Desolation Angels (42 page)

And the next day Irwin carts me and Simon and Raphael off in a bus to Rutherford New Jersey to meet William Carlos Williams the old great poet of 20th Century America. Williams is a general practitioner all his life, his office is still there where he'd examined patients for 40 years and got his material for fine Thomas Hardy-like poems. He sits there staring out the window as we all read him our poems and prose. He's actually bored. Who wouldnt at 72? He's still thin and youthful and grand, tho, and at the end he goes down to the cellar and brings up a bottle of wine to cheer us all up. He tells me: “Keep writing like that.” He loves Simon's poems and later writes in a review that Simon is actually the most interesting new poet in America (Simon will write lines like, “Does the fire hydrant weep as many tears as me?” or “I have a red star on my cigarette”)—But of course Dr. Williams loves Irwin of nearby Paterson N.J. the best because of his huge, in a sense uncriticizable howling altogether sameness greatness (like Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet, Dizzy comes on in
waves
of thought, not in phrases)—Let Irwin or Dizzy get warmed up and the walls fall down, at least the walls of your ear-porch—Irwin writes about tears with a big tearful moan, Dr. Williams is old enough to understand—Actually a historic occasion and finally we dopey poets ask him for the last advice, he stands there looking thru the muslin curtains of his livingroom at the New Jersey traffic outside and says:

“
There's lots of bastards out there.
”

I've wondered about that ever since.

And I had spent most of the time talking to the doctor's charming wife, 65, who described how handsome Bill had been in his young days.

But there's a man for you.

44

Irwin Garden's father Harry Garden comes to Dr. Williams' house to drive us home, to his own house in Paterson where we'll have a supper and a big talk about poetry—Harry is a poet himself (appears on the editorial page of the
Times
and
Tribune
several times a year with perfectly rhymed love and sadness lyrics)—But he's a bug on puns and as soon as he walks into Dr. Williams' house he says “Drinkin wine, hey? When your glass is always empty that's when you're really sippin”—“Ha ha ha”—Rather a good pun, even, but Irwin looks at me with consternation as tho it was some impossible social scene in Dostoevsky. “How would you like to buy a necktie with hand painted gravy stains?”

Harry Garden is a high school teacher of about 60 about to retire. He has blue eyes and sandy hair like his eldest son Leonard Garden, now a lawyer, while Irwin has the black hair and black eyes of his beautiful mother Rebecca, of whom he wrote, now dead.

Harry gaily drives us all to his home exhibiting ten times more energy than boys young enough to be his grandsons. In his kitchen which has swirling wallpaper I go blind over wine as he reads and puns over coffee. We retire to his study. I start reading my silly far-out poem with just grunts or “grrrr” and “frrrrt” in it to describe the sounds of Mexico City street traffic—

Raphael yells out “Ah that's not poetry!” and old man Harry looks at us with frank blue eyes and says:—

“You boys are fighting?” and I catch Irwin's quick glance. Simon is neutral in Heaven.

The fight with Raphael the Mobster carries over to when we're catching the Paterson bus to New York, I jump in, pay my fare, Simon pays his (Irwin stayed with his father) but Raphael yells out “I aint got no money, why dont you pay my fare Jack?” I refuse. Simon pays it with Irwin's money. Raphael starts to harangue me about what a coldblooded money-fisted Canook I am. By the time we get to Port Authority I'm practically crying. He keeps saying: “All you do is hide money in your beauty. It makes you ugly! You'll
die
with money in your hand and wonder why the Angels wont lift you up.”

“The reason
you
havent got money is because you keep spending it.”

“
Yes
I keep spending it! And why not? Money is a lie and poetry is truth—Could I pay my bus fare with truth? Would the driver understand? No! Because he's like you, Duluoz, a scared tightfisted and even tight-ass son of a bitch with money hidden in his 5 & 10 socks. All he wants to do is
DIE
!”

But tho I could have used a lot of arguments like why did Raphael blow his money on a
plane
from Mexico when he could have rode with us in the woesome car, I cant do anything but wipe the tears in my eyes. I dont know why, maybe because he's right when all is said and done and we've all given good money for all our funerals, yay—O all the funerals ahead of me, for which I'll have to wear ties! Julien's funeral, Irwin's funeral, Simon's funeral, Raphael's funeral, Ma's funeral, my sister's funeral, and I already wore a tie and bleaked at dirt for my
father's
funeral! Flowers and funerals, the loss of broad shoulders! No more the eager clack of shoes on the sidewalk to somewhere but a drear
fight
in a grave, like in a French movie, the Cross cant even stand erect in such silk and mud—O Talleyrand!

“Raphael I want you to know that I love you.” (This information was imparted eagerly to Irwin the next day by Simon, who saw its importance.) “But dont bug me about money. You're always talkin about how you dont need money but it's the only thing you want. You're trapped in ignorance. I at least admit it. But I love you.”

“You can
keep
your money, I'm going to Greece and have visions—People will
give
me money and I'll throw it away—I'll
sleep
on money—I'll turn over in my
dreams
on money.”

It was snowing. Raphael accompanied me to Ruth Heaper's where we were supposed to eat supper and tell her all about our meeting with William Carlos Williams. I saw a funny look in her eye, in Ruth Erickson's too. “What's the matter?”

In the bedroom my love Ruth tells me her psychoanalyst has advised her to tell me to move out of her room and go get a room of my own because it isnt good for her psyche or mine.

“This asshole wants to screw you himself!”

“Screw is just the right word. He said you were taking advantage of me, that you're irresponsible, do me no good, get drunk, bring drunk friends—all hours of the night—I cant rest.”

I pack up all my gear and walk out with Raphael into the increasing snowstorm. We go down Bleecker Street, or Bleaker Street, one. Raphael is now sad for me. He kisses me on the cheek as he leaves (to go have supper with a girl uptown), and says, “Poor Jack, forgive me Jackie. I love you too.”

I'm all alone in the snow so I go to Julien's and we get drunk again in front of the TV, Julien finally getting mad and ripping my shirt and even my T-shirt off my back and I sleep drunk on the livingroom floor till noon.

The next day I get a room in the Marlton Hotel on 8th Street and start typing what I wrote in Mexico, double space neatly for the publishers, thousands of dollars hidden in that pack of mine.

45

With only ten dollars left I go down to the corner drugstore on 5th Avenue to buy a pack of butts, figuring I can buy a roast chicken that night and eat it over my typewriter (borrowed from Ruth Heaper). But in the drugstore the character says “How are things in Glacamora? You living around the corner or in Indiana? You know what the old bastard said when he kicked the bucket …” But later when I get back to my room I find he's only given me change for a five. He has pulled the shortchange hype on me. I go back to the store but he's off duty, gone, and the management is suspicious of me. “You've got a shortchange artist working in your store—I dont wanta put the finger on anybody but I want my money back—I'm
hungry!
” But I never got the money back and I shoulda stuck the finger up my ass. I went on typing on just coffee. Later I called Irwin and he told me to call Raphael's uptown girl because maybe I could live with her as she was already sick of Raphael.

“Why's she sick of Raphael?”

“Because he keeps laying around on the couch saying ‘Feed Raphael'!
Really!
I think she'd like you. Just be cool nice Jack and call her.” I called her, Alyce Newman by name, and told her I was starving and would she meet me in Howard Johnson's on 6th Avenue and buy me two frankfurts? She told me okay, she was a short blonde in a red coat. At 8
P.M.
I saw her walk in.

She bought me the hotdogs and I gobbled them up. I'd already looked at her and said “Why dont you let me stay at your apartment, I've got a lot of typing to do and they cheated me out of my money in a drugstore today.”

“If you wish.”

46

But it was the beginning of perhaps the best love affair I ever had because Alyce was an interesting young person, a Jewess, elegant middleclass sad and looking for something—She looked Polish as hell, with the peasant's legs, the bare low bottom, the
torque
of hair (blond) and the sad understanding eyes. In fact she sorta fell in love with me. But that was only because I really didnt impose on her. When I asked her for bacon and eggs and applesauce at two in the morning she did it gladly, because I asked it sincerely. Sincerely? What's insincere about “Feed Raphael”? Old Alyce (22) however said:

“I s'pose you're going to be a big literary god and everybody's going to eat you up, so you should let me protect you.”

“How do they go about eating lit'ry gods?”

“By bothering them. They gnaw and gnaw till there's nothing left of you.”

“How do you know about all this?”

“I've read books—I've met authors—I'm writing a novel myself—I think I'll call it
Fly Now, Pay Later
but the publishers think they'd get trouble from the airlines.”

“Call it Pay Me The Penny After.”

“That's nice—Shall I read you a chapter?” All of a sudden I was in a quiet home by lamplight with a quiet girl who would turn out to be passionate in bed, as I saw, but my God—
I dont like blondes.

“I dont like blondes,” I said.

“Maybe you'll like me. Would you like me to dye my hair?”

“Blondes have soft personalities—I've got whole future lifetimes left to deal with that softness—”

“Now you want hardness? Ruth Heaper actually isnt so great as you think, she's only after all a big awkward girl who doesnt know what to do.”

I had me a companion there, and more so I saw it the night I got drunk in the White Horse (Norman Mailer sitting in the back talking anarchy with a beer mug in his hand, my God will they give us beer in the Revolution? or Gall?)—Drunk, and in walks Ruth Heaper walking Erickson's dog and starts to talk to me persuading me to go home with her for the night.

“But I'm living with Alyce now—”

“But dont you still love me?”

“You said your doctor said—”

“Come on!” But Alyce somehow arrives at the White Horse and drags me out forcibly as if by the hair, to a cab to her home, from which I learn: Alyce Newman is not going to let anybody steal her man from her, no matter who he will be. And I was proud. I sang Sinatra's “I'm a Fool” all the way home in the cab. The cab flashed by oceangoing vessels docked at the North River piers.

47

And actually Alyce and I were wonderful healthy lovers—She only wanted me to make her happy and she did everything in her power to make me happy too, which was enough—“You should know more Jewish girls! They not only love you they bring you pumpernickel bread and sweet butter with your morning coffee.”

“What's your father like?”

“He's a cigarsmoker—”

“And your mother?”

“Lace doilies in the livingroom—”

“And you?”

“I dont know.”

“So you're going to be a big novelist—Who are your models?” But all her models were wrong, yet I knew she could do it, be the first great woman writer of the world, but I guess, I think, she wanted babies anyhow anyway—She was sweet and I still love her tonight.

We stayed together for an awful long time, too,
years
—Julien called her Ecstasy Pie—Her best friend, the dark haired Barbara Lipp, happened by circumstance to be in love with Irwin Garden—Irwin had steered me to a haven. In this haven I slept with her for lovemaking purposes but after we were done I'd go to the outer bedroom, where I kept the winter window constantly open and the radiator shut off, and slept there in my sleepingbag. Eventually that way I finally got rid of that tubercular Mexican cough—I'm not so dumb (as Ma always said).

48

So Irwin with that $225 in his pocket first takes me to Rockefeller Center for my passport before we wander downtown talking about everything like we used to do in our college days—“So now you're going to Tangiers to see Hubbard.”

“My mother says he's going to destroy me.”

“Oh he'll probably try but he wont make it, like me,” putting his head against my cheek and laughing. That Irwin. “What about all the people who want to destroy
me
but I keep on leaning my head against the bridge?”

“What bridge?”

“The Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge over the Passaic River in Paterson. Even your bridge on the Merrimac full of mad laughter. Any kinda bridge. I'll lean my head against
any
old bridge any time. A spade in the Seventh Avenue toilet leaning his head against toilets or something. I'm not fighting with God.”

“Who
is
God?”

“That big radar machine in the sky, I guess, or dead eyes see.” He was quoting one of his teenage poems, “Dead Eyes See.”

“What
do
dead eyes see?”

“Remember that big building we saw on 34th Street one morning when we were high, and we said there was a giant in it?”

“Yeh—with his feet stuck out or something? That was a long time ago.”