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make your mind like a wall, dont pant after outside activities and dont bug
me with your outside plans" -- "So the guy goes out and stands on his head
in the snow? " "No that was Fubar" -- Or you go runnin into Dave Wain's room
and there he is sitting crosslegged on his mattress on the floor reading
Jane Austen, you ask "What's the best way to make beef Stroganoff? "...
"Beef Stroganoff is very simple, "t'aint nothin but a good well cooked beef
and onion stew that you let cool afterwards then you throw in mushrooms and
lotsa sour cream, I'll come down and show way soon's I finish this chapter
in this marvelous novel, I wanta find out what happens next" -- Or you go
into the Negro's room and ask if you can borrow his tape recorder because
right at the moment some funny things are being said in the kitchen by
Duluoz and McLear and Monsanto and some newspaperman -- Because the kitchen
was also the main talking room where everybody sat in a cluster of dishes
and ashtrays and all kinds of visitors came... The year before a beautiful
16 year old Japanese girl had come there just to interview me, for instance,
but chaperoned by a Chinese painter The phone rang consistently -- Even wild
Negro hepcats from around the corner came in with bottles (Edward Kool and
several others) -- There was Zen, jazz, booze, pot and all the works but it
was somehow obviated (as a supposedly degenerate idea) by the sight of a
"beatnik" carefully painting the wall of his room and clean white with nice
little red borders around the door and windowframes -- Or someone is
sweeping out the livingroom. Itinerant visitors like me or Ron Blake always
had an extra mattress to sleep on.
But Dave is anxious and so am I to see great Cody who is always the
major part of my reason for journeying to the west coast so we call him up
to Los Gatos fifty miles away down the Santa Clara Valley and I hear his
dear sad voice saying "Been waitin for ya old buddy, come on down right
away, but I'll be goin to work at midnight so hurry up and you can visit me
at work soon's the boss leaves round two and I'll show you my new job of
tire recappin and see if you cant bring a little somethin like a girl or
sumptin, just kiddin, come on down pal... "
So there's old Willie waiting for us down on the street parked across
from the little pleasant Japanese liquor store where as usual, according to
our ritual, I run and get Pernod or Scotch or anything good while Dave
wheels around to pick me up at the store door, and I get in the front seat
at Dave's right where I belong all the time like old Honored Samuel Johnson
while everybody else that wants to come along has to scramble back there on
the mattress (a full mattress, the seats are out) and squat there or lie
down there and also generally keep silent because when Dave's got the wheel
of Willie in his hand and I've got the bottle in mine and we're off on a
trip the talking all comes from the front seat... "By God" yells Dave all
glad again, "it's just like old times Jack, gee old Willie's been sad for
ya, waiting for ya to come back -- So now I'm gonna show ya how old Willie's
even improved with age, had him reconditioned in Reno last month, here he
goes, are you ready Willie? " and off we go and the beauty of it allthis
particular summer is that the front right seat is broken and just rocks back
and forth gently to every one of Dave's driving moves -- It's like sitting
in a rocking chair on a porch only this is a moving porch and a porch to
talk on at that -- And insteada watching old men pitch horseshoes from this
here talking porch it's all that fine white clean line in the middle of the
road as we go flying like birds over the Harrison ramps and whatnot Dave
always uses to sneak out of Frisco real fast and avoid all the traffic...
Soon we're set straight and pointed head on down beautiful fourlane Bayshore
Highway to that lovely Santa Clara Valley... But I'm amazed that after only
a few years the damn thing no longer has prune fields and vast beet fields
like at Lawrence when I was a brakeman on the Southern Pacific and even
after) it's one long row of houses right down the line fifty miles to San
Jose like a great monstrous Los Angeles beginning to grow south of Frisco.
At first it's beautiful to just watch that white line reel in to
Willie's snout but when I start looking around out the window there's just
endless housing tracts and new blue factories everywhere -- Sez Dave "Yes
that's right, the population explosion is gonna cover every bit of backyard
dirt in America someday in fact they'll even have to start piling up friggin
levels of houses and others over that like your city City CITY till the
houses reach a hundred miles in the air in all directions of the map and
people looking at the earth from another planet with super telescopes will
see a prickly ball hanging in space -- It's like real horrible when you come
to think of it, even us with our fancy talks, shit man it's all millions of
people and events piling up almost unimaginable now, like raving baboons
we'll all be piled on top of each other or one another or whatever you're
sposed to say -- Hundreds of millions of hungry mouths raving for more more
more -- And the sadness of it all is that the world hasn't any chance to
produce say a writer whose life could really actually touch all this life in
every detail like you always say, some writers could bring you sobbing thru
the bed fuckin bedcribs of the moon to see it all even unto the goddamned
last gory detail of some dismal robbery of the heart at dawn when no one
cares like Sinatra sings" ('When no one cares, " he sings in his low
baritone but resumes): "Some strict sweeper sweeping it all up. I mean the
incredible helplessness I felt Jack when Celine ended his Journey To The End
Of The Night by pissing in the Seine River at dawn there I am thinkin my God
there's probably somebody pissing in the Trenton River at dawn right now,
the Danube, the Ganges, the frozen Obi, the Yellow, the Parana, the
Willamette, the Merrimac in Missouri too, the Missouri itself, the Yuma, the
Amazon, the Thames, the Po, and so and so, it's so friggin endless it's like
poems endless everywhere and no one knows any bettern old Buddha you know
where he says it's like "There are immeasurable star misty aeons of
universes more numerous than the sands in all the galaxies, multiplied by a
billion lightyears of multiplication, in fact if I were to go on you'd be
scared and couldn't comprehend and you'd despair so much you'd drop dead, "
that's what he just about said in one of those sutras -- Macrocosms and
microcosms and chillicosms and microbes and finally you get all these
marvelous books a man aint even got time to read em all, what you gonna do
in this already piled up multiple world when you have to think of the Book
of Songs, Faulkner, Cesar Birotteau, Shakespeare, Satyricons, Dantes, in
fact long stories guys tell you in bars, in fact the sutras themselves, Sir
Philip Sidney, Sterne, Ibn El Arabi, the copious Lope de Vega and the
uncopious goddamn Cervantes, shoo, then there's all those Catulluses and
Davids and radio listening skid row sages to contend with because they've
all got a million stories too and you too Ron Blake in the backseat shut up!
down to everything which is so much that it is of necessity dont you think
Nothing anyway, huh? " (expressing exactly the way I feel, of course).
And to corroborate all that about the too-much-ness of the world, in
fact, there's Stanley Popovich also in the back mattress next to Ron,
Stanley Popovich of New York suddenly arrived in San Francisco with Jamie
his Italian beauty girl but's going to leave her in a few days to go work
for the circus, a big tough Yugoslav kid who ran the Seven Arts Gallery in
New York with big bearded beatnik readings but now comes the circus and a
whole big on-the-road of his own -- It's too much, in fact right this minute
he's started telling us about circus work -- On top of all that old Cody is
up ahead with HIS thousand stories -- We all agree it's1 too big to keep up
with, that we're surrounded by life, that we'll never understand it, so we
center it all in by swigging Scotch from the bottle and when it's empty I
run out of the car and buy another one, period.
13
But on the way to Cody's my madness already began to manifest itself in
a stranger way, another one of those signposts of something wrong I
mentioned a ways back: I thought I saw a flying saucer in the sky over Los
Gatos -- From five miles away -- I look and I see this thing flying along
and mention it to Dave who takes one brief look and says 'Ah it's only the
top of a radio tower" -- It reminds me of the time I took a mescaline pill
and thought an airplane was a flying saucer (a strange story this, a man has
to be crazy to write it anyway).
But there's old Cody in the livingroom of his fine ranchito home sittin
over his chess set pondering a problem and right by the fresh woodfire in
the fireplace his wife's set out because she knows I love fireplaces -- She
a good friend of mine too... The kids are sleeping in the back, it's about
eleven, and good old Cody shakes my hand again -- Havent seen him for
several years because mainly he's just spent two years in San Quentin on a
stupid charge of possession of marijuana... He was on his way to work on the
railroad one night and was short on time and his driving license had been
already revoked for speeding so he saw two bearded bluejeaned beatniks
parked, asked them to trade a quick ride to work at the railroad station for
two sticks of tea, they complied and arrested him -- They were disguised
policemen... For this great crime he spent two years in San Quentin in the
same cell with a murderous gunman -- His job was sweeping out the cotton
mill room -- I expect him to be all bitter and out of his head because of
this but strangely and magnificently he's become quieter, more radiant, more
patient, manly, more friendly even -- And tho the wild frenzies of his old
road days with me have banked down he still has the same taut eager face and
supple muscles and looks like he's ready to go anytime -- But actually loves
his home (paid for by railroad insurance when he broke his leg trying to
stop a boxcar from crashing), loves his wife in a way tho they fight some,
loves his kids and especially his little son Timmy John partly named after
me -- Poor old, good old Cody sitting there with his chess set, wants
immediately to challenge somebody to a chess game but only has an hour to
talk to us before he goes to work supporting the family by rushing out and
pushing his Nash Rambler down the quiet Los Gatos suburb street, jumping in,
starting the motor, in fact his only complaint is that the Nash wont start
without a push -- No bitter complaints about society whatever from this
grand and ideal man who really loves me moreover as if I deserved it, but
I'm bursting to explain everything to him, not even Big Sur but the past
several years, but there's no chance with everybody yakking -- And in fact I
can see in Cody's eyes that he can see in my own eyes the regret we both
feel that recently we haven't had chances to talk whatever, like we used to
do driving across America and back in the old road days, too many people now
want to talk to us and tell us their stories, we've been hemmed in and
surrounded and outnumbered -- The circle's closed in on the old heroes of
the night -- But he says "However you guys, come on down round "bout one
when the boss leaves and watch me work and keep me company awhile before you
go back to the City" -- I can see Dave Wain really loves him at once, and
Stanley Popovich too who's come along on this trip just to meet the fabled
"Dean Moriarty" -- The name I give Cody in "On the Road" -- But O, it breaks
my heart to see he's lost his beloved job on the railroad and after all the
seniority he'd piled up since 1948 and now is reduced to tire recapping and
dreary parole visits -- All for two stick of wild loco weed that grows by
itself in Texas because God wanted it -- And there over the bookshelf is the
old photo of me and Cody arm in arm in the early days on a sunny street -- I
rush to explain to Cody what happened the year before when his religious
advisor at the prison had invited me to come to San Quentin to lecture the
religious class -- Dave Wain was supposed to drive me and wait outside the
prison walls as I'd go in there alone, probably with a pepup nip bottle
hidden in my coat (I hoped) and I'd be led by big guards to the lecture room
of the prison and there would be sitting a hundred or so cons including Cody
probably all proud in the front row -- And I would begin by telling them I
had been in jail myself once and that I had no right nevertheless to lecture
them on religion -- But they're all lonely prisoners and dont care what I
talk about -- The whole thing arranged, in any case, and on the big morning
I wake up instead dead drunk on a floor, it's already noon and too late,
Dave Wain is on the floor also, Willie's parked outside to take us to
Quentin for the lecture but it's too late -- But now Cody says "It's alright
old buddy I understand" -- Altho our friend Irwin had done it, lectured
there, but Irwin can do all sorta things like that being more social than I
am and capable of going in there as he did and reading his wildest poems
which set the prison yard humming with excitement tho I think he shouldna
done it after all because I say just to show up for any reason except
visiting inside a prison is still SIGNIFYING -- And I tell this to Cody who
ponders a chess problem and says "Drinkin again, hey? " (if there's anything
he hates is to see me drink).
We help him push his Nash down the street, then drink awhile and talk
with Evelyn a beautiful blonde woman that young Ron Blake wants and even
Dave Wain wants but she's got her mind on other things and taking care of
the children who have to go to school and dancing classes in the morning and
hardly gets a word in edgewise anyway as we all yak and yell like fools to
impress her tho all she really wants is to be alone with me to talk about
Cody and his latest soul.
Which includes the fact of Billie Dabney his mistress who has
threatened to take Cody away completely from Evelyn, as I'll show later.
So we do go out to the San Jose highway to watch Cody recap tires --
There he is wearing goggles working like Vulcan at his forge, throwing tires
all over the place with fantastic strength, the good ones high up on a pile,
"This one's no good" down on another, bing, bang, talking all the time a
long fantastic lecture on tire recapping which has Dave Wain marvel with
amazement -- ('My God he can do all that and even explain while he's doing
it') -- But I just mention in connection with the fact that Dave Wain now
realizes why I've always loved Cody... Expecting to see a bitter ex con he
sees instead a martyr of the American Night in goggles in some dreary tire
shop at 2 A. M. making fellows laugh with joy with his funny explanations
yet at the same time to a T performing every bit of the work he's being paid
for -- Rushing up and ripping tires off car wheels with a jicklo, clang,
throwing it on the machine, starting up big roaring steams but yelling
explanations over that, darting, bending, flinging, flaying, till Dave Wain
said he thought he was going to die laughing or cry right there on the spot.
So we drive back to town and go to the mad boarding-house to drink some
more and I pass out dead drunk on the floor as usual in that house, waking
up in the morning groaning far from my clean cot on the porch in Big Sur No
bluejays yakking for me to wake up any more, no gurgling creek, I'm back in
the grooky city and I'm trapped.
Instead there's the sound of bottles crashing in the living-room where
poor Lex Pascal is holding forth yelling, it reminds of the time a year ago
when Jarry Wagner's future wife got sore at Lex and threw a half gallonfull
of tokay across the room and hooked him right across the eye, thereupon
sailing to Japan to marry Jarry in a big Zen ceremony that made coast to
coast papers but all old Lex's got is a cut which I try to fix in the
bathroom upstairs saying "Hey, that cut's already stopped bleeding, you'll
be alright Lex" -- "I'm French Canadian too" he says proudly and when Dave
and I and George Baso get ready to drive back to New York he gives me a St
Christopher medal as a goingaway gift -- Lex the kind of guy shouldnt really
be living in this wild beat boardinghouse, should hide on a ranch somewhere,
powerful, goodlooking, full of crazy desire for women and booze and never
enough of either -- So as the bottles crash again and the Hi Fi's playing
Beethoven's Solemn Mass I fall asleep on the floor.
Waking up the next morning groaning of course, but this is the big day
when we're going to go visit poor George Baso at the TB hospital in the
Valley -- Dave perks me up right away bringing coffee or wine optional...
I'm on Ben Fagan's floor somehow, apparently I've harangued him till dawn
about Buddhism some Buddhist.
Complicated already but now suddenly appears Joey Rosenberg a strange
young kid from Oregon with a full beard and his hair growing right down to
his neck like Raul Castro, once the California High School high jump champ
who was only about five foot six but had made the incredible leap of six
foot nine over the bar! and shows his highjump ability too by the way he
dances around on light feet -- A strange athlete who's suddenly decided
instead to become some sort of beat Jesus and in fact you see perfect purity
and sincerity in his young blue eyes -- In fact his eyes are so pure you
don't notice the crazy hair and beard, and also he's wearing ragged but
strangely elegant clothing ('One of the first of the new Beat Dandies, "
McLear told me a few days later, "did you hear about that? there's a new
strange underground group of beatniks or whatever who wear special smooth
dandy clothes even tho it may just be a jean jacket with shino slacks
they'll always have strange beautiful shoes or shirts, or turn around and
wear fancy pants unpressed acourse but with torn sneakers') -- Joey is
wearing something like brown soft garments like a tunic or something and his
shoes look like Las Vegas sports shoes -- The moment he sees my battered
blue little sneakers that I'd used at Big Sur when my feet go sore, that is
in case my feet got sore on a rocky hike, he wants them for himself, he
wants to swap the snazzy Las Vegas sports shoes (pale leather, untooled) for
my silly little tightfitting tho perfect sneakers that in fact I was wearing
because the Monterey hike blisters were still hurting me -- So we swap --
And I ask Dave Wain about him: Dave says: "He's one of the really strangest
sweetest guys I've ever known, showed up about a week ago I hear tell, they
asked him what he wanted to do and never answers, just smiles -- He just
sorta wants to dig everything and just watch and enjoy and say nothing
particular about it... If someone's to ask him "Let's drive to New York"
he'd jump right for it without a word -- On a sort of a pilgrimage, see,
with all that youth, us old fucks oughta take a lesson from him, in faith
too, he has faith, I can see it in his eyes, he has faith in any direction
he may take with anyone just like Christ I guess. "
It's strange that in a later revery I imagined myself walking across a
field to find the strange gang of pilgrims in Arkansas and Dave Wain was
sitting there saying "Shhh, He's sleeping, " "He" being Joey and all the
disciples are following him on a march to New York after which they expect
to keep going walking on water to the other shore -- But of course (in my
revery even) I scoff and don't believe it (a kind of story daydreaming I
often do) but in the morning when I look into Joey Rosenberg's eyes I
instantly realize it IS Him, Jesus, because anyone (according to the rules
of my revery) who looks into those eyes is instantly convinced and converted
-- So the revery continues into a long farfetched story ending with thinking
IBM machines trying to destroy this "Second Coming" etc. (but also, in
reality, a few months later I threw away his shoes in the ashcan back home
because I felt they had brought me bad luck and wishing I'd kept my blue
sneakers with the little holes in the toes! ) So anyway we get Joey and Ron
Blake who's always following Dave and go off to see Monsanto at the store,
our usual ritual, then across the corner to Mike's Place where we start off
the 10 A. M. with food, drink and a few games of pool at the tables along
the bar -- Joey winning the game and a stranger poolshark you never saw with
his long Biblical hair bending to slide the cue stick smoothly through
completely professionally competent fingerstance and smashing home long
straight drives, like seeing Jesus shoot pool of course -- And meanwhile all
the food these poor starved kids all three of them do pack in and eat! --
It's not every day they're with a drunken novelist with hundreds of dollars
to splurge on them, they order everything, spaghetti, follow that up with
Jumbo Hamburgers, follow that up with ice cream and pie and puddings, Dave
Wain has a huge appetite anyway but adds Manhattans and Martinis to the side
of his plate -- I'm just wailing away on my old fatal double bourbons and
gingerale and I'll be sorry in a few days. Any drinker knows how the process
works: the first day you get drunk is okay, the morning after means a big
head but so you can kill that easy with a few more drinks and a meal, but if
you pass up the meal and go on to another night's drunk, and wake up to keep
the toot going, and continue on to the fourth day, there'll come one day
when the drinks wont take effect because you're chemically overloaded and
you'll have to sleep it off but cant sleep any more because it was alcohol
itself that made you sleep those last five nights, so delirium sets in --
Sleeplessness, sweat, trembling, a groaning feeling of weakness where your
arms are numb and useless, nightmares, (nightmares of death)... well,
there's more of that up later.
About noon which is now the peak of a golden blurry new day for me we
pick up Dave's girl Romana Swartz a big Rumanian monster beauty of some kind
(I mean with big purple eyes and very tall and big but Mae West big), Dave
whispers in my ear "You oughta see her walking around that Zen-East House in
those purple panties of hers, nothing else on, there's one married guy lives
there who goes crazy every time she goes down the hall tho I dont blame him,
would you? she's not trying to entice him or anybody she's just a nudist,
she believe in nudism and bygod she's going to practice it! " (the Zen-East
house being another sort of boardinghouse but this one for all kinds of
married people and single and some small bohemian type families all races
studying Subud or something, I never was there) -- She's a big beautiful
brunette anyway in the line of taste you might attribute to every slaky
hungry sex slave in the world but also intelligent, well read, writes
poetry, is a Zen student, knows everything, is in fact just simply a big
healthy Rumanian Jewess who wants to marry a good hardy man and go live on a
farm in the valley, that's it...
The TB hospital is about two hours away through Trac and down the San
Joaquin Valley, Dave drives beautiful with Romana between us and me holding
the bottle again, it's bright beautiful California sunshine and prune
orchards out there zipping by... It's always fun to have a good driver and a
bottle and dark glasses on a fine sunny afternoon going somewhere
interesting, and all the good conversation as I said -- Ron and Joey are on
the back mattress sitting crosslegged just like poor George Baso had sat on
that trip last year from Frisco to New York.
But the main thing I'd liked at once about that Japanese kid was what
he told me the first night I met him in that crazy kitchen of the Buchanan
Street house: from midnight to 6 A. M. in his slow methodical voice he gave
me his own tremendous version of the Life of Buddha beginning with infancy
and right down to the end... George's theory (he has many theories and has
actually run meditation classes with bells, just really a serious young lay
priest of Japanese Buddhism when all is said and done) is that Buddha did
not reject amorous love life with his wife and with his harem girls because
he was sexually disinterested but on the contrary had been taught in the
highest arts of lovemaking and eroticism possible in the India of that time,
when great tomes like the Kama Sutra were in the process of being developed,
tomes that give you instructions on every act, facet, approach, moment,
trick, lick, lock, bing and bang and slurp of how to make love with another
human being "male or female" insisted George: "He knew everything there is
to know about all kinds of sex so that when he abandoned the world of
pleasure to go be an ascetic in the forest everybody of course knew that he
wasn't putting it all down out of ignorance... It served to make people of
those times feel a marvelous respect for all his words -- And he was just no
simple Casanova with a few frigid affairs across the years, man he went all
the way, he had ministers and special eunuchs and special women who taught
him love, special virgins were brought to him, he was acquainted with every
aspect of perversity and non perversity and as you know he was also a great
archer, horseman, he was just completely trained in all the arts of living
by his father's orders because his father wanted to make sure he'd NEVER
leave the palace -- They used every trick in the books to entice him to a
life of pleasure and as you know they even had him happily married to a
beautiful girl called Yasodhara and he had a son with her Rahula and he also
had his harem which included dancing boys and everything in the books" then
George would go into every detail of this knowledge, like "He knew that the
phallus is held with the hand and moved inside the vagina with a rotary
movement, but this was only the first of several variations where there is
also the lowering down of the gal's hips so that the vulva you see recedes
and the phallus is introduced with a fast quick movement like stinging of a
wasp, or else the vulva is protruded by means of lifting up the hips high so
that the member is buried with a sudden rush right to the basis, or then he
can withdraw real teasing like, or concentrate on right or left side -- And
then he knew all the gestures, words, expressions, what to do with a flower,
what not to do with a flower, how to drink the lip in all kinds of kissing
or how to crush kiss or soft kiss, man he was a genius in the beginning'...
and so on, George went all the way telling me this till 6 A. M. it being one
of the most fantastic Buddha Charitas I'd ever heard ending with George's
own perfect enunciation of the law of the Twelve Nirdanas whereby Buddha
just logically disconnected all creation and laid it bare for what it was,
under the Bo Tree, a chain of illusions -- And on the trip to New York with
Dave and me up front talking all the way poor George just sat there on the
mattress for the most part very quiet and told us he was taking this trip to
find out if HE was traveling to New York or just the CAR (Willie the Jeep)
was traveling to New York or was it just the WHEELS were colling, or the
tires, or what -- A Zen problem of some kind -- So that when we'd see grain
elevators on the Plains of Oklahoma George would say quietly "Well it seems
to me that grain elevator is sorta waitin for the road to approach it" or
he'd say suddenly "While you guys was talkin just then about how to mix a
good Pernod Martini I just saw a white horse standing in an abandoned
storefront" -- In Las Vegas we'd taken a good motel room and gone out to
play a little roulette, in St Louis we'd gone to see the great bellies of
the East St Louis hootchy kootchy joints where three of the most marvelous
young girls performed smiling directly at us as tho they knew all about
George and his theories about erogenous Buddha (there sits the monarch
observing the donzinggerls) and as tho they knew anyway all about Dave Wain
who whenever he see a beautiful girl says licking his lips "Yum Yum'...
But now George has TB and they tell me he may even die... Which adds to
that darkness in my mind, all these DEATH things piling up suddenly -- But I
cant believe old Zen Master George is going to allow his body to die just
now tho it looks like it when we pass through the lawn and come to a ward of
beds and see him sitting dejected on the edge of his bed with his hair
hanging over his brow where before it was always combed back -- He's in a
bathrobe and looks up at us almost displeased (but everybody is displeased
by unexpected visits from friends or relatives in a hospital) -- Nobody
wants to be surprised on their hospital bed -- He sighs and comes out to the
warm lawn with us and the expression on his face says "Well ah so you've
come to see me because I'm sick but what do you really want? " as tho all
the old humorous courage of the year before has now given away to a
profoundly deep 15 Japanese skepticism like that of a Samurai warrior in a
fit of suicidal depression (surprising me by its abject gloomy fearful
frown).
15
I mean it was like my first frightened realization of what to be
Japanese really meant -- To be Japanese and not to believe in life any more
and to be gloomy like Beethoven yet to be Japanese in gloom, the gloom of
Basho behind it all, the huge thunderous scowl of Issa or of Shiki, kneeling
in the frost with the bowed head like the bowed-head-oblivion of all the old
horses of Japan long dust.
He sits there on the lawn bench looking down and when Dave asks him
"Well you gonna be alright soon George" he says simply "I don't know" -- He
really means "I dont care" -- And always warm and courteous with me he now
hardly pays any attention to me -- He's a little nervous because the other
patients, GI vets, will see that he's received a visit from a bunch of
ragged beatniks including Joey Rosenberg who is bouncing around the lawn
looking at flowers with that bemused sincere smile -- But little neat
George, just five feet five and a few pounds over that and so clean, with
his soft feathery hair like the hair of a child, his delicate hands, he just
stares at the ground -- His answers come like an old man's (he's only 30) --
"I guess all the Dharma talk about everything is nothing is just sorta
sinking in my bones, " he concedes, which makes me shudder -- (On the way
Dave's been telling us to be ready because George's changed so) -- But I try
to keep things going, "Do you remember those dancing girls in St Louis? " --
"Yen, whore candy" (he's referring to a piece of perfumed cotton one of the
girls threw at us in her dance, which we tacked up later to a highway
accident cross we'd yanked out of the ground one blood red sunset in
Arizona, tacking this perfumed beautiful cotton right where the head of
Christ was so that when we brought the cross to New York naturally we had
everybody smelling it but George pointed out how beautiful we'd done all
this subconsciously because the net result was that all the hepcats of
Greenwich Village who came in to see us were picking up the cross and
putting their heads [noses] to it) -- But George doesn't care any more --
And anyway it's time to leave.
But ah, as we're leaving and waving back at him and he's turned around
tentatively to go into the hospital I linger behind the others and turn
around several times to wave again -- Finally I start to make a joke of it
by ducking around a corner and peeking out and waving again... He ducks
behind a bush and waves back I dart to a bush and peek out... Suddenly we're
two crazy hopeless sages goofing on a lawn -- Finally as we part further and
further and he comes closer to the door we are making elaborate gestures and
down to the most infinitesimal like when he steps inside the door I wait
till I see him sticking a finger out -- So from around my corner I stick out
a shoe -- So from his door he sticks out an eye -- So from my corner I stick
out nothing but just yell "Wu! " -- So from his door he sticks out nothing
and says nothing
-- So I hide in the corner and do nothing -- But suddenly I burst out
and there HE is bursting out and we start waving gyrations and duck back to
our hiding places -- Then I pull a big one by simply walking away rapidly
but suddenly I turn and wave again -- He walking backwards and waving back
-- The further I go now also walking backwards the more I wave --
Finally we're so far apart by about a hundred yards the game is almost
impossible but we continue somehow -- Finally I see a distant sad little Zen
wave of hand
-- I jump up into the air and gyrate both arms -- He does the same --
He goes into the hospital but a moment later he's peeking out this time from
the ward window! -- I'm behind a tree trunk thumbing my nose at him --
There's no end to it, in fact -- The other kids are all back at the car
wondering what's keeping me -- What's keeping me is that I know George will
get better and live and teach the joyful truth and George knows I know this,
that's why he's playing the game with me, the magic game of glad freedom
which is what Zen or for that matter the Japanese soul ultimately means I
say, "And someday I will go to Japan with George" I tell myself after we've
made our last little wave because I've heard the supper bell ring and seen
the other patients rush for the chow line and knowing George's fantastic
appetite wrapped in that little frail body I don't wanta hang him up tho he
nevertheless does one last trick: He throws a glass of water out the window
in a big froosh of water and I don't see him any more.
"Wotze mean by that? " I'm scratching my head going back to the car.
To complete this crazy day at 3 o'clock in the morning here I am
sitting in a car being driven 100 miles an hour around the sleeping streets
and hills and waterfronts of San Francisco, Dave's gone off to sleep with
Romana and the others are passed out and this crazy nextdoor neighbor of the
roominghouse (himself a Bohemian but also a laborer, a housepainter who
comes home with big muddy boots and has his little boy living with him the
wife has died) -- I've been in his pad listening to booming loud Stan Getz
jazz on his Hi Fi and happened to mention I thought Dave Wain and Cody
Pomeray were the two greatest drivers in the world -- "What? " he yells, a
big blond husky kid with a strange fixed smile, "man I used to drive the
getaway car! come on down I'll show ya! " -- So almost dawn and here we are
cuttin down Buchanan and around the corner on screeching wheels and he opens
her up, goes zipping towards a red light so takes a sudden screeching left
and goes up a hill fullblast, when we come to the top of the hill I figger
he'll pause awhile to see what's over the top but he goes even faster and
practically flies off the hill and we head down one of those incredibly
steep San Fran streets with our snout pointed to the waters of the Bay and
he steps on the gas! we go sailing down a hundred m. p. h. to the bottom of
the hill where there's an intersection luckily with the light on green and
thru that we blast with just one little bump where the road crosses and
another bump where the street is dipping downhill again -- We come down to
the waterfront and screech right In a minute we're soaring over the ramps
around the Bridge entrance and before I can gulp up a shot or two from my
last late bottle we're already parked back outside the pad on Buchanan --
The greatest driver in the world whoever he was and I never saw him again --
Bruce something or other -- What a getaway.
I end up groaning drunk on the floor this time beside Dave's floor
mattress forgetting that he's not even there. But a strange thing happened
that morning I remember now: before Cody's call from downvalley: I'm feeling
hopelessly idiotically depressed again groaning to remember Tyke's dead and
remembering that sinking beach but at the side of the radiator in the toilet
lies a copy of Boswell's Johnson which we'd been discussing so happy in the
car: I open to any page then one more page and start reading from the top
left and suddenly I'm in an entirely perfect world again: old Doc Johnson
and Boswell are visiting a castle in Scotland belonging to a deceased friend
called Rorie More, they're drinking sherry by the great fireplace looking at
the picture of Rorie on the wall, the widow of Rorie is there, Johnson
suddenly says "Sir, here's what I would do to deal with the sword of Rorie
More" (the portrait shows old Rorie with his Highlands flinger) "I'd get
inside him with a dirk and stab him to my pleasure like an animal" and
bleary with hangover I realize that if there was any way for Johnson to
express his sorrow to the widow of Rorie More on the unfortunate
circumstance of his death, this was the way -- So pitiful, irrational, yet
perfect -- I rush down to the kitchen where Dave Wain and some others are
already eating breakfast of sorts and start reading the whole thing to the
lot of them -- Jonesy looks at me askance over his pipe for being so
literary so early in the morning but I'm not being literary at all -- Again
I see death, the death of Rorie More, but Johnson's response to death is
ideal and so ideal I only wish old Johnson be sitting in the kitchen now --
(Help! I'm thinking).
The call comes from Cody in Los Gatos that he lost his job tire
recapping -- "Because we were there last night? " -- 'No no something
entirely different, he's gotta lay off some men because his mortgage is
bleeding him and all that and some girl is tryna sue him for forging a check
and all that, so man I've got to find another job but I have to pay the rent
and everything's all fucked up down here, Oh old buddy how about, cant you,
I plead or I don't plead, or honestly, Jack, ah, lend me a hundred dollars
willya? " -- 'By God Cody I'll be right down and GIVE you a hundred
dollars'... "You mean you'll really do that, listen just to lend to me is
enough but if you insist, hm" (fluttering his eyelashes over the phone
because he knows I mean it) "you old loverboy you, how you gonna get down
here there and give me that money there son and make my old heart glad" --
"I'll have Dave drive me down" -- "Okay I'll pay the rent with it right away
and because it's now Friday, why, Thursday or whatever, that's right
Thursday, why I dont have to be lookin for a new job till next Monday so you
can stay here and we'll have a long weekend just goofin and talkin boy like
we used to do, I can demolish you at chess or we can watch a baseball game"
and in a whisper "and we can sneak into the City see and see my purty baby"
-- So I ask Dave Wain and yes he's ready to go anytime, he's just following
me like I often follow people myself, and so off we go again.
And on the way we drop in on Monsanto at the bookstore and the idea
suddenly comes to me for Dave and me and Cody to go to the cabin and spend a
big quiet crazy weekend (how? ) but when Monsanto hears this idea he'll come
too, in fact he'll bring his little Chinese buddy Arthur Ma and we'll catch
McLear at Santa Cruz and go visit Henry Miller and suddenly another big huge
ball is begun. So there's Willie waiting down on the street, I go to the
store, buy the bottle, Dave wheels Willie around, Ron Blake and now Ben
Fagan are on the back mattress, I'm sitting in my front seat rocking chair
as now in broad afternoon we go blattin again down that Bay Shore highway to
see old Cody and Monsanto's in back of us in his jeep with Arthur Ma, two
jeeps now, and about to be two more as I'll show -- Coming to Cody's in mid
afternoon, his own house already filled with visitors (local Los Gatos
literaries and all kinds of people the phone there ringing continually too)
and Cody says to Evelyn "I'll just spend a couple days with Jack and the
gang like the old days and look for a job Monday" -- "Okay" -- So we all go
to a wonderful pizza restaurant in Los Gatos where the pizzas are piled an
inch high with mushrooms and meat and anchovies or anything you want, I cash
a travelers check at the supermarket, Cody takes the 100 in cash, gives it
to Evelyn in the restaurant, and later that day the two jeeps resume down to
Monterey and down that blasted road I walked on blistered feet back to the
frightful bridge at Raton Canyon And I'd thought I'd never see the place
again. But now I was coming back loaded with observers. The sight of the
canyon down there as we renegotiated the mountain road made me bite my lip
with marvel and sadness.
It's as familiar as an old face in an old photograph as tho I'm gone a
million years from all that sun shaded brush on rocks and that heartless
blue of the sea washing white on yellow sand, those rills of yellow arroyo
running down mighty cliff shoulders, those distant blue meadows, that whole
ponderous groaning upheaval so strange to see after the last several days of
just looking at little faces and mouths of people As tho nature had a
Gargantuan leprous face of its own with broad nostrils and huge bags under
its eyes and a mouth big enough to swallow five thousand jeepster
stationwagons and ten thousand Dave Wains and Cody Pomerays without a sigh
of reminiscence or regret -- There it is, every sad contour of my valley,
the gaps, the Mien Mo captop mountain again, the dreaming woods below our
high shelved road, suddenly indeed the sight of poor Alf again far way
grazing in the mid afternoon by the corral fence -- And there's the creek
bouncing along as tho nothing had ever happened elsewhere and even in the
daytime somehow dark and hungry looking in its deeper tangled grass. Cody's
never seen this country before altho he's an old Californian by now, I can
see he's very impressed and even glad he's come out on a little jaunt with
the boys and with me and is seeing a grand sight -- He's like a little boy
again now for the first time in years because he's like let out of school,
no job, the bills paid, nothing to do but gratefully amuse me, his eyes are
shining -- In fact ever since he's come out of San Quentin there's been
something hauntedly boyish about him as tho prison walls had taken all the
adult dark tenseness out of him -- In fact every evening after supper in the
cell he shared with the quiet gunman he'd bent his serious head to a daily
letter or at least every-other-day letter full of philosophical and
religious musings to his mistress Billie... And when you're in bed in jail
after lights out and you're not sleepy there's ample time to just remember
the world and indeed savor its sweetness if any (altho it's always sweet to
remember it in jail tho harder in prison, as Genet shows) with the result
that he'd not only come to a chastisement of his bashing bitternesses (and
of course it's always good to get away from alcohol and excessive smoking
for two years) (and all that regular sleep) he was just like a kid again,
but as I say that haunting kidlikeness I think all ex cons seem to have when
they've just come out -- In seeking to severely penalize criminals society
by putting the criminals away behind safe walls actually provide them with
the means of greater strength for future atrocities glorious and otherwise
-- "Well I'll be damned" he keeps saying as he sees those bluffs and cliffs
and hanging vines and dead trees, "you mean to tell me you ben alone here
for three weeks, why I wouldn't dare that... must be awful at night
... looka that old mule down there... man, dig the redwood country way
back in... reminds me of old Colorady b'god when I used to steal a car every
day and drive out to hills like this with a fresh little high school
sumptin" -- "Yum Yum, " says Dave Wain emphatically turning that big goofy
look to us from his driving wheel with his big mad feverish shining eyes
full of yumyum and yabyum too -- "S'matter with you boys not making
extensive plans to bring a bevy of schoolgirls down there to wile away our
conversation pieces thar" says Cody real relaxed and talking sadly. Behind
me with your outside plans" -- "So the guy goes out and stands on his head
in the snow? " "No that was Fubar" -- Or you go runnin into Dave Wain's room
and there he is sitting crosslegged on his mattress on the floor reading
Jane Austen, you ask "What's the best way to make beef Stroganoff? "...
"Beef Stroganoff is very simple, "t'aint nothin but a good well cooked beef
and onion stew that you let cool afterwards then you throw in mushrooms and
lotsa sour cream, I'll come down and show way soon's I finish this chapter
in this marvelous novel, I wanta find out what happens next" -- Or you go
into the Negro's room and ask if you can borrow his tape recorder because
right at the moment some funny things are being said in the kitchen by
Duluoz and McLear and Monsanto and some newspaperman -- Because the kitchen
was also the main talking room where everybody sat in a cluster of dishes
and ashtrays and all kinds of visitors came... The year before a beautiful
16 year old Japanese girl had come there just to interview me, for instance,
but chaperoned by a Chinese painter The phone rang consistently -- Even wild
Negro hepcats from around the corner came in with bottles (Edward Kool and
several others) -- There was Zen, jazz, booze, pot and all the works but it
was somehow obviated (as a supposedly degenerate idea) by the sight of a
"beatnik" carefully painting the wall of his room and clean white with nice
little red borders around the door and windowframes -- Or someone is
sweeping out the livingroom. Itinerant visitors like me or Ron Blake always
had an extra mattress to sleep on.
But Dave is anxious and so am I to see great Cody who is always the
major part of my reason for journeying to the west coast so we call him up
to Los Gatos fifty miles away down the Santa Clara Valley and I hear his
dear sad voice saying "Been waitin for ya old buddy, come on down right
away, but I'll be goin to work at midnight so hurry up and you can visit me
at work soon's the boss leaves round two and I'll show you my new job of
tire recappin and see if you cant bring a little somethin like a girl or
sumptin, just kiddin, come on down pal... "
So there's old Willie waiting for us down on the street parked across
from the little pleasant Japanese liquor store where as usual, according to
our ritual, I run and get Pernod or Scotch or anything good while Dave
wheels around to pick me up at the store door, and I get in the front seat
at Dave's right where I belong all the time like old Honored Samuel Johnson
while everybody else that wants to come along has to scramble back there on
the mattress (a full mattress, the seats are out) and squat there or lie
down there and also generally keep silent because when Dave's got the wheel
of Willie in his hand and I've got the bottle in mine and we're off on a
trip the talking all comes from the front seat... "By God" yells Dave all
glad again, "it's just like old times Jack, gee old Willie's been sad for
ya, waiting for ya to come back -- So now I'm gonna show ya how old Willie's
even improved with age, had him reconditioned in Reno last month, here he
goes, are you ready Willie? " and off we go and the beauty of it allthis
particular summer is that the front right seat is broken and just rocks back
and forth gently to every one of Dave's driving moves -- It's like sitting
in a rocking chair on a porch only this is a moving porch and a porch to
talk on at that -- And insteada watching old men pitch horseshoes from this
here talking porch it's all that fine white clean line in the middle of the
road as we go flying like birds over the Harrison ramps and whatnot Dave
always uses to sneak out of Frisco real fast and avoid all the traffic...
Soon we're set straight and pointed head on down beautiful fourlane Bayshore
Highway to that lovely Santa Clara Valley... But I'm amazed that after only
a few years the damn thing no longer has prune fields and vast beet fields
like at Lawrence when I was a brakeman on the Southern Pacific and even
after) it's one long row of houses right down the line fifty miles to San
Jose like a great monstrous Los Angeles beginning to grow south of Frisco.
At first it's beautiful to just watch that white line reel in to
Willie's snout but when I start looking around out the window there's just
endless housing tracts and new blue factories everywhere -- Sez Dave "Yes
that's right, the population explosion is gonna cover every bit of backyard
dirt in America someday in fact they'll even have to start piling up friggin
levels of houses and others over that like your city City CITY till the
houses reach a hundred miles in the air in all directions of the map and
people looking at the earth from another planet with super telescopes will
see a prickly ball hanging in space -- It's like real horrible when you come
to think of it, even us with our fancy talks, shit man it's all millions of
people and events piling up almost unimaginable now, like raving baboons
we'll all be piled on top of each other or one another or whatever you're
sposed to say -- Hundreds of millions of hungry mouths raving for more more
more -- And the sadness of it all is that the world hasn't any chance to
produce say a writer whose life could really actually touch all this life in
every detail like you always say, some writers could bring you sobbing thru
the bed fuckin bedcribs of the moon to see it all even unto the goddamned
last gory detail of some dismal robbery of the heart at dawn when no one
cares like Sinatra sings" ('When no one cares, " he sings in his low
baritone but resumes): "Some strict sweeper sweeping it all up. I mean the
incredible helplessness I felt Jack when Celine ended his Journey To The End
Of The Night by pissing in the Seine River at dawn there I am thinkin my God
there's probably somebody pissing in the Trenton River at dawn right now,
the Danube, the Ganges, the frozen Obi, the Yellow, the Parana, the
Willamette, the Merrimac in Missouri too, the Missouri itself, the Yuma, the
Amazon, the Thames, the Po, and so and so, it's so friggin endless it's like
poems endless everywhere and no one knows any bettern old Buddha you know
where he says it's like "There are immeasurable star misty aeons of
universes more numerous than the sands in all the galaxies, multiplied by a
billion lightyears of multiplication, in fact if I were to go on you'd be
scared and couldn't comprehend and you'd despair so much you'd drop dead, "
that's what he just about said in one of those sutras -- Macrocosms and
microcosms and chillicosms and microbes and finally you get all these
marvelous books a man aint even got time to read em all, what you gonna do
in this already piled up multiple world when you have to think of the Book
of Songs, Faulkner, Cesar Birotteau, Shakespeare, Satyricons, Dantes, in
fact long stories guys tell you in bars, in fact the sutras themselves, Sir
Philip Sidney, Sterne, Ibn El Arabi, the copious Lope de Vega and the
uncopious goddamn Cervantes, shoo, then there's all those Catulluses and
Davids and radio listening skid row sages to contend with because they've
all got a million stories too and you too Ron Blake in the backseat shut up!
down to everything which is so much that it is of necessity dont you think
Nothing anyway, huh? " (expressing exactly the way I feel, of course).
And to corroborate all that about the too-much-ness of the world, in
fact, there's Stanley Popovich also in the back mattress next to Ron,
Stanley Popovich of New York suddenly arrived in San Francisco with Jamie
his Italian beauty girl but's going to leave her in a few days to go work
for the circus, a big tough Yugoslav kid who ran the Seven Arts Gallery in
New York with big bearded beatnik readings but now comes the circus and a
whole big on-the-road of his own -- It's too much, in fact right this minute
he's started telling us about circus work -- On top of all that old Cody is
up ahead with HIS thousand stories -- We all agree it's1 too big to keep up
with, that we're surrounded by life, that we'll never understand it, so we
center it all in by swigging Scotch from the bottle and when it's empty I
run out of the car and buy another one, period.
13
But on the way to Cody's my madness already began to manifest itself in
a stranger way, another one of those signposts of something wrong I
mentioned a ways back: I thought I saw a flying saucer in the sky over Los
Gatos -- From five miles away -- I look and I see this thing flying along
and mention it to Dave who takes one brief look and says 'Ah it's only the
top of a radio tower" -- It reminds me of the time I took a mescaline pill
and thought an airplane was a flying saucer (a strange story this, a man has
to be crazy to write it anyway).
But there's old Cody in the livingroom of his fine ranchito home sittin
over his chess set pondering a problem and right by the fresh woodfire in
the fireplace his wife's set out because she knows I love fireplaces -- She
a good friend of mine too... The kids are sleeping in the back, it's about
eleven, and good old Cody shakes my hand again -- Havent seen him for
several years because mainly he's just spent two years in San Quentin on a
stupid charge of possession of marijuana... He was on his way to work on the
railroad one night and was short on time and his driving license had been
already revoked for speeding so he saw two bearded bluejeaned beatniks
parked, asked them to trade a quick ride to work at the railroad station for
two sticks of tea, they complied and arrested him -- They were disguised
policemen... For this great crime he spent two years in San Quentin in the
same cell with a murderous gunman -- His job was sweeping out the cotton
mill room -- I expect him to be all bitter and out of his head because of
this but strangely and magnificently he's become quieter, more radiant, more
patient, manly, more friendly even -- And tho the wild frenzies of his old
road days with me have banked down he still has the same taut eager face and
supple muscles and looks like he's ready to go anytime -- But actually loves
his home (paid for by railroad insurance when he broke his leg trying to
stop a boxcar from crashing), loves his wife in a way tho they fight some,
loves his kids and especially his little son Timmy John partly named after
me -- Poor old, good old Cody sitting there with his chess set, wants
immediately to challenge somebody to a chess game but only has an hour to
talk to us before he goes to work supporting the family by rushing out and
pushing his Nash Rambler down the quiet Los Gatos suburb street, jumping in,
starting the motor, in fact his only complaint is that the Nash wont start
without a push -- No bitter complaints about society whatever from this
grand and ideal man who really loves me moreover as if I deserved it, but
I'm bursting to explain everything to him, not even Big Sur but the past
several years, but there's no chance with everybody yakking -- And in fact I
can see in Cody's eyes that he can see in my own eyes the regret we both
feel that recently we haven't had chances to talk whatever, like we used to
do driving across America and back in the old road days, too many people now
want to talk to us and tell us their stories, we've been hemmed in and
surrounded and outnumbered -- The circle's closed in on the old heroes of
the night -- But he says "However you guys, come on down round "bout one
when the boss leaves and watch me work and keep me company awhile before you
go back to the City" -- I can see Dave Wain really loves him at once, and
Stanley Popovich too who's come along on this trip just to meet the fabled
"Dean Moriarty" -- The name I give Cody in "On the Road" -- But O, it breaks
my heart to see he's lost his beloved job on the railroad and after all the
seniority he'd piled up since 1948 and now is reduced to tire recapping and
dreary parole visits -- All for two stick of wild loco weed that grows by
itself in Texas because God wanted it -- And there over the bookshelf is the
old photo of me and Cody arm in arm in the early days on a sunny street -- I
rush to explain to Cody what happened the year before when his religious
advisor at the prison had invited me to come to San Quentin to lecture the
religious class -- Dave Wain was supposed to drive me and wait outside the
prison walls as I'd go in there alone, probably with a pepup nip bottle
hidden in my coat (I hoped) and I'd be led by big guards to the lecture room
of the prison and there would be sitting a hundred or so cons including Cody
probably all proud in the front row -- And I would begin by telling them I
had been in jail myself once and that I had no right nevertheless to lecture
them on religion -- But they're all lonely prisoners and dont care what I
talk about -- The whole thing arranged, in any case, and on the big morning
I wake up instead dead drunk on a floor, it's already noon and too late,
Dave Wain is on the floor also, Willie's parked outside to take us to
Quentin for the lecture but it's too late -- But now Cody says "It's alright
old buddy I understand" -- Altho our friend Irwin had done it, lectured
there, but Irwin can do all sorta things like that being more social than I
am and capable of going in there as he did and reading his wildest poems
which set the prison yard humming with excitement tho I think he shouldna
done it after all because I say just to show up for any reason except
visiting inside a prison is still SIGNIFYING -- And I tell this to Cody who
ponders a chess problem and says "Drinkin again, hey? " (if there's anything
he hates is to see me drink).
We help him push his Nash down the street, then drink awhile and talk
with Evelyn a beautiful blonde woman that young Ron Blake wants and even
Dave Wain wants but she's got her mind on other things and taking care of
the children who have to go to school and dancing classes in the morning and
hardly gets a word in edgewise anyway as we all yak and yell like fools to
impress her tho all she really wants is to be alone with me to talk about
Cody and his latest soul.
Which includes the fact of Billie Dabney his mistress who has
threatened to take Cody away completely from Evelyn, as I'll show later.
So we do go out to the San Jose highway to watch Cody recap tires --
There he is wearing goggles working like Vulcan at his forge, throwing tires
all over the place with fantastic strength, the good ones high up on a pile,
"This one's no good" down on another, bing, bang, talking all the time a
long fantastic lecture on tire recapping which has Dave Wain marvel with
amazement -- ('My God he can do all that and even explain while he's doing
it') -- But I just mention in connection with the fact that Dave Wain now
realizes why I've always loved Cody... Expecting to see a bitter ex con he
sees instead a martyr of the American Night in goggles in some dreary tire
shop at 2 A. M. making fellows laugh with joy with his funny explanations
yet at the same time to a T performing every bit of the work he's being paid
for -- Rushing up and ripping tires off car wheels with a jicklo, clang,
throwing it on the machine, starting up big roaring steams but yelling
explanations over that, darting, bending, flinging, flaying, till Dave Wain
said he thought he was going to die laughing or cry right there on the spot.
So we drive back to town and go to the mad boarding-house to drink some
more and I pass out dead drunk on the floor as usual in that house, waking
up in the morning groaning far from my clean cot on the porch in Big Sur No
bluejays yakking for me to wake up any more, no gurgling creek, I'm back in
the grooky city and I'm trapped.
Instead there's the sound of bottles crashing in the living-room where
poor Lex Pascal is holding forth yelling, it reminds of the time a year ago
when Jarry Wagner's future wife got sore at Lex and threw a half gallonfull
of tokay across the room and hooked him right across the eye, thereupon
sailing to Japan to marry Jarry in a big Zen ceremony that made coast to
coast papers but all old Lex's got is a cut which I try to fix in the
bathroom upstairs saying "Hey, that cut's already stopped bleeding, you'll
be alright Lex" -- "I'm French Canadian too" he says proudly and when Dave
and I and George Baso get ready to drive back to New York he gives me a St
Christopher medal as a goingaway gift -- Lex the kind of guy shouldnt really
be living in this wild beat boardinghouse, should hide on a ranch somewhere,
powerful, goodlooking, full of crazy desire for women and booze and never
enough of either -- So as the bottles crash again and the Hi Fi's playing
Beethoven's Solemn Mass I fall asleep on the floor.
Waking up the next morning groaning of course, but this is the big day
when we're going to go visit poor George Baso at the TB hospital in the
Valley -- Dave perks me up right away bringing coffee or wine optional...
I'm on Ben Fagan's floor somehow, apparently I've harangued him till dawn
about Buddhism some Buddhist.
Complicated already but now suddenly appears Joey Rosenberg a strange
young kid from Oregon with a full beard and his hair growing right down to
his neck like Raul Castro, once the California High School high jump champ
who was only about five foot six but had made the incredible leap of six
foot nine over the bar! and shows his highjump ability too by the way he
dances around on light feet -- A strange athlete who's suddenly decided
instead to become some sort of beat Jesus and in fact you see perfect purity
and sincerity in his young blue eyes -- In fact his eyes are so pure you
don't notice the crazy hair and beard, and also he's wearing ragged but
strangely elegant clothing ('One of the first of the new Beat Dandies, "
McLear told me a few days later, "did you hear about that? there's a new
strange underground group of beatniks or whatever who wear special smooth
dandy clothes even tho it may just be a jean jacket with shino slacks
they'll always have strange beautiful shoes or shirts, or turn around and
wear fancy pants unpressed acourse but with torn sneakers') -- Joey is
wearing something like brown soft garments like a tunic or something and his
shoes look like Las Vegas sports shoes -- The moment he sees my battered
blue little sneakers that I'd used at Big Sur when my feet go sore, that is
in case my feet got sore on a rocky hike, he wants them for himself, he
wants to swap the snazzy Las Vegas sports shoes (pale leather, untooled) for
my silly little tightfitting tho perfect sneakers that in fact I was wearing
because the Monterey hike blisters were still hurting me -- So we swap --
And I ask Dave Wain about him: Dave says: "He's one of the really strangest
sweetest guys I've ever known, showed up about a week ago I hear tell, they
asked him what he wanted to do and never answers, just smiles -- He just
sorta wants to dig everything and just watch and enjoy and say nothing
particular about it... If someone's to ask him "Let's drive to New York"
he'd jump right for it without a word -- On a sort of a pilgrimage, see,
with all that youth, us old fucks oughta take a lesson from him, in faith
too, he has faith, I can see it in his eyes, he has faith in any direction
he may take with anyone just like Christ I guess. "
It's strange that in a later revery I imagined myself walking across a
field to find the strange gang of pilgrims in Arkansas and Dave Wain was
sitting there saying "Shhh, He's sleeping, " "He" being Joey and all the
disciples are following him on a march to New York after which they expect
to keep going walking on water to the other shore -- But of course (in my
revery even) I scoff and don't believe it (a kind of story daydreaming I
often do) but in the morning when I look into Joey Rosenberg's eyes I
instantly realize it IS Him, Jesus, because anyone (according to the rules
of my revery) who looks into those eyes is instantly convinced and converted
-- So the revery continues into a long farfetched story ending with thinking
IBM machines trying to destroy this "Second Coming" etc. (but also, in
reality, a few months later I threw away his shoes in the ashcan back home
because I felt they had brought me bad luck and wishing I'd kept my blue
sneakers with the little holes in the toes! ) So anyway we get Joey and Ron
Blake who's always following Dave and go off to see Monsanto at the store,
our usual ritual, then across the corner to Mike's Place where we start off
the 10 A. M. with food, drink and a few games of pool at the tables along
the bar -- Joey winning the game and a stranger poolshark you never saw with
his long Biblical hair bending to slide the cue stick smoothly through
completely professionally competent fingerstance and smashing home long
straight drives, like seeing Jesus shoot pool of course -- And meanwhile all
the food these poor starved kids all three of them do pack in and eat! --
It's not every day they're with a drunken novelist with hundreds of dollars
to splurge on them, they order everything, spaghetti, follow that up with
Jumbo Hamburgers, follow that up with ice cream and pie and puddings, Dave
Wain has a huge appetite anyway but adds Manhattans and Martinis to the side
of his plate -- I'm just wailing away on my old fatal double bourbons and
gingerale and I'll be sorry in a few days. Any drinker knows how the process
works: the first day you get drunk is okay, the morning after means a big
head but so you can kill that easy with a few more drinks and a meal, but if
you pass up the meal and go on to another night's drunk, and wake up to keep
the toot going, and continue on to the fourth day, there'll come one day
when the drinks wont take effect because you're chemically overloaded and
you'll have to sleep it off but cant sleep any more because it was alcohol
itself that made you sleep those last five nights, so delirium sets in --
Sleeplessness, sweat, trembling, a groaning feeling of weakness where your
arms are numb and useless, nightmares, (nightmares of death)... well,
there's more of that up later.
About noon which is now the peak of a golden blurry new day for me we
pick up Dave's girl Romana Swartz a big Rumanian monster beauty of some kind
(I mean with big purple eyes and very tall and big but Mae West big), Dave
whispers in my ear "You oughta see her walking around that Zen-East House in
those purple panties of hers, nothing else on, there's one married guy lives
there who goes crazy every time she goes down the hall tho I dont blame him,
would you? she's not trying to entice him or anybody she's just a nudist,
she believe in nudism and bygod she's going to practice it! " (the Zen-East
house being another sort of boardinghouse but this one for all kinds of
married people and single and some small bohemian type families all races
studying Subud or something, I never was there) -- She's a big beautiful
brunette anyway in the line of taste you might attribute to every slaky
hungry sex slave in the world but also intelligent, well read, writes
poetry, is a Zen student, knows everything, is in fact just simply a big
healthy Rumanian Jewess who wants to marry a good hardy man and go live on a
farm in the valley, that's it...
The TB hospital is about two hours away through Trac and down the San
Joaquin Valley, Dave drives beautiful with Romana between us and me holding
the bottle again, it's bright beautiful California sunshine and prune
orchards out there zipping by... It's always fun to have a good driver and a
bottle and dark glasses on a fine sunny afternoon going somewhere
interesting, and all the good conversation as I said -- Ron and Joey are on
the back mattress sitting crosslegged just like poor George Baso had sat on
that trip last year from Frisco to New York.
But the main thing I'd liked at once about that Japanese kid was what
he told me the first night I met him in that crazy kitchen of the Buchanan
Street house: from midnight to 6 A. M. in his slow methodical voice he gave
me his own tremendous version of the Life of Buddha beginning with infancy
and right down to the end... George's theory (he has many theories and has
actually run meditation classes with bells, just really a serious young lay
priest of Japanese Buddhism when all is said and done) is that Buddha did
not reject amorous love life with his wife and with his harem girls because
he was sexually disinterested but on the contrary had been taught in the
highest arts of lovemaking and eroticism possible in the India of that time,
when great tomes like the Kama Sutra were in the process of being developed,
tomes that give you instructions on every act, facet, approach, moment,
trick, lick, lock, bing and bang and slurp of how to make love with another
human being "male or female" insisted George: "He knew everything there is
to know about all kinds of sex so that when he abandoned the world of
pleasure to go be an ascetic in the forest everybody of course knew that he
wasn't putting it all down out of ignorance... It served to make people of
those times feel a marvelous respect for all his words -- And he was just no
simple Casanova with a few frigid affairs across the years, man he went all
the way, he had ministers and special eunuchs and special women who taught
him love, special virgins were brought to him, he was acquainted with every
aspect of perversity and non perversity and as you know he was also a great
archer, horseman, he was just completely trained in all the arts of living
by his father's orders because his father wanted to make sure he'd NEVER
leave the palace -- They used every trick in the books to entice him to a
life of pleasure and as you know they even had him happily married to a
beautiful girl called Yasodhara and he had a son with her Rahula and he also
had his harem which included dancing boys and everything in the books" then
George would go into every detail of this knowledge, like "He knew that the
phallus is held with the hand and moved inside the vagina with a rotary
movement, but this was only the first of several variations where there is
also the lowering down of the gal's hips so that the vulva you see recedes
and the phallus is introduced with a fast quick movement like stinging of a
wasp, or else the vulva is protruded by means of lifting up the hips high so
that the member is buried with a sudden rush right to the basis, or then he
can withdraw real teasing like, or concentrate on right or left side -- And
then he knew all the gestures, words, expressions, what to do with a flower,
what not to do with a flower, how to drink the lip in all kinds of kissing
or how to crush kiss or soft kiss, man he was a genius in the beginning'...
and so on, George went all the way telling me this till 6 A. M. it being one
of the most fantastic Buddha Charitas I'd ever heard ending with George's
own perfect enunciation of the law of the Twelve Nirdanas whereby Buddha
just logically disconnected all creation and laid it bare for what it was,
under the Bo Tree, a chain of illusions -- And on the trip to New York with
Dave and me up front talking all the way poor George just sat there on the
mattress for the most part very quiet and told us he was taking this trip to
find out if HE was traveling to New York or just the CAR (Willie the Jeep)
was traveling to New York or was it just the WHEELS were colling, or the
tires, or what -- A Zen problem of some kind -- So that when we'd see grain
elevators on the Plains of Oklahoma George would say quietly "Well it seems
to me that grain elevator is sorta waitin for the road to approach it" or
he'd say suddenly "While you guys was talkin just then about how to mix a
good Pernod Martini I just saw a white horse standing in an abandoned
storefront" -- In Las Vegas we'd taken a good motel room and gone out to
play a little roulette, in St Louis we'd gone to see the great bellies of
the East St Louis hootchy kootchy joints where three of the most marvelous
young girls performed smiling directly at us as tho they knew all about
George and his theories about erogenous Buddha (there sits the monarch
observing the donzinggerls) and as tho they knew anyway all about Dave Wain
who whenever he see a beautiful girl says licking his lips "Yum Yum'...
But now George has TB and they tell me he may even die... Which adds to
that darkness in my mind, all these DEATH things piling up suddenly -- But I
cant believe old Zen Master George is going to allow his body to die just
now tho it looks like it when we pass through the lawn and come to a ward of
beds and see him sitting dejected on the edge of his bed with his hair
hanging over his brow where before it was always combed back -- He's in a
bathrobe and looks up at us almost displeased (but everybody is displeased
by unexpected visits from friends or relatives in a hospital) -- Nobody
wants to be surprised on their hospital bed -- He sighs and comes out to the
warm lawn with us and the expression on his face says "Well ah so you've
come to see me because I'm sick but what do you really want? " as tho all
the old humorous courage of the year before has now given away to a
profoundly deep 15 Japanese skepticism like that of a Samurai warrior in a
fit of suicidal depression (surprising me by its abject gloomy fearful
frown).
15
I mean it was like my first frightened realization of what to be
Japanese really meant -- To be Japanese and not to believe in life any more
and to be gloomy like Beethoven yet to be Japanese in gloom, the gloom of
Basho behind it all, the huge thunderous scowl of Issa or of Shiki, kneeling
in the frost with the bowed head like the bowed-head-oblivion of all the old
horses of Japan long dust.
He sits there on the lawn bench looking down and when Dave asks him
"Well you gonna be alright soon George" he says simply "I don't know" -- He
really means "I dont care" -- And always warm and courteous with me he now
hardly pays any attention to me -- He's a little nervous because the other
patients, GI vets, will see that he's received a visit from a bunch of
ragged beatniks including Joey Rosenberg who is bouncing around the lawn
looking at flowers with that bemused sincere smile -- But little neat
George, just five feet five and a few pounds over that and so clean, with
his soft feathery hair like the hair of a child, his delicate hands, he just
stares at the ground -- His answers come like an old man's (he's only 30) --
"I guess all the Dharma talk about everything is nothing is just sorta
sinking in my bones, " he concedes, which makes me shudder -- (On the way
Dave's been telling us to be ready because George's changed so) -- But I try
to keep things going, "Do you remember those dancing girls in St Louis? " --
"Yen, whore candy" (he's referring to a piece of perfumed cotton one of the
girls threw at us in her dance, which we tacked up later to a highway
accident cross we'd yanked out of the ground one blood red sunset in
Arizona, tacking this perfumed beautiful cotton right where the head of
Christ was so that when we brought the cross to New York naturally we had
everybody smelling it but George pointed out how beautiful we'd done all
this subconsciously because the net result was that all the hepcats of
Greenwich Village who came in to see us were picking up the cross and
putting their heads [noses] to it) -- But George doesn't care any more --
And anyway it's time to leave.
But ah, as we're leaving and waving back at him and he's turned around
tentatively to go into the hospital I linger behind the others and turn
around several times to wave again -- Finally I start to make a joke of it
by ducking around a corner and peeking out and waving again... He ducks
behind a bush and waves back I dart to a bush and peek out... Suddenly we're
two crazy hopeless sages goofing on a lawn -- Finally as we part further and
further and he comes closer to the door we are making elaborate gestures and
down to the most infinitesimal like when he steps inside the door I wait
till I see him sticking a finger out -- So from around my corner I stick out
a shoe -- So from his door he sticks out an eye -- So from my corner I stick
out nothing but just yell "Wu! " -- So from his door he sticks out nothing
and says nothing
-- So I hide in the corner and do nothing -- But suddenly I burst out
and there HE is bursting out and we start waving gyrations and duck back to
our hiding places -- Then I pull a big one by simply walking away rapidly
but suddenly I turn and wave again -- He walking backwards and waving back
-- The further I go now also walking backwards the more I wave --
Finally we're so far apart by about a hundred yards the game is almost
impossible but we continue somehow -- Finally I see a distant sad little Zen
wave of hand
-- I jump up into the air and gyrate both arms -- He does the same --
He goes into the hospital but a moment later he's peeking out this time from
the ward window! -- I'm behind a tree trunk thumbing my nose at him --
There's no end to it, in fact -- The other kids are all back at the car
wondering what's keeping me -- What's keeping me is that I know George will
get better and live and teach the joyful truth and George knows I know this,
that's why he's playing the game with me, the magic game of glad freedom
which is what Zen or for that matter the Japanese soul ultimately means I
say, "And someday I will go to Japan with George" I tell myself after we've
made our last little wave because I've heard the supper bell ring and seen
the other patients rush for the chow line and knowing George's fantastic
appetite wrapped in that little frail body I don't wanta hang him up tho he
nevertheless does one last trick: He throws a glass of water out the window
in a big froosh of water and I don't see him any more.
"Wotze mean by that? " I'm scratching my head going back to the car.
To complete this crazy day at 3 o'clock in the morning here I am
sitting in a car being driven 100 miles an hour around the sleeping streets
and hills and waterfronts of San Francisco, Dave's gone off to sleep with
Romana and the others are passed out and this crazy nextdoor neighbor of the
roominghouse (himself a Bohemian but also a laborer, a housepainter who
comes home with big muddy boots and has his little boy living with him the
wife has died) -- I've been in his pad listening to booming loud Stan Getz
jazz on his Hi Fi and happened to mention I thought Dave Wain and Cody
Pomeray were the two greatest drivers in the world -- "What? " he yells, a
big blond husky kid with a strange fixed smile, "man I used to drive the
getaway car! come on down I'll show ya! " -- So almost dawn and here we are
cuttin down Buchanan and around the corner on screeching wheels and he opens
her up, goes zipping towards a red light so takes a sudden screeching left
and goes up a hill fullblast, when we come to the top of the hill I figger
he'll pause awhile to see what's over the top but he goes even faster and
practically flies off the hill and we head down one of those incredibly
steep San Fran streets with our snout pointed to the waters of the Bay and
he steps on the gas! we go sailing down a hundred m. p. h. to the bottom of
the hill where there's an intersection luckily with the light on green and
thru that we blast with just one little bump where the road crosses and
another bump where the street is dipping downhill again -- We come down to
the waterfront and screech right In a minute we're soaring over the ramps
around the Bridge entrance and before I can gulp up a shot or two from my
last late bottle we're already parked back outside the pad on Buchanan --
The greatest driver in the world whoever he was and I never saw him again --
Bruce something or other -- What a getaway.
I end up groaning drunk on the floor this time beside Dave's floor
mattress forgetting that he's not even there. But a strange thing happened
that morning I remember now: before Cody's call from downvalley: I'm feeling
hopelessly idiotically depressed again groaning to remember Tyke's dead and
remembering that sinking beach but at the side of the radiator in the toilet
lies a copy of Boswell's Johnson which we'd been discussing so happy in the
car: I open to any page then one more page and start reading from the top
left and suddenly I'm in an entirely perfect world again: old Doc Johnson
and Boswell are visiting a castle in Scotland belonging to a deceased friend
called Rorie More, they're drinking sherry by the great fireplace looking at
the picture of Rorie on the wall, the widow of Rorie is there, Johnson
suddenly says "Sir, here's what I would do to deal with the sword of Rorie
More" (the portrait shows old Rorie with his Highlands flinger) "I'd get
inside him with a dirk and stab him to my pleasure like an animal" and
bleary with hangover I realize that if there was any way for Johnson to
express his sorrow to the widow of Rorie More on the unfortunate
circumstance of his death, this was the way -- So pitiful, irrational, yet
perfect -- I rush down to the kitchen where Dave Wain and some others are
already eating breakfast of sorts and start reading the whole thing to the
lot of them -- Jonesy looks at me askance over his pipe for being so
literary so early in the morning but I'm not being literary at all -- Again
I see death, the death of Rorie More, but Johnson's response to death is
ideal and so ideal I only wish old Johnson be sitting in the kitchen now --
(Help! I'm thinking).
The call comes from Cody in Los Gatos that he lost his job tire
recapping -- "Because we were there last night? " -- 'No no something
entirely different, he's gotta lay off some men because his mortgage is
bleeding him and all that and some girl is tryna sue him for forging a check
and all that, so man I've got to find another job but I have to pay the rent
and everything's all fucked up down here, Oh old buddy how about, cant you,
I plead or I don't plead, or honestly, Jack, ah, lend me a hundred dollars
willya? " -- 'By God Cody I'll be right down and GIVE you a hundred
dollars'... "You mean you'll really do that, listen just to lend to me is
enough but if you insist, hm" (fluttering his eyelashes over the phone
because he knows I mean it) "you old loverboy you, how you gonna get down
here there and give me that money there son and make my old heart glad" --
"I'll have Dave drive me down" -- "Okay I'll pay the rent with it right away
and because it's now Friday, why, Thursday or whatever, that's right
Thursday, why I dont have to be lookin for a new job till next Monday so you
can stay here and we'll have a long weekend just goofin and talkin boy like
we used to do, I can demolish you at chess or we can watch a baseball game"
and in a whisper "and we can sneak into the City see and see my purty baby"
-- So I ask Dave Wain and yes he's ready to go anytime, he's just following
me like I often follow people myself, and so off we go again.
And on the way we drop in on Monsanto at the bookstore and the idea
suddenly comes to me for Dave and me and Cody to go to the cabin and spend a
big quiet crazy weekend (how? ) but when Monsanto hears this idea he'll come
too, in fact he'll bring his little Chinese buddy Arthur Ma and we'll catch
McLear at Santa Cruz and go visit Henry Miller and suddenly another big huge
ball is begun. So there's Willie waiting down on the street, I go to the
store, buy the bottle, Dave wheels Willie around, Ron Blake and now Ben
Fagan are on the back mattress, I'm sitting in my front seat rocking chair
as now in broad afternoon we go blattin again down that Bay Shore highway to
see old Cody and Monsanto's in back of us in his jeep with Arthur Ma, two
jeeps now, and about to be two more as I'll show -- Coming to Cody's in mid
afternoon, his own house already filled with visitors (local Los Gatos
literaries and all kinds of people the phone there ringing continually too)
and Cody says to Evelyn "I'll just spend a couple days with Jack and the
gang like the old days and look for a job Monday" -- "Okay" -- So we all go
to a wonderful pizza restaurant in Los Gatos where the pizzas are piled an
inch high with mushrooms and meat and anchovies or anything you want, I cash
a travelers check at the supermarket, Cody takes the 100 in cash, gives it
to Evelyn in the restaurant, and later that day the two jeeps resume down to
Monterey and down that blasted road I walked on blistered feet back to the
frightful bridge at Raton Canyon And I'd thought I'd never see the place
again. But now I was coming back loaded with observers. The sight of the
canyon down there as we renegotiated the mountain road made me bite my lip
with marvel and sadness.
It's as familiar as an old face in an old photograph as tho I'm gone a
million years from all that sun shaded brush on rocks and that heartless
blue of the sea washing white on yellow sand, those rills of yellow arroyo
running down mighty cliff shoulders, those distant blue meadows, that whole
ponderous groaning upheaval so strange to see after the last several days of
just looking at little faces and mouths of people As tho nature had a
Gargantuan leprous face of its own with broad nostrils and huge bags under
its eyes and a mouth big enough to swallow five thousand jeepster
stationwagons and ten thousand Dave Wains and Cody Pomerays without a sigh
of reminiscence or regret -- There it is, every sad contour of my valley,
the gaps, the Mien Mo captop mountain again, the dreaming woods below our
high shelved road, suddenly indeed the sight of poor Alf again far way
grazing in the mid afternoon by the corral fence -- And there's the creek
bouncing along as tho nothing had ever happened elsewhere and even in the
daytime somehow dark and hungry looking in its deeper tangled grass. Cody's
never seen this country before altho he's an old Californian by now, I can
see he's very impressed and even glad he's come out on a little jaunt with
the boys and with me and is seeing a grand sight -- He's like a little boy
again now for the first time in years because he's like let out of school,
no job, the bills paid, nothing to do but gratefully amuse me, his eyes are
shining -- In fact ever since he's come out of San Quentin there's been
something hauntedly boyish about him as tho prison walls had taken all the
adult dark tenseness out of him -- In fact every evening after supper in the
cell he shared with the quiet gunman he'd bent his serious head to a daily
letter or at least every-other-day letter full of philosophical and
religious musings to his mistress Billie... And when you're in bed in jail
after lights out and you're not sleepy there's ample time to just remember
the world and indeed savor its sweetness if any (altho it's always sweet to
remember it in jail tho harder in prison, as Genet shows) with the result
that he'd not only come to a chastisement of his bashing bitternesses (and
of course it's always good to get away from alcohol and excessive smoking
for two years) (and all that regular sleep) he was just like a kid again,
but as I say that haunting kidlikeness I think all ex cons seem to have when
they've just come out -- In seeking to severely penalize criminals society
by putting the criminals away behind safe walls actually provide them with
the means of greater strength for future atrocities glorious and otherwise
-- "Well I'll be damned" he keeps saying as he sees those bluffs and cliffs
and hanging vines and dead trees, "you mean to tell me you ben alone here
for three weeks, why I wouldn't dare that... must be awful at night
... looka that old mule down there... man, dig the redwood country way
back in... reminds me of old Colorady b'god when I used to steal a car every
day and drive out to hills like this with a fresh little high school
sumptin" -- "Yum Yum, " says Dave Wain emphatically turning that big goofy
look to us from his driving wheel with his big mad feverish shining eyes
full of yumyum and yabyum too -- "S'matter with you boys not making
extensive plans to bring a bevy of schoolgirls down there to wile away our
conversation pieces thar" says Cody real relaxed and talking sadly. Behind