In the Shadow of the American Dream (9 page)

September 4, 1978

Charlie Plymell called this morning. Somehow he had gotten my number. He said he received the manuscript, he thought it was great, that it had chances for international publication, over in Europe. He had no money, was trying to figure out how to get tomorrow's groceries, otherwise he would publish the book himself, he felt it was that good. He said that Ferlinghetti was sometimes “stupid on these things,” talking about publishing my book and how his book
Last of the Mocassins
has sold out and something about getting 250 dollars for the run and how he could have gotten 2,000 dollars for 500 copies but he fucked it up. He said that he didn't know my chances for getting the book published, but that it was great. He recommended a book that I should read:
Waiting for Nothing,
by Kromer (Hill & Wang). He said Sylvia, a woman who owns a bookshop and helps edit
Gasolin,
would probably like some parts for
Gasolin
—check it out. Gotta write him from France.

I called Dolores [David's mother], and she said she had been to a medium and the medium got in contact with a British fella, a spirit, and that the fella, when asked about me said, Oh no oohhh … the stubborn one! He said that I had to realize, it is not a crime not to know everything. He said that I would be successful in my art and writing, that I would be healthy all my later life and I would get my hot temper under control after a while.

He also said that Dad realized what he had done and that he was sorry for it and that he was at peace.

September 14–October 18, 1978

Paris–Normandy

Auto noir–l'an de le cheval

September 16, 1978

J.P. [Jean Pillu, Pat's husband] drove Pat and I to the doctor's on the left bank of the Seine. J.P. waited across the street in a bistro while we went inside. Pat was gonna have an IUD inserted because she wants to get off the pill. I went into the outer doctor's office while she explained the problems I was having with a rash and prescription. The doctor took me inside and examined me and then took Pat inside for the insertion of the IUD. The door remained open and after a couple of minutes she started yelling in pain—it was terrible. I thought of how terrible it is that women undergo this sort of shit for men. It's something I would never say to her as I feel she might get upset. I might not have any business saying it anyhow. But I remembered when Jez and I were in our relationship, how she was gonna do the pill or some other method but I insisted she not, that I would do rubbers. What had upset me was that she immediately assumed the responsibility of taking precautions. I think it is the responsibility of the male since it comes down to the fact that all of the options available to women seem to endanger their own health. It's complex, it's just that when it comes to insertion of foreign objects or medicines I would rather undergo the slight decrease in sensitivity wearing a rubber than the woman do that to herself.

Pat screamed out a few times and started talking to the doctor about how she was going to faint, and how very much like her adolescent periods the pain was, how she would have cramps so severe when she was younger that she would faint or get extremely nauseous. She yelled some more and I found myself tying my fingers into knots feeling what she must have been going through. I wished J.P. was there to hear. Pat went home afterwards and took a painkiller and went to sleep. J.P. and I went to the Marcel Proust Flea Market to check out clothes, etc. I found a couple of books that I've either wanted to read or have never seen or heard of. One was called
Cut Up or Shut Up,
a book by Carl Weissner and two other fellas with ticker tape by W. S. Burroughs. The other book was John Rechy's
Numbers,
a book Brian had recommended.

J.P. and Pat bought me a typewriter for my birthday! J.P. and I found it in the Proust Flea Market. It is an Underwood machine in great condition—type lined perfectly, all letters clear as new, and a handsome fuckin' machine. Now I can write poems and start on the novel and finally write decent letters to friends. (Ah, but the fuckin' postage!)

So now I'm back in bourgeois St.-Germain, cruising grounds for prowlers/pickpockets/homosexuals/fire-eaters/jugglers and the famous Ratman who a year ago gave some woman a heart attack with his live rats on strings—now he's been reduced to plastic rats by the police. Ate ravioli in my Italian restaurant with the waiter who reminds me of Jerry Leo—he looks like a French Bruce Springsteen. Real handsome in hustler tight pants.

September 17, 1978

Had an incredible lunch with J.P.'s mother, sweet woman white/blond haired, très French looking much like Giselle, Dolores's friend from Paris who dug clams in the briny mint green surf of Atlantic City, New Jersey, with us in swimsuits back sometime in '64–'65, a hot summer before I got into the Times Square scene and all that hot sooty neon and hotels.

So she made potatoes and garlic, watercress salad, and veal and string beans and afterwards we went out in the car. She was powdered up and lipsticked and in a white suit we drove to le château du Versailles and strolled to one of the entrances of the gardens.

We walked around the gardens and over to the fountains with les poissons rouges! Les poissons rouges! Like a Ferlinghetti poem I read years ago when in the silence of the November dusk when no one was watching a shadow turned its head.

September 19, 1978

Got my haircut today. (Pat and I took the metro—easy-riding rubber-wheeled trains in huge tile stations with curved walls.) I had to wear a fluffy pink robe because mostly women went to the place. Funny, my intense reaction to wearing the robe because of its pinkness, don't know what I fear in that. The haircut was nice. Went to St.-Germain after lunch and wrote in my journal at a table at Café Flore, read sections of John Rechy's
Numbers,
a good book though I feel I write much better and that there's a lot I could do with the material had there never been books written by him, the stuff I come in contact with. He is good at times, very dry observatory eye. Wonder where he's at now, somewhere in his forties? Wonder if he'll commit suicide rather than face the decline of his body, that which he loved so fucking much in the pages of his novels, his obsession with the self, affirmation through others desiring him.

Noticed the businessman who speaks good English and French—looks very American. Saw him last night. He sat next to me at the Cafe Flore and I felt him cruising me and tonight saw him there with what seemed like his wife and kin. He looked up and regarded me with interest, with my hair cut I'm looking more intense especially when wearing my blue corduroy shirt almost black.

October 8, 1978

Stare up at the lonesome night with its irregular stars and mirror of vast calm over upturned eyes. A blond young man in a bright white shirt and fine body pushing against his clothes was pursued by most of the characters in the garden. He cruised me but I turned away and ignored him walking into the circular mound of earth and grass and lay on my back checking out the solar system 'cause I didn't wanna feed his ego as he was stunning—desperate characters crashed into trees and bushes pursuing him. Later as I walked around he was still cruising me and finally I made it with him. It was très gentle and at the same time frantically passionate and we did it under the cover of an area where there were no men—orgasm so explosive I almost fell to my knees. Before parting I traced an
X
over his heart in a kind of quiet gratitude for the fast sexual act and the intensity of his senses so apparent in the encounter and to take the place of my inability to communicate the desire for an encounter away from the park and in the warmth of a home and bed, the communication that isn't quite there in outlaw sexual encounters no matter how much sense is transferred. He smiled and grasped my waist and arm in a quick hug and I trailed off across the cobbles into the taxiing night looking for transport.

October 16, 1978

[Copy of letter sent to Christian Bourgois Editeur]

Dear Editor,

I am twenty-four years old and have lived on and off in New York City for twelve years. In the last four years I've spent a great deal of time hitchhiking and freight-hopping across the highways and folds of America, and have spent a good deal of that time living around the back streets of various cities. From this period I've collected a series of monologues—sections of conversations from junkies, prostitutes, male hustlers, truck drivers, hobos, young outlaws, runaway kids, criminal types, and perpetual drifters. These monologues were not written down with the aid of any tape-recording device but were the bare sections of one-way conversations that I retained in memory till minutes, days, or weeks later when I would write them down in journals and scraps of paper and in letters to friends around the U.S. They contain bits of road philosophies, accounts of street life & road life, anxieties of America's young who live outside of society, and sections of word-flights from the lips of characters who needed to articulate for themselves and me what their lives have been composed of. I merely served as a filter for all of this. This collection is called
Sounds in the Distance: Thirty-eight Monologues from the American Road
. I recently erased my own borders and have come to live and write in France. I stay on and off in Paris and Normandy with family. I have a copy of this manuscript with me and am interested in submitting it for your consideration. Charles Plymell (editor of Cherry Valley Editions) should be sending me the name or names of persons who might be interested in translating the book. In the meantime I would like to know if you are interested in looking at the copy I have and if not would you have an idea of a publishing company I might send it to as an alternative?

Thank you—

David composed many letters to his mother, Dolores, with whom, by this time in his life, he had very little direct contact. For the most part it is presumed that these letters were not posted. In fact, by the time David was featured in a cover story for
The Village Voice
in 1990 by C. Carr, his mother was completely out of touch with him, and from this article she learned for the first time that he had a successful career as an artist, and that in his work he revealed and explored the meanings of being HIV-positive in this culture
.