Swimming In The Seine 1985

In the summer of 1985 I rode my Vespa 150 east from Paris along the Seine until reaching a strand of strand past Melun. The temperature was warm and I waded into the river. It smelled of algae, but I plunged into the waters. Not pleasant, but not unpleasant, then again as a child in the early 1960s we swam off the sewer ducts off Wollaston Beach. Warm. We didn't know any better as hadn't an Amerlot swimming in the Seine.

Of course our prime swimming hole in Paris was the Piscine Deligny. The floating pool was moored on the Rive Gauche. Paris' only outdoor piscine or at least the only one I knew. A favorite of the young and old alike.

According to parisisinvisible.blogspot.com/ at the beginning of the 1970s, one French politician, Emmanuel Hamel, wrote a letter to the Minister of the Interior complaining about topless sunbathing at the pool. His particular concern about that? The French parliament, the Assemblée nationale overlooked the pool, and it was 'offputting'!

Tant pis.

Foto Helmut Newton 1976

White Condo Fog

An April overcast overwhelms
A white luxury condo
O'er
Jay Street Brooklyn
Obscuring the upper floors
Earth warm
Sky cold
My fingers chilled
Not by Winter
But by the damp of Spring.
The new season
One month in
My joints ache in the damp
Old
Some of me.
My mind 15
1967

Ruby Tuesday
The South Shore
Wollaston Beach
The Quincy Quarries
The Surf Nantasket
The Mattapan Oriental
Making out with Hyde Park girls
In the dark of the balcony
My fingers warm.
I write of my youth
My fingers
Manulyxic
Tripping over consonents
My fingers
Fumbling with a bra
In the blacony of the Mattapan Oriental
Fifteen
Forever
Young
With a white fog
Without gloom
For me
Alive.
As are the Rolling Stones

December 4, 1978 - East Village - Journal

4:10am I lie on the living room floor. My ribs hurt less that way.

Vincent Price was killing zombies on the TV and the NY Sunday Times is scattered besides me. I'm reading the back pages of the travel section, wishing I had enough money to buy a round-the-world ticket. $1100. I only have $78 in my wallet. I'm stuck in America.

It's quiet here. Alice slept in the bedroom. We haven't touched each other since yesterday. I haven't offered any solace. This is all her. Even though I want it to be all us.

Last week the girl renting the apartment below us had her throat slashed by a boyfriend. Luckily she lived. Alice is asleep in the loft bed. It's the dead of night.

Alice said later last night that she had to apologize for my behavior at Irving Plaza. Apologize for getting beaten up by Blondie's band. For having my ribs broken. For doing my job. I wish I hadn't done anything. I just wanted to go home in peace.

In the summer of 1967 I had driven a borrowed Vespa accompanied by Steve Talutis (a bullied neighbor who pumps gas at Jenny's gas station across St. Elizabeth's on Route 28. A year older he drives a yellow Mustang) to Tony's Fried Clams in Wollaston. I arrived first. Hippies hung out on the sea wall. I was dressed in straight legged jeans and a black tee-shirt. Bikers were harassing them for fun.

My mother hated this spot.

"I'd let you go to New York, before allow you to go to Wollaston."

A hippie boy with long blonde hair came up to me and said, "I don't like the way you look."

"Don't be an idiot," the pretty girl with him walked away and he followed. I would have too and started to take off the helmet. Something hit me. A fist. I was surrounded by the hippies. The blonde guy yelled, "Take off the helmet." I looked for help. There was none.

Just like last night.

Alice wasn't there.

"She was the only one who might have stopped it.

But there was no one.

Just like at Wollaston Beach.

Some things don't change.

Oh Little Necks

Last week I rode down to Little Neck Restaurant off the Gowanus Canal to sampled their Fried Clams.

$22.

I was thoroughly disappointed by their offering. Even the extinct HoJo clam strips were better than these measly clams, which had no bellies and were mostly Batter and fries.

Yesterday I purchased little neck clams from Bobby at the Fort Greene Farmer's Market.

$10

I steamed the plump mollusks in water, cider, garlic, and butter.

Delicious.

And I drank the broth.

Thinking OH NEW ENGLAND and dreaming of authentic Ispswich Fried Clams Tony's on Wollaston Beach.