Last night at CBGBs I offered kisses to eager high school girls from Dalton, they acted sexy as if they had rehearsed the wanton kisses and yearning smiles before the bathroom mirror at home. The music at the clubs was tolerable, but I wished I had been alone instead of with Alice. Not to cheat, just to be free.
After CBGBs closed at 4am, Guadalcanal, his frail girlfriend from DC, Alice and I once more went to his place to snort cocaine. He had another pile of it, since he was dealing to Johnny Thunders, the Heartbreakers, their groupies, and entourage. It was a good business and Guadalcanal didn't have to cut his blow. The yellow Bolivian flake was the purest in the Lower East Side.
Alice and I left a 6:30 AM and she said walking up 1st Avenue in the early dawn light, "I want open spaces. I'd like to see my brother, Bobbie, in Morgantown."
"Even after you fled your grandmother's house there?"
"I was spooked by the rain falling on that old place."
"I want a holiday too. Maybe Boston."
I had family there. My mother and father woulld take me to eat at Tony's Clam Shack on Wollaston Beach. I might even get a little money from them.
"I have had enough of New York City."
That was the cocaine speaking, but I admitted, "I've had my fill too."
My heart was in this city. My heart also wanted to be in Boston or better yet Maine. Not here with all the garbage on the sidewalks. I kicked a sack.
"Why isn't this city clean?"
"Because the city can't afford the sanitation workers," answered Alice and added, "The city can't afford anything. It's bankrupt. It's falling apart."
"Right into our hands." The city belonged to the people. "Tourists complained about the garbage. We just live with it."
"Until they take it back, it is ours."
Not forever. The banks love being in one place. Wall Street. A couple of billion and the city is good as new, at least on the surface. The 1980s are less than a year away and 1984 closer than ever.
The radio announced the hundreds of national car crash deaths over the Labor Day Weekend.
We sounds like we will top last year.
I've survived two major car collisions and one pedestrian-car crash over the years.
Drink was involved in none of them and nothing bad ever happened on a highway. The interstates are my paradise of speed and skill with smooth roads late at night. 'Hit The Road, Jack' is my modus operandi.
By thumb or car I headed West, but now I am anchored to New York by commitments to nothinglessness. Everyone here says I have drifted too long and it's true, but also a lie. I love the road.
I used to sleep in desert motels Cheap ones to spend the night Crashing in a field When the towns were too far apart.
I've huddled in city alleys I knew no one. No one knew me. Golf courses had soft grass. Little League fields too The towns had no name. I forget some of the places. I remember most.
Meeting you ended my shifting A woman to whom I owe it all We settled in the big city A drifter quit running to the sun A hillbilly woman never going back home. The bad times are still bad, but you stop my shouting.
Your love steered me away from a bad ending The one drifters dream about without ever wanting to live. Now I can tell you, I ain't going nowhere.
Believe me, baby, I'm telling the truth And I'm not leaving, because every day I keep drifting to you. A surprise to you, a happy ending for me, A drifter at the end of the road.
2022 - For Labor Day Weekend I rode the Lucky Star bus from Chinatown to Boston's South Station. BBQ traffic was tough on I-95. There were no accidents. My sister-in-law picked me up in Harvard Square. We drove back to their home on the Watertown line. Nothing was open around them and now that I'm not drinking, I settled for a hummus vegetable wrap and a glass of water.
No cocaine either.
Guadalcanal is in Kansas City.
Alice is in LA.
She hates that I refer to her as a hillbilly. Her father was a lawyer, her separate other was a teacher or something like that, and the family home in Charleston was located in a suburban development.
The streets of New York especially Manhattan resemble the bankrupt city in the 1970s; encampment of homeless, drug addicts openly dealing and shooting in the streets, and young thugs getting mouthy with their elders. Once Old Bill from Frank's Lounge said to me, "The worst thing about getting old is that no one thinks you're dangerous."
He unbuttoned his elegant suit coat to reveal a holstered .38.
This changes the young punks' mind real quick, because they can also see in my eyes that I will pull the trigger."
Damn straight, Old Bill.
I'm lying on a bed at 8PM. It is quiet outside in Cambrige. Too quiet to be life.
I'm reading a book.
Philip Kerr's METROPOLIS
Berlin 1928.
Paradise.
George Grosz to Bernie Gunther
"I draw drunkards, men puking out their guts, prostitutes, military men with blood on their hands, women pissing in your beer, suicides, men who are horribly crippled, women who have been murdered by men playing cards. My chief subject is this Hell's metropolis, Berlin. With all its wild excess and decadence the city to me seems the very essence of humanity."
Not so New York.
I sense the threads of society to humanity fraying to the breaking point.
Then nothing and I know nothing well.
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Much more to come.
