5306. THIS RAIN

THIS RAIN

(excerpt)

I have all Bill Burrough's late NYC addresses; they are

jumbled in my pocket. Most especially did I like the

Bunker, 222 Bowery  -  like 1976, or so. It was built

in 1884-85 to house the Young Men's Institute, the

first New York branch of the YMCA, and in 1915

a rear three-story addition was built to provide a

swimming pool, enlarged gym, and a locker room.

Bill moved into the locker room, what had been,

below the gym  -  which used to be Mark Rothko's

studio, and above the abandoned swimming pool.

The first artist to live there was Fernand Leger, in

1940-41 after he'd escaped the war in France. Right

next door was the Prince Hotel, a flophouse for

Bowery bums, who were regularly found frozen to

death on the doorstep in Winter. The Bowery Mission

and the Salvation Army were directly across the street.

a guy named Wynn Chamberlain had a loft upstairs,

where Burroughs had given a reading back in 1965, and,

importantly, John Giorno lived in the building in a loft

overlooking the Bowery. It was to become a legendary

for Burroughs along with the Beat Hotel, but he only

lived there continuously for three years, all of 1979 

until 1981. The drug years. The loft was one huge

space with a concrete floor and windows that were

inches from the opposite wall outside. These they

painted over. A previous tenant had built stud-walling

to divide the space into an office, a bedroom, and a large

living-space with an open-plan kitchen at one side. 

Everything was painted white. The concrete floor was

scrubbed. The locker-room bathroom still contained

a row of urinals, cubicles, and a choice of sinks. The

space was very live; it echoed slightly and there was a

caused by the refrigerator. In Bill's bedroom six heating

pipes and three drainage pipes ran floor to ceiling in the

corner to the right of his bed and there was a sprinkler

system on the ceiling. Andy Warhol described the Bunker

in his diaries : 'There's no windows. It's all white and neat

and looks like sculpture all over, the way the pipes are.

Bill sleeps in another room, on the floor.' It was otherwise

bare, functional, a place for work and the exchange of ideas.

-

In Feb. 1977, Burroughs returned to Boulder in order to be 

near his son, Billy. He took an apartment, #415, on the fourth

floor of Varsity Manor, at 1155 Marine.  (Burroughs pronounced

 it 'Man-OR'). He had a schedule of readings; North Carolina

(Chapel Hill Arts Festival) with Allen Ginsberg and John Cage.

The most memorable reading from this period was in Washington,

D. C., at the Corcoran Gallery. His group stayed with the

Washington hostess Amy Huntington Block in Georgetown

where they could look right across the street at Henry Kissinger's

house. Amy pointed out all the boys walking around the street

and explained that they 'serviced' the foreign embassies. The boys

were watched by the Secret Service but not interfered with as

they waited to be invited indoors or for a limo to pick them up.

At the Corcoran reading, Bill read his 'When Did I Stop Wanting

To Be President?' to the cream of D. C. society.

-

Oh, where was I? This rain has gotten my pants soaking wet.