RHINESTONE THREADBARE
BIRTHDAY CAKE
On the edges of 14th, at the west - the Gansevoort Market
and all the rest. The meat-packing plants, once, when they
were yet in operation, kept me up for nights on end - men
swinging both mallets and hatchets together, jabbing fresh-cut
carcasses on dead-animal meat conveyor chains. Chaim
Soutine it was who used to paint pictures of such slabs of
meat, still red and fatty and blemished with blood. We never
did that, just a pretend : watching instead the slather of men
working. Cigarette butts dangling from awesome lips, lips
which may have already kissed dead cow flank. The strangest
Winter steam of chemical reaction I'd ever seen - moistened
carcass meeting freezing air; something made the water smoke,
just like the men. Everything high-wired and askew. I tidily
summed it up as 'another world, just another world entire.'
We went instead to the Village Dinner, over at some corner.
This was way back, in 1968. Some twisted people were having
a birthday party within, for the wild looking girl in a leopard
skin coat. She tried to talk, and then she tried to dance too.
I think she was too drunk for either, and the just all ended
up laughing, as they presented her with a rhinestone
threadbare birthday cake they'd named 'Teddy.'
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