RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,158
(new york city was sure a weird place)
Maybe I walked too many
miles in all those walking
days I had. In a certain way
of seeing things, there wasn't
too much else I ever had to
do. I'd landed, feet-first and
fortunate, on the long slide of
Manhattan : knowing little
about it, really. There seemed
to be a torch at every corner,
yet only now I realize they
were the old-style, short-stalk
2-color traffic lamps that New
York City used to have. Amber,
I guess, had not yet been
invented. If they tried that
today, the dead would be
lining the streets. Except, as
it is, I can't recall what actually
happened, back then, between
red and green. Maybe it was
red for all for a few seconds?
I don't know. Havoc, in any
case, was always my bedfellow,
so it wouldn't have mattered.
Now, like anywhere else, the
traffic lights are all overhead
and seen by all. It used to be
you had to really ferret them
out; hard to find in a crowd.
-
It was pretty maddening anyway,
along east 11th street, and I hardly
knew what I was doing there.
Spanish murders. Drug cases.
Crumbling buildings, yet somehow
filled with people - families of
8 or 9. I guess the parents, in
all that misery, just never stopped
pounding each other and thus
kept producing kids. Juicy ones,
dripping over everything. August
ice-creams. Custodians of custard
and sweets.
-
I don't know, and I probably never
was meant to. A few things I did
find out, haphazardly, while I was
settling in : newcomer kids, the
hippies, all rolling in, the girls
among them, novices, once they
started smoking pot, they always
had their clothes off not long after.
I guess it was a sort of rite-of-passage
for Summer, 1967. I never found out.
Not everyone knew that; only the
wise-guys, like my 'roommate' Andy,
who wasn't really. He was a localized
drug vendor; how long before me
he'd been doing it, I never knew, nor
where he stayed before he moved in
with me. He was - he said - from
California, where he'd lived a deep
life, though in deep-freeze, in L.A.,
growing up as a scoundrel. He blew
in with the hippie tide, but in reverse,
as it went. The end-goal for most
of the others was to get to California,
starting out from NYC. For him, it all
apparently went the other way. In
the very beginning of my time, he
did sort of save my butt by giving
me a space to sleep - after I'd met
him accidentally, at some crummy
job we had at the food joint next
to the Fillmore East. It was a small,
narrow dive, next to what once had
been some large cafeteria-style eaterie.
Now it was was a sludge-pot pushing
hamburgers and ice cream and soda
to the freaked out music-heads at the
'concerts' next door. Moby Grape, '8:05,
I guess I'm leaving soon....' That was
the big tune around, when I landed.
-
Looking back now, New York as
Paradise sucked. New York as a
dream also sucked. I never paid a
day's rent, except that first month,
after Andy came in and somehow
fund a way to pay the monthly rent
to the skeeter-headed pot-freak
Superintendent on the premises
in drugs. Cash was so passe.
-
It all made me bored and nervous,
but I never said much; just went on
my way, coming and going, not
frequenting much of the ways and
means that were flooding all around
me. Andy kept cowboy boots, filled
with change - one for quarters, one
for dimes, another for nickels, etc.
I never knew about paper money or
bills; where any of that went; the
entire world of such high finance
(there's a pun for you!). Whenever
my girlfriend came to visit, Andy
was always happy to load her with
change for the subway. He kept me
flush too - except that quarters got
heavy. It was all a joke. There'd be
people dozing about, enough that
I'd have to step over them, heads,
arms, even naked torsos - those
stupid girls again I mentioned. It
was just a big grin to Andy. He
was about 6 or 8 years older than
me, I guessed, at my runt age of 18;
a wizened old man, he was, wiser
in the ways of filth and the world
than I'd ever be; so I just rolled off
and sort of let him run the show
even though it was my apartment.
It was my name on the lease, not
his. All that was OK, and I didn't
care because I'd moved out anyway
- living in the basement of the
Studio School instead. It was OK
until bad-shit started happening.
It just got worse. Real worse. I
leave it there, for now.
-
Other and better things took my
time and energy away. I managed
a sort of happiness. Whenever I
went back there, in the midst of
all else we'd been doing - running
draft-dodgers to Canada, formulating
strange protests and marches for the
anti-Vietnam factions, evading police
and vice-squad snoopers - the vibes
I felt were really bad. No one even
knew me anymore; as I'd go back to
MY apartment, to be questioned and
let in by new people I'd not know
and who didn't know me. The kettle
was about to blow, and it had been
boiling bad shit too. When it all
went down - fortunately for me - I
wasn't there. Bodies and fumigation.
Police tape and a news story too!
Nobody knew me then, and I was
determined to keep it that way.
-
Years later I met the guy whose
father had been detective to the
investigation. He was dead by then,
and his son reflected - without
knowing who I was - how that
case and that era had irked his father,
never being able to get to the real
bottom of anything. It was OK with
me, and we left it at that. New York
City was sure a weird place.
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