Triumph to Rick to pay my rent for a junkie subleasee during an extended stay in France. I regularly saw Dmitri and Hugh, but I was strictly a pedestrian.

The bike shop on East 6th Street flourished under the two partners. Everyone loved them for their laissez-faire professionalism. Dmitri started shipping Harley-Davidsons to Russian millionaires and was known for his writing in IRON HORSE. Everything seemed to be going his way.

Loving wife, two kids, a famous stepfather, travels to Russia, his famous stepfather's return to Rodina, but things were never what they seem on the surface.

In 1990 I traveled the world, riding bikes in Indonesia and Thailand.

I saw Dmitri the Sidewalk Cafe on Avenue A.

Above the bar a huge mural portrayed the Sixth Street bikers. Dmitri was immortalized for the moment. We fantasized about international sagas. London to Singapore. Across Africa from Nairobi to Dakar. East from Moscow to Kamchatka. These dreams were easy to believe on drugs. It was the 1990s and I was still in my 30s.

Every year i took off around the world. Bikes were part of the thrill. In 1994 I went to the shop with a friend seeking a vintage Triumph. Something was different. The place was more popular than ever, but the crowd was disheveled and hollow eyed. Heroin. Everyone was jacked on dope, except for Dmitri. He was proud to have been clean for months. He looked tanned and healthy for the first time in years. I had done some pink in Penang with two rickshaw drivers, but nothing since. I was almost straight after six months in the Orient, although still a drunk.

Randy bought a Thunderbird 500 cc. I bid Dimi goodbye without saying that I was going up to Boston to drive my older brother's two children to their aunt's funeral in DC. That sad affair had me dreaming of the mosques of Samarkand. Dmitri needed to hit the road. So did I.

Tante Jane told me about Dmitri being found in the bathroom by his wife. OD. I was pissed that I hadn't been at the funeral and vowed to visit his grave.

The next summer I drove to Maine the long way with Ms. Carolina, my married mistress, in her Lexus. Up along the Housatonic River along the Berkshires across lower Vermont to his grave in Claremont, NH. It was quiet. Grass covered the grave. Putney VT lay across the river. His mother lived there with his famous stepfather. The land of his exiled childhood. Funny Claremont NH had a Russian cemetery. Ms. Carolina cried. She had never met Dmitri. I shook my head. This fate awaited us all and I poured vodka over his grave and told Dmitri I was bound for the road. Destination unknown.

July 16, 1978 - Providence - Journal Entry

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

On a train to Boston with Alice.

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

Providence.

Amtrak stop.

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

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

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

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

"I wish I had bigger."

"Not me, I like them small."

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

"Maybe."

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

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

I even forgot that I need to fuck.

Foto Old Union Station - Providence

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July 13, 1986 Journal

revised 12/27/2027
A dream

I'm trying to get into my old room at home in Boston. Some of my things are still there. Behind me the door opens and a young man with a shotgun comes to me. Then he stands before the door and hands over the gun. I twirl it over my head and then I'm on my moped next to a broken down car someplace on a highway. Several moments later the moped is dead and falls apart

Poem

Lena and me
On the A train to Times Square
Sliding my thigh between yours
Denim on denim
Skin beneath the denim
The A train rocks on the track
We stand
At the end of the car
Only a few passengers
We don't care if they look
We are lost
In this act
Your hand on my crotch
My cock underneath the denim
The train shutters into Times Square
Stops
We don't stop
Lena bites her lip
As we dry hump
Doors open
All the passengers off
Doors shut
No passengers on
Only us
The A train
Screeches out of Times Square.
Lena shuts her eyes
Moan
Stutters a moan
Lena and me
On the A train__

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July 3, 1978 Journal Charleston West Virginia

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Is that all there is?"

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

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

LATER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What do you think?"

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

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

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

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Much more to come. t

JUNE 30, 1978 JOURNAL ENTRY

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

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

Alice says she will help.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Later

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

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

Teenage Jesus and the Jerks

I woke up dreaming

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 21, 1977 - Park Slope - Brooklyn

Throughout the night David the super of Berkeley Place played Got to Give It Up (Part 1) by Marvin Gaye over and over again very loud. James rolled into the apartment at 3:30 and pounded on Hazel's wall and the ceiling above his room.

"Shut that shit off."

He put on a tape of the World Saxophone Quartet - Point of No Return. I preferred Marvin to Hamiet Bluiett, Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake and David Murray, but wasn't anything better to fuck with the neighbors, especially David, who turned off his stereo.

Around noon I spoke with Ro to arrange an afternoon rendezvous. She promised chaos. We met at the Riviera Cafe in the West Village. I ordered a vodka-tonic. She had water.

"I'm leaving for Paris to study painting at Beaux Arts."

"When?"

"Soon."

"Then I'll have to get a passport."

"You're coming to Paris?"

"Why not? Flights are cheap. Don't worry I won't bother you there."

She looked at me as if she wasn't so sure about that, but Libby was in Paris. She couldn't be that hard to find."

This evening I had tried to seduce Libby's friend Karen at the Rainbow Room. We danced in a very erotic way. my though between hers. We were both turned on, but she finally shoved me away, saying, "I can't. I have a boyfriend. I'd feel miserable if I did anything with you."

"I understand. I'm very used to being alone."

"It's not that I don't want to, but my roommate is at home, otherwise I couldn't trust myself."

"There's always the bathroom here."

She shut her eyes and said, "Okay, it's not like I'm going to be with my boyfriend forever."

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 31, 1978 - East Village - Journal

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

Later

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

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

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

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

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

"I got Cookie."

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

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

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

"Agreed.

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

Later

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

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

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

The Red Sox in first___

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

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

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

May 30 1992 - Bangkok - Journal

Two mornings ago I was making an overseas call at the phone booth in the Malaysia Hotel. A young bearded man entered the lobby with two young ladies. I had last seen Dice in Kathmandu 1990 after a ten-day trek to Lantang Glacier. Upon departure westward to Europe I had told Dice, if he was ever in Bangkok, then he should stay at the Malaysia Hotel and there was a good chance, if the Hawaiian passed through Bangkok next year I might be at the Malaysia Hotel. Room 203 overlooking the swimming pool. Dice was a no show in 1991.

One late night in May 1992 I was in the hotel lobby making an overseas call to my parents and spotted Dice. Two go-go  girls in tow. Upon seeing me the thirtyish Hawaiian called out, "Pascha."

My Oriental pseudonym.

Dice was just in from Nepal and a long night at the go-go bars. He was having breakfast in the hotel's restaurant, which offered a restorative American breakfast. The girls were very happy. Thais are always hungry.  

"Then sleep. I'm sending these girls home. They have probably had enough of me. I'll see you later."

We rendezvoused that afternoon at Kenny's Bar on Soi Si Bamphen. We drank Singhas that day, which was my 40th birthday.

After a few beers at Kenny's we told some girls we would be back after dinner and wandered over to the Chandrphen Restaurant, a top-notched Chinese chicken restaurant across from the Lumpini Muay Thai boxing stadium, where we finished off a bottle of small bottle of Mekong whiskey. The waiters invited us to a comedy club. I was drunk enough to allow myself to be dragged on stage by a troop of improvisers. They mocked me, but I grabbed the mike. I have no idea what I said, but I thought it was funny the Thai audience laughed at the farang fool.

Finally I was thrown off the stage gently. Todd said, "You're natural ham."

We were late for the rendezvous at Kenny's and rode a tuktuk over to Patpong. Despite being my birthday I wasn't in the mood for whoring. Maybe Bangkok's wild fun doesn't glitter as wickedly coming from Indonesia, instead of New York. Maybe it's all part my monastic onanism. I had passed through Bangkok three times this trip without bar-fining a single Go-go girl. The old age truck has hit me so hard. 

40 and overweight. I don't know how many more years I've got to go. Decades I hope.

No pension plan. No retirement cabin. All I have two written books, a script, thirty or so journals, an East Village apartment, and a crapped-out Yamaha 650 on the sidewalk outside on the East 20th Street sidewalk, unless someone had stolen it in my absence.

Of course I also had my fading good looks and by the time I reach California I'm going to be in tip top shape ready for the conquest of the modern world of the West.

As I packed to check out of the Malaysia Hotel, I listened to Velvet Underground on a cassette player. NOTHING AT ALL. I won't be coming back here until next year after working at the Diamond District from September to January. Any possibility of my earning any cash from writing was probably decades away. My typing sucks and my spelling is worse.

Two days ago I had gone down the Victory Square. Hundreds of thousands of young people had been protesting for weeks against the military rule for weeks without any violence. The hometown troops would not shoot their neighbors friends and family. The generals ordered troops from the country. The fascists called the demonstrators communists and gave the order to shoot to kill. The rural Isaan soldiers killed hundreds of their countrymen to prevent democracy. But nightlife in Bangkok remained open under the harsh rule of High Society over Low Society. The murderous crackdown stilled the revolution. The King and his family were once more saved by the Army.

Today Bangkok remains under martial law. 

I'm catching a bus to the South island of Koh Phi Phi. 14 hours overnight.  

I wonder when I'll into into Dice again.

ps Dice aka Ty Spauling aka Todd and I remained friends since then. We have met in Paris, New York, Hawaii, LA, Whitby Island, San Francisco, and lived together in Ballyconeeley, Galway in 1997. The best of friends.

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Much more to come.

Journal Entry - May 29, 1983 - Paris

A journal entry from 1983

My 31st birthday party at Jurgen's house on Rue de la Tour with Bridget, Tony, Tracy, Alfredo, Karine, Diana, Olivier, T, Rufus,David, Philip Brook, everyone absolutely smacked out on Persian brown. Julie Cole was the only straight person. The less about this evening the better.

Tony later said, "Anyone who can survive a birthday like yours deserves to be at the next one."

The next entry is about hanging with Willie DeVille and Countess Gudmilla von Bismarck morning Jurgen, Willie, and I retreated to Willie's room on the Grand Boulevard. Willie shot up in the bathroom not wanting to show the damage to his arms. I had seen them the previous night. Bad. Real bad.

Jurgen nodded out and we spoke about East Village junkies, his feud with the Rolling Stones, the betting odds on Johnny Thunders OD, vomiting on stage, my battles in the night, and his many attempts to stop heroin. We crashed without a care for nothing but more.

Thankfully Jurgen had more.

Jurgen, a German telex criminal, was a good friend with Kalle Swensen. The Black King ruling the biggest brothel in Hamburg. The Eros Center.

I worked for them at BSir's.

Good money until in December SS Tommy presented a bill of 20K Deustchmarks for sleeping with a blonde lingerie American model.

Stephanie.

"I didn't know she was working. She had been Jurgen's girlfriend.

"Everyone in Hamburg is working for someone."

SS Tommy was a murderer and I gave the keys to my orange VW which two weeks before I had driven into the forest with Philippe Kroechey, a Paris DJ screaming we were being chased by zombies.

The car was still in the forest. Prisoner of a tree trunk. I handed over the keys to the VW, promising to settle the rest of the debt in the morning. I went to my apartment in Mittelweg, and called Stephanie.

No answer.

I packed a single bag with books, clothes, a world band radio and taxied to the Hamburg Bahnhof to flee on the midnight train to Paris like an anarchist escaping from the Nazis.

I didn't breathe easy until we crossed the Belgian border at dawn.

A month later I met with Stephanie for a weekend at the Hotel Lutece in Paris. Neither of us mentioned Hamburg.

It was better that way.

Clean sheets, soft skin, a woman's breath on my skin and dreaming this could last forever.

Nothing like rewriting.

Chai-yo

Journal Entry August 2, 1978 - East Village

Today Alice and I moved out of my West 11th Street SRO room. The temperature was rising into the 90s and I sweated bullets, loading a taxi with our possessions. Jumping in the back seat, I shut the door and we crossed 10th Street to 1st Avenue, where the driver stopped at the curb and said, "I don't go any farther than this. Alphabet City is too dangerous and this corner ain't no bargain."

He pointed out the sinse dealers on the corner and spat out the window.

"They're hippies in comparison to the junkies. You're not really going to live here?"

"Yes, but we found a cheap one-bedroom apartment for $180 a month." I unpacked the taxi, putting our boxes on the corner."

"Let me guess. Bathtub in kitchen. Water closet in back. Very 19th Century." He was visibly nervous about having stayed on the corner this long. "Very quaint. Good luck."

The Checker burned rubber up 1st Avenue. My twenty-two year old girlfriend shrugged, "We're home one way or the other."

256 was only three stoeps from the avenue. Two scrawny kids ran up to us and asked excitedly, "Mister, you need help?"

"$1 each to carry a box to our new apartment." I pointed to the third stoop on the south side of the street.

"Can we trust them?" whispered Alice. Her eyes were two different colors; green with tints of red. The latter was the color of fire.

"It's not like we have anything to steal. We let them help and no one will think we're stuck-up white people trying to take over their neighborhood?"

Carrying the boxes the kids joked about us being Mr. And Mrs. Opie, then fell silent at our new address.

A pockmarked junkie sprawled before the door and the taller kid said, "That's George."

"Is he dead?" asked Alice.

"No, he ain't dead, just fucked up," said the shorter of the two boys.

"Let me see, if I can wake him."

I called his name several times and then climbed the stairs to lightly nudge the comatose junkie with my foot. As he slumped from the doorway, an enraged voice shouted from behind me, "Who the fuck are you to kick George?"

"Oh shit."

The two kids dropped the boxes and sped toward Avenue A. The kids in the spray of the fire hydrant scurried to their parents. A bare-chested black man wearing jean too tight for his muscular build approached us with yellowed eyes bellowing with fury.

My girlfriend stepped behind me.

"I'm not goin' to ask you again. You kick George?"

"I didn't kick him. I touched him with my foot."

"You callin’ me a liar, you white piece of shit?" the junkie snarled from the sidewalk.

"I’m sorry." I couldn’t look him the eyes.

"Too late for sorrys. You're fucked." The veins on his neck pulsed with thick throbs of blood and put a foot on the steps. "I’m gonna to kick your ass."

Countless scraps with Southie gangs had taught me the value of not fighting fair and I threw the boxes at his chest. Their weight knocked him off balance and his body slammed onto the sidewalk. The crack of his skull on the pavement echoed off the opposite building. A trickle of blood seeped from under his head.

The street was very quiet. Everyone had been surprised by effect of my attack.

George rose from his slumber and stared at his friend and then me.

"What you done to Hakkim? You fucked yourself good. My man gonna come for you and your little girlfriend. Take your clothes, TV, jewelry and fuck her."

Anyone stupid enough to threaten you deserved a beating and I kicked him in the head. My girlfriend stopped me and said, “We better leave before the police come.”

”Ain’t no police coming here.” I opened the door and carried the boxes to our third-floor flat. We tore the previous tenant's artwork from the walls, twice washed the floors, toilet and tub. The air in the tenement flat was breathlessly still. We soaked naked in the lukewarm bath and my cock began to get hard. I asked the ingenue actress from West Virginia, "You want to make love?"

"Not in this heat," she laughed in this heat. She was right. My body was sapped on all libido, but I was at Alice mercy coming to money and she liked my acting as a hustler. Luckily we had one fan and after drying off laid in the futon naked, awaiting for Hakkim's revenge.

A little past 11AM Alice said, "Nothing is going to happen tonight."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing bad," the lithe brunette said, as if she had been born on the Lower East Side instead of the good end of an Appalachian hollow. She slipped across the futon into the arms.

We were home, far from our suburban roots. The first time I walked these streets was in 1970. Wayne Shepherd and I hitchhiked from Boston to New York City. His sister lived on St. Mark's, two blocks west from 256 East 10th Street. Alice was asleep and I thought about everywhere I had lived in my twenty-seven; first breath - Boston Lying -in, Hingham until 1954, Falmouth Foresides before moving to the South Shore of Boston in 1960, I left that suburb in 1971 and rented an unheated apartment in Brighton's Bug Village, a Brookline basement with a sixteen year-old lude dealer, Park Slope with the jazz impresario James Spicer and now here.

With Alice.

From here into forever.

AUGUST 2, 2021 - CLINTON HILL, BROOKLYN

Yesterday afternoon I rose from bed at the Myrtle Avenue Punishment Cells and walked into the kitchen. A wet belch burbled from my lips and I wiped away the bright red wet with the back of my hand and a second later blood spewed from my mouth into a metal bucket. Another four heaves covered the pots' bottom and the color darkened to near-black. I repeated this several times.

There was no pain, but I instinctively understood that my stomach was fucked.

The retching stopped throughout the night and this morning I packed a night bag with a 1979 journal, Cookie Mueller's book, A Bernie Gunther novel, two changes of clothes, chargers et al and crossed the East River on the Manhattan Bridge heading for NYU hospital. I wasn't feeling too good, but felt no urge to vomit.

At the Emergency Ward check-in the nurses immediately led me to the holding pen and I laid in bed.

"We need you to stay overnight. This blood thing is dangerous," said a young doctor and two hours later I was brought upstairs to Room 2205 hooked up to three feeders. a number of failing vital signs threatened my existence.

I wasn't scared.

I've died before.

I picked up my journal and saw the first page was from August 2, 1979.

Forty-years ago.

I vividly remember the heat.

Alice.

Hakkim.

The one fan.

The crackling of thunder raising the ghost of Rip Van Winkle.

I'm 69.

A man my age don't remember everything.

No one can.

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Much more to come.

May 14, 1978 - East Village - Journal

Actors are all full of shit.

Expecting attention for an unending of neuroses. Pretending to be someone they are not. Unless they're funny they bore me. Artists are much better. I prefer workers like Patrick the cook and Kim's friend Amos.

Amos's a Southerner always quiet. I didn't know why Kim explained he was dyslexic. "He never finished high school. He can't read and he can't read it write "

Back in Boston I taught at a Special Ed school. The kids were very challenged. Most couldn't read. Most couldn't write. Some couldn't speak. I sang to them. Write. As a child I had trouble speaking. Stutters stammers mumbles lisps eating my words. My schoolmates were not kind. I wanted to kill them all. I wanted to join the Marines and come back to my hometown as a killer. Amos must feel the same way and that's why he's in New York. Because people like us belong here.

Home must have been torture for Amos to stay in school.

He's a good man and he likes me, because I dislike Marky from the Ghosts. But I no longer dislike Marky. He once tore up a picture of mine. It reminded me being bullied. I didn't hit him. Wanted to, but didn't, since my father used to say, "You have to compromise."

I never saw why, but maybe one day I might.

Four fat lesbians

I like the idea of Subway suicide Laying on the tracks The steel wheels running over me Not stopping Not screeching The A train 40 miles an hour heading to Times Square

At that Kim's apartment Amos Cyrena, Kim and I drink party shots. It's afternoon. Sean leans against the plastic wall. He falls through it. No fun. we leave for a dracula film.

May 14, 1990 - Langtang Glacier - Nepal - Journal Entry

Published on: May 22, 2024

As promised by the guide the trek across the landslide was tricky. Loose shale and rocks under foot. Dorge said two houses had been swept away by the avalanche.

"No one was killed. One man still missing."

He said this with resignation to the danger of living in the Himalayas.

Another trekker Miriam picked her way across the wasteland. Her bare feet were bleeding and her partner, an older German, didn't look in much better shape. Going barefoot like penitents. I can't imagine their sins. I slid a couple of times as did Lance, a New York architect. We both aee better suited to that city's sidewalks.. The porters handled the damaged trail as sure-foored aslike mountain goats.

Reaching the bottom of the valley we crossed the river on a derelict hanging bridge. The current was ever fierce. Falling into the water meant drowning and I was glad to have safely negotiated the span.

At the next village an older woman greeted our passage by sticking out her tongue. Another trekker Dice aka Todd commented that maybe it was part of mating ritual. Our guide Dorge corrected him, "Here the devils have no tongue, so villagers stick out their tongue to show that they are not demons."

"There are demons here." Dice laughed at such an idea.

"Everywhere on my travels across Asia, everyone had warned about the devils or witches in the next valley or island. Upon arriving onward the people of the island or valleys warned their neighbors were evil. Magic was everywhere. A forgotten technology by the West. The worst demons are the royal troopsin Kathmandu repressing the democratic uprising of the people, but those men are seized by a king andhuman.

"All the wooden masks in the villages are of demons." Dorge stuck out his tongue.

I've never seen any demons other than in human forms, but I have seen ghosts."

"You have???" Dorge was alarmed by this admission.

"I have and I'll tell you a ghost story this evening." Ghost stories work better around a fire in the dark. A glass of whiskey helped too.

A crowd of villagers waited by the school and motioned for my approach.

"They ave heard that you have medicine. None of them have seen a doctor in this life."

"I'm not a doctor."

Dorge shrugged with little concern for my being charged with malpractice.

"You have medicine. Only medicine here. Tiger balm and pain and death."

I agreed to the deception and treated infected eyes and hands and feet with antiseptics. I lanced small wounds swollen with pus. They bore the pain without a whimper. I gave a bottle of antiseptic ointment to the teacher, who expressed his gratitude with a solemn bow.

"How much medicine did you bring?" asked Dice. He had attended Cornell for Hotel Management. I had attended Boston College. My major had been Economics and I had graduated sin laude Latin for without praise. My Yankee grandfather had been a Maine doctor. My Irish namesake had been a trolley man in Boston. My only medical training had been at Boy Scout camp in New Hampshire over twenty years ago. Thankfully no one in the villages had any broken bones or suffered from a serious ailment.

"Enough to handle a hypochondriac's ills." I had enough to last me till the return to Kathmandu.

LATER

Resting by a prayer wall at another villager. I was a doctor again. Dorge explained that we are stopping too often, so I cut my clinic short by only tending to the children. Babies with coughs got a droplet of sweet syrup. They smiled, as I washed their grimy faces. One old gent complained about a tooth ache. He opened his mouth to reveal rotten stumps. I gave him cloves for the pain and advised that he suck on them. He made a face tasting them, but upon my departure smiled with relief. They waved good-bye.

Ganchemao is the monster peak rising above the valley. Snow clumped in glaciers on the peak. The sun is torching my lips. Dice lends me lip balm.

"I have to take care of the doctor."

"Then you can be my nurse."

Later

I walked ahead of everyone. Even the porters. I want to be alone. The wind, the scent of pines and flowers, the world of sky peaks. I sneak peeks, because I am trekking on a narrow trail and pay attention to where I put my feet rather than trip and fall into a deadly valley. Lots of rocks. Twisting an ankle would be a disaster this far from the road. I stop and rest, regaining my breath. Our porters pass smoking cigarettes. I wait for a lagging trekker. Dieter is suffering from dysentery. He appears after fifteen minutes, looking like shit. I advise him to hire a porter. We are dismissing one at the next village. His pack is empty.

"You shits are only get worse."

"I'm fine."

"You don't look it, but up to you."

Miriam appears that she has abandoned the Sherpa way and is wearing her boots. A wise decision, but I can tell by her gait that she really savaged her feet. I offer to clean them and binding them with tape. She shakes her head not willing to admit she was wrong. Lance looks at me and we both shrug with no comment.

Best to let people do what they think is best.

LATER

We stopped for an afternoon tea. Each step up this valley transports us further back into medieval times. This could be 1452 AD. Yaks, the Sherpas' beast of burden, lumbered up and down the trail under heavy loads of up to a hundred-fifty pounds. Three times more than the Sherpa porters. I'm carrying about ten pounds and every step is a struggle. Dice is much younger than me and is handling the ascent to Langtang glacier with ease. Lance and I are in the same shape.

Crap.

I had to switch pens. I had given away two to young boys.

This is as faraway from civilization as I have been in my life. Far from Boston. Far from New York. As soon as I put my boots on the trail I was transported to the 15th Century. No telephones, no radio signal. No electricity other than our flashlights. No subways. No bagels. No diamonds on 47th Street.

Dice, who retired from Wall Street at 30, squatted with me on a boulder, and asked, "What do you think these people think of us. Trekking through their villages without stopping for more than a cup of tea and sleep."

"They think of us a cash cow. Without us life would be even harder. They have been thinking the same as all travelers since before time. In good times lots of people. In bad times fewer and most of them bad."

"And these are good times?"

"Be more trekkers, if Kathmandu was quiet."

"My guide, Porterhouse, says nothing that happens in Kathmandu affects up here. Do you think these are good times?"

"Nothing is burning and we don't see any dead people. I saw the soldiers shoot into a crowd in Kathmandu. They weren't aiming over their heads. It's peaceful up here. Normal times. Nothing special."

We were surrounded by Rhododendrons. The huge flowers flourish in the high altitudes. I had won a small bush in high school from a church raffle. The only thing I had ever won.

I squinted up to the mountains, the high glare off the snow peaks. These villages weren't flush with money. They never had any. Bad things happened. Bad things happened a lot. A sick child. A sick parent. A sick cow. The King had opened Nepal to foreigners in 1951. The 1950s hadn't hit Langtang Valley yet. This trek wasn't too popular, since it dead-ends at the glacier. There is no open crossing into the neighboring Helambu Valley.

"Maybe in ten years this valley might improved, but the only transport are your feet, on the sherpa's back, or a yak. These people are shackled to poverty, they are slaves to the lower altitude people, but they proudly live their lives as had their fathers and mothers. And do they want our lives?"

"I don't, which is why I quit Wall Street."

"Not after making a fortune."

"I was lucky and left the casino before I gambled it all away."

"All the porters play cards. For their pay."

"To be blessed by luck."

"As are we all."

May 13, 1990 - Langtang Trek, Nepal - Journal Entry

Previously published May 20, 2023

I wish my camera was functional. It had been smashed after a porter chucked my bag from the bus at the trailhead.

The scenery and people are amazing. I speak with two German trekkers. Dieter is in his 40s. Thin and fit. His hiking partner is Miriam. She has decided to not wear boots and go barefoot like some of our Sherpas. She attacks me for hiring them as slaves. Lance says, "We pay them so they can put food on their families' tables."

"I've seen where they live. They don't have tables."

Lance shook his heads.

Our first stop was a little tea shop with a Coca-Cola flag flying on a pole. Lance and I bought Cokes for everyone. The porters happily thanked us, then lit up cigarettes, inhaling deeply. Lance and I were still huffing from the lack of oxygen. The trail climbed along a savage torrent of glacier melt.

This morning Lance and I were passing through a forest of tall plants. The porters were way ahead of us. I stared closer at some flowers. They looked familiar, because they were marijuana. Lance asked if we should take some and I shook my head. The families of this valley lived on less than a $1 a day. When we emerged from the reefer forest, a young boy ran down the slope, shouting, "Hash, hash, hash."

I was glad to have brought small bills and bought an ounce for $20.

His eyes were crusted due to an infection.

I pulled out my medicine kit. He seemed wary until seeing the Red Cross. I washed away the crud with antiseptic eyedrops. He smiled with gratitude and I filled a small vial for his future use.

"I'm impressed," said Lance.

My grandfather was a surgeon for the Royal Canadian Medical expedition in World War I." I doubted any of his knowledge had been passed through two generations, but I was a severe hypochondriac. My paranoia had killed me many time. Never with success. So I possessed a good sense of preservation for myself and others.

At the next stop I showed the other two trekkers the hashish. Ty Spaulding and I smoke some at lunch. Lance refused, saying he needed his lungs for the next stage.He wasn't a smoker and neither was Ty's partner.

The hashish was fresh off the bud and strong, but probably not the best idea, since Dorge warned us that we were crossing a landslide after this.

I'm sure he's right.

He always is so far and I wonder how many times he has trekked this trail.

May 11, 1978 III - East Village - Journal

Last night Alice and I smoked opium in my SRO on East 11th an 5th. I had scored the O from Fred, my neighbor, a queen who collects Nazi memorabilia. He even has a human skin lamp and a SS female uniform whihc fits his girth. Fat she was no ELSA SHEWOLF OF THE SS. A total slave in the Toilet by the Hudson.

In my room with a wndow on the airshaft ee got undressed into our underwear. Alice taking off her bra and slipping into a small wife beater teeshirt. We chase the dragon on tinfoil. She was wasted after a single huff. It was strong. This was my third time. It wasn't hashish,

"I love the smell. Like we were lost in Hong Kong. Smoke some more."

I played a match under the foil. the brown tar bubbled spewing white smoke. I exhaled in Alice's face. She moaned and said, "Fuck me."

I didn't think she knew where she was or who I was. Lost in a narcotic dream. She passed out a minute later, my hard cock inside her. I masturbated without cumming and joined her in lotus land naked, our limbs intertwined.

Dreams melted through the stupor. Naked with John Holmes trying to push his cock in my ass. And Alice trying to help him. I woke and pushed Alice away from me, her finger in my anus. I liked it. She sniffed her finger without making a face.

"What is it?"

I had a bad dream. I told her about getting fucke up the ass.

"You poor darling."

She fingered my ass.

We lay together the thigh between mine her stomach pressed him on we went back to sleep

Right before noon I woke and we fucked. I came. Alice did not.

"I don't know what's wrong with me. When I was young, one of my boyfriends left me, because all I wanted was sex. Sorry, now I'm not even interested. I don't mind you fucking me. I don't know why I don't want to come. Sometimes I just want you to fuck me."

When she does, she lies like a dead person or a starfish and I fake cumming. I want to say it's because she's so worried about her school about graduation her play her weight these worries prevent her from enjoying herself, uncomfortable with who she is and sometimes she asks for advice with her play, but when I try and say something she shuts me down, saying that's stupid or I can't work with you just huffing.

Later she left for the theater. That evening we were on the phone about how spending too much time together it spoils our appetite for each other

"I have to finish my school work. I like waking up with you at your place. It leaves me feeling that I have abandone everything. I'm so disorganized this time of year and I have to finish so much."

I agreed, but suggesting we spend less time together. Usually the sign breaking up.

Later that night in an elevator in my building after I push the fifth floor button she asked, "This is a hypothetical question but how would you feel if I left you."

"I wouldn't do anything drastic."

So it seems as if the wait for her departure has been paved. Alice only needs me as a friend and protector and fucker, until she leaves for Appalachia, but I thought, "You'll be back."

However I'm beginning to doubt that one must be prepared to soften the shock of an amputation of a romance. A nice affair, but nothing's really occurred besides my falling in Love. Funny how life slips between highs and lows without any advanced notice, but then we would be no better than a pet dog knowing what time we're going to be fed or petted or killed. The unexpectancy of life has meant leaving so many people.

The high school quarterback, the cheerleaders, the student presidents, College big men on campus, all of them mean nothing now in New York City. I was nothing to them, when I was young. Think to them now too. I doubt any of them remember me. I was always alone. I feel strong. No threats no fears being scared will never come back. Never having to worry about how people see me or when Alice ask me, "Why don't you smile?"

True, I grin, instead of laugh. Smiling? I wish I could, but smiling feels too much like accepting them world around me. Satisfied as I leave childhood and become an adult unlike Peter Pan

I will never grow up.

I have no innocence . I will not regain virginity. To have no creative skills. Writing in this journal delaying realization that an artist cannot be swayed desires to be somebody.

Later

I was in Cornelius Street Cafe with Alice, Kim, Amos, and Serena, Sean's wannabe girlfriend. We are planning the four Gemini party. Amos, Kim, Serena, and me. Atkins Bleecker Street apartment. We have given out over 100 invitations at CBGB's and Easats Village bars and restaurants.

My back was to the door, which I never like. Always worried that someone with whom I had a fight they hit me in the back of the head like Jack McCall shooting Wild Bill Hitchcock in Deadwood, while he was holding the dead man's hand.

Two fingers poke me in the back in the mystery voice said, "What are you doing here?"

It was Ro and I wanted to protect myself look and she looked very vulnerable since coming back from Paris. Our past barely crossed with chance meetings rarely lasting more than a minute.

Alice scolded me, "You never introduced me to anyone."

"Ro, this is Alice."

I said without explaining who was who. Basically wanted to shield her from knowing that I had been in love with Ro. Maybe even not now but maybe yes.

"We're planning a birthday Party."

"Am I invited?"

"Of course/ I'll call you later. You have the same telephone number right. 255-3035.

An old man pulled on her jacket. The two of them left. They didn't look like lovers. I said nothing and then Alice leaned over and asked, "Are you thinking of fucking her?"

"No, I have you."

Kim ever mischievous asked, "Who was that? The next fuck of yours."

"Who isn't?"

Chemistry more than a few alliances set a word to Alice. I've never said a word about hers. In many ways they only exist for sex to be shared fucking someone else.

Marooned in the city Seeking exits Once disguised As walls To stand on the shore of an Eastern ocean Seeing Atlantis Beneath the waves He deserts the city To wade in the tide.

Later

Raphaela, the owner's wife blows me in the bathroom.

April 1, 1980 Journal Entry East Village

April 1

My brother Frank's Birthday

April Fool's Day 1979

Yesterday Michael Selbach and I felt the urge for a short trip up the Hudson on his Kawasaki 650cc motorcycle. The day was sunny and I dressed in white denims; jacket and jeans, then rode the subway up to Times Square. The David's Pot Belly's cook waited on the corner of 42nd and Eighth. He handed me a Bell helmet and I climbed on the back.

"I never thought you'd be my bike bitch."

"Hey, this is only platonic."

He headed over to the semi-destructed West Side Highway and we cruised north along the Hudson.

"Shall we go to the Cloisters?" he shouted with his head slightly turned away from the wind.

"I went there two weeks ago. Have you ever been to West Point?" The famed military academy was about fifty miles away.

"No, I haven't."

"It's worth the ride, plus there's the Storm King Highway overlooking the Hudson. A must see." I had been there once with my family. Like me my father loved the road.

"Sounds good to me."

We crossed the Fiord on the GW Bridge to New Jersey and sped along the Palisades Parkway.

Far back in the Ice Age this falaise had guarded an extinct continent against the rising ocean, as the melt-off from the mile-high glacier carved through the tectonic plate to form the Hudson hundreds of feet below us. A fierce wind along the parkway buffered us from lane to lane. Thankfully traffic was light after the 9W exit and we soon sheltered by the bare branched trees.

The towns along the western bank were situated out of sight from the roadway. THe surrounding towns had outlived their original purpose to become suburbs for men and women commuting into Manhattan for work. We passed by the exit signs dentoing their existence without seeing their centers. After Nyack the land ruralized with farms spreading over the hills, until we reached a massive quarry shipping gravel to reconstruct New York City recovering slowly from the dereliction of the 1970s.

Michael topspeeded on the highway. 86 mph. Helmets restricted any conversation and I spoke within my mind to my minds.

After Haversack we entered the suburban sprawl of malls and little league fields. The station wagons were filled with young boys in baseball uniforms driven by well-coiffed mothers. The young boys studied our passage with a a sense of yearning. Some of them had to want to be us.

Michael and I had grown up in similar surroundings on the West and East Coasts. A life as a bum was preferable to their parents' enslavement to the 9 to 5. I had left behind the suburbs in 1974 and I harbored no urge of returning to the sprawl of my birth.

Lately Michael had been talking about moving to Hoboken, as if he was abandoning the city. I was bound to the East Village. I wasn't leaving until it was time to leave and today that felt like never.

Haverstack gave way to West Haversack without a struggle. George Washington might have retreated through these lands after the military debacle in New York over two centuries ago. The towns were replaced by farmland and then tenth-growth woodlands. Michael hit 80W for a few miles before we exited for West Point.

US 6 spanned the Hudson River on the Bear Mountain Bridge. In 1948 Jack Kerouac started his trip across America here. That trip inspired ON THE ROAD. I wanted Michael to stop, so I could stand where the Beat writer had stood thirty-two years ago. The bridge dated back to the 1930s. America really began here. I had last hitchhiked across the continent in the winter of 1975. I stood wishing I was on my way to the Coast, instead I sat back on the bike.

We descended into marshes. Railroad tracks were strapped to the western bank. A sign WEST POINT 10 MILES stood at attention by the roadside. My father had driven here on our Ford Station Wagon in 1966. I had been almost fourteen. My mother had wanted me to be a priest or a cadet.

Michael and I entered the academy by Thayer Gate. The graduates of the the 1960s and 1970s had served in Vietnam. The power of the world's strongest army. Defeated by rice farmers. Now five years after the Fall of Saigon the cadets of the 1980s in their dress uniforms showed no defeat. Their stiff posture marked their dreams of America's future glory. Vietnam wasn't their defeat, but it was our victory. Michael and I were both anti-war leather punks.

A sign announced NO PARADE TODAY.

"It's a good show." Back in my youth I had wanted to be a cadet. Anything to get out of my hometown on the South Shore of Boston. I would have looked good in the uniform.

We stopped at the military graveyard. Home eternal for thousands of officers. We stood at George Custer's grave.

"He's no hero."

"And neither are we."

We saddled up and the Kawasaki climbed the steep two-laner to the top of the Storm King Highway, 420 feet over the Hudson. We stopped at the precipitous vista point. The Hudson ran north between the Berkshires and Catskills. Both mountain ranges had been shorn of their height by the glaciers.

"You know I might have fallen in love with Vickie." Michael had been seeing the redheaded fashion student for a few months. I was still recovering from Lisa's desertion. My blonde girlfriend had disappeared into Europe to be a fashion model. I had seen her in a German lingerie ad. Michael had been a good friend. His wife had left him last summer.

That's a good thing for you."

"But not you?"

"It's was bound to happen. I'm happy you're in love. I know how to drink alone."

"Really?"

No, but better you than neither of us."

"What about you and Elizabeth?"

I had been seeing the lanky Virginian for a few months too. We had even met each other's parents.

"We're going nowhere."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah I'm too haunted. I don't felt anything for anyone. Not even myself. It's better that I break up with her before I really hurt her."

"Or yourself." Michael straddled the Kawasaki. "Too bad, she's a great girl. By the way you should look at your jacket."

"Why?"

"Look."

I took off the Levi jacket. The back tire had thrown up a oily rooster tail to splatter the back of the white jacket.

"Damn. That ain't gonna come off."

"Your jeans match."

"Double damnit."

I got on the bike behind Michael. If I had a motorcycle, I wished we were bound for the West Coast and a sore ass, but we crossed the Hudson at Newburgh and drove south to New York and our lives.