The Vulture (23 page)

‘You can really understand this,’ I said. ‘Stretch your mind a little. Why do you think Americans always shake their heads in stupefaction when they look at movies and things that take a close look at the kamikaze pilots? They simply can't imagine a man being willing to commit suicide for his beliefs. They can envision heroism, but not the giving of life. They can see the risking of a life, but not the deliberate dismissal. They see life as an end.’

‘But that's brainwashing. There were no free kamikazes.’

‘But it displays the point I'm trying to make. The total commitment to a way of life!’

‘So you now suggest that we go out and shoot up Times Square so that we can get killed, but knowing that we have taken a few more idiots out of their misery.’ Ricky's sarcasm was thick in the air, as thick as his breath against the window. I clenched and unclenched my hands in my pockets.

‘It shows the importance . . .’ I began.

‘Just knock it,’ he said. ‘I don't need it! If you're committed to the idea of the mind being the controller of everything, go see one of the whitey hippies an’ get yourself some LSD. Take a trip after every meal. What do I care?’

‘I may do that,’ I said.

‘And when you come back with your copies of the
Vatsayana
and the
Kama Sutra
, make sure they have epitaphs somewhere in the back that you can read over my body . . . I think I'll come back as a wine bottle.’ He laughed derisively. I headed for the ladder that would take me to the roof and back outside. I was very puzzled by Ricky's whole bag. He would find me to
laugh at me and my ideas, and I stood for it, when I could blow his whole bag away with ease and show him just where we were. I never quite knew why I didn't do it. There was a ton of confusion involved with the whole scene. I would stay away, come, go. Ricky would come by my house, laugh, sing, and write epitaphs for himself in my notebooks.

Maybe the answer was the ‘cats.’ There were certain downs that we took every once in a while, called ‘cats’ colloquially, and I noticed that Ricky was at his lowest when we took them. What I needed to do was check with the man on the block who was giving out with all the dope. I went to see John Lee.

‘Look, John, I ain't askin’ you to quit dealing altogether,’ I told Lee.

‘Shhh! Keep it down. You want my old man to hear you?’

‘I just want . . .’

‘Okay! Okay! But go see Seedy. I ain't the only cat around here with a deal. I ain’ sold Ricky no catnip in a long time, anyway. Most of them go to the whiteys in Chelsea and up near 19th Street.’

‘So you think he's been getting them from Seedy?’

‘What the hell I know? I jus’ wanna make sure you don't hold me responsible if Seedy turns out wrong.’

‘Where does Seedy live?’ I asked.

‘Up on 17th Street, next door to José's. The top floor. You won't catch him now. It's too early. He gets in about twelve onna weekdays. Eleven on Saturdays and Sundays.’

‘You know a lot about him,’ I commented.

‘It pays for number one to keep up with number two,’ he said, laughing a little.

‘Yeah.’

I left John's, making a mental note to catch up with Isidro and tell him what I told John. I was going to protect Ricky, whether he wanted me to or not.

January, 1969

I had been toying with the idea of taking LSD for some time before Ricky sarcastically suggested it. When our school took its midyear break, I decided that the time was right for me to take the plunge. I had a free weekend with nothing to tie me down in the way of homework, so I took off downtown to a spot on Astor Place where a white classmate of mine told me they were always ‘making that scene.’

The room was dark and musty; dust seemed to rise from the rotten floorboards with every step I took. A small, apprehensive whitey with big, bloodshot eyes had asked me for a reference at the door, and I told him my classmate's name.

‘Anybody know Allan Rosen?’ he called.

‘Yeah!’ I heard. ‘Let him in!’

The door was unlocked with a snap and the chain unhooked.

‘It's not him. It's a friend.’ The doorman turned back to me. ‘You never can tell what kind of package the Man will dress up in.’

He led me back through the narrow, dim corridor to a larger living room where all of the furniture had been discarded and crammed into corners. The floor was used for sitting, sleeping, or whatever the people on it happened to be into. There were about ten teenagers and early-twenty-year-olds lying all over in various stages of dress. The only light was supplied by two giant candles. I peered through the shadows uneasily, and the curious peered back.

‘You a friend uv Alley's, huh?’

‘Yeah. He told me to come down and check you out.’

‘Yeah? Why don't he come down and check me out?’

‘Are you Barbara?’

‘That's right.’

‘Well, he said . . .’

‘Save it,’ she said, cutting me off. ‘Sit here. All this yakkin’ will blow everybody's high. Me an’ you can converse softly.’

I sat next to her in front of the candles, looking around the room now and again. She immediately lost interest in me and started to toy with the melted wax that dripped along the candle vase, forming thin and thick red stalactites. Somewhere behind me there was incense burning, and the aroma twisted its way through the smell of sweat and funk to my nostrils.

‘You come to get high or write an article for TV?’ Barbara was laughing and twisting the ends of her dark hair through the wax on her fingers. ‘That's what some people want to do, you know. I think I coulda been on TV ten times. Dum-De-Dum-Dum.’ She started humming the ‘Dragnet’ theme. ‘I mean, like on TV programs about freak-outs and all that . . . I didn't do it, ‘cauz I want my parents to think I'm dead.’

She took her hands out of the wax and started waving them over the candles like one of those strippers from the Far East in an Ali Baba movie. I was caught up in watching the patterns formed on the walls and listening to her voice. She giggled.

‘This guy from
Life
magazine comes in, an’ he wants to have my picture in the magazine along with my philosophy about everybody gettin’ high an’ doin’ their own thing. He comes in here with his camera and a checkbook, the whole bit . . . So we're sittin’ here rapping about this an’ that, an’ this chick Susie I had in here comes outta the John freaked out of her mind on speed . . . Like, she's havin’ a bad time, an’ she goes through her thing, an’ I'll be damned if Mr
Life
magazine doesn't get the hell up an’ run outta here!’ Her laughing became so wild that she gave up her hand patterns for a second to put her hand over her mouth. ‘I mean, like, imagine a big company like that sendin’ a square to dig on life . . .
Life
can't dig life!’ The laughter started all over again.

‘I came to get high,’ I said.

‘Goddamn magazines anyway!’ Barbara coughed. ‘D'you have a cigarette? I need to go out an’ buy a whole lotta shit, but I don't feel like it.’

I tapped the bottom of the cigarette pack until the filter of a smoke stood out, and Barbara grabbed it. I lit it for her, and she nodded. The guy who had let me in came over to us.

‘Barb, if I'm goin’ to the store, I better go now.’

‘So go! You know where the money is! Did I tell you what to get?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So what now?’

‘I wondered what this cat wanted,’ he said, indicating me.

‘LSD,’ I said.

‘Seventeen hours'll cost you four bucks,’ Barbara said.

‘Okay.’

‘Get it, Jimmy,’ Barbara ordered. Jimmy disappeared into another back room. ‘My doorman. A good strong wind come through this dump, an’ I'll need another one.’ Jimmy came back with a small round tab.

‘I guess you gonna take it here,’ he said.

I nodded. Barbara took the tab and dumped ice cubes into a glass of water. Jimmy zipped his coat and went through the corridor toward the front door.

‘You ever trip before?’ Barbara asked.

‘No.’

‘I didn't think so. It's wild, man, really wild.’

I was lying flat on my back in an open clearing with no one around for miles and watching clouds play leapfrog. The scene reminded me of Coney Island and the bump cars that you get into and try to knock each other to hell. The tall wires that
connect your car with the mesh-wire ceiling zoom to and fro like tight barbed steel as you laugh hysterically in the middle of the chaos.

There was nothing near me save a few strands of haggard corn and wheat stalks. The whole countryside was yellow and pale, with few splotches of green about. The trees were naked against the sky, barren and shivering, branches doing their best to conceal the trunk's privates. Birds flocked on limbs and dotted the scenery, chirping uncontrollably. The whole connection seemed to shake loose in my mind. Corn, wheat, birds, but no leaves. What season is this? The grass seemed to be growing under me, pushing me up toward the clouds that were really only bump-'um cars. I looked down at my rising carpet. Blue grass. I was in Kentucky with a banjo on my knee. I looked at my knee. No banjo.

The word that was tugging at my head for attention was ‘photosynthesis.’ The grass was germinating, copulating, procreating, multiplying under my eyes. I had a microscope inside my head, or a magnifying glass in my hand. Maybe it was only a monocle. But there was the grass reproducing more grass that spread all over the countryside, six feet high. It covered the scrawny corn and wheat stalks and seemed to rise like a sea of blue grass up around the waists of the wading trees. Inside the hollow sprigs of grass were tiny people, tossing buckets of water into one tunnel while buckets of sunlight were being mixed in the next compartment. These were grass follicles; like hair on a human head, they were hollow, and there were things going on inside. I wondered quickly if I had landed on top of some giant's head. A poor giant with blue hair and tiny men living inside the follicles as slaves.
Slaves!
Tiny men and bigger men, and me not being either. I was not a giant or a lilliputian. I was still outside, watching and reporting to myself. There was no one else around to listen. I think I
will call out to see if there are any other people near here like myself.

‘Hello!’ I called. Echo. Echo. Echo. Echo. No reply.

‘I'm Ivan Quinn. Is there anyone else here like me?’ Echo. No reply. ‘I am a human being from the planet Earth. I don't know how I got here, but I am in no particular hurry to get away. My intentions are friendly . . . Take me to your leader.’ I laughed at that last part, because it was obvious that I was still on earth. All of the things I saw were totally recognizable. The little men were shaped like humans. The hair on the giant's head had follicles, and I could relate that back to biology. The fact that there were trees on his head being rapidly covered up by the hair was no concern of mine. Or was it? The trees were up to their necks in blue sea hair. The expressions on their faces were sad but resolute, as though they were only succumbing to the inevitable. Oh, no! I thought. Don't tell me that this is a dream with a hidden message about conservation. The only fact that was disturbing me now was the question of what I would breathe once the trees had been killed. This would eliminate the oxygen and the rest of that silly-assed cycle that's supposed to be going on all the time. Unless, of course, this was really just exceptionally speedy grass. In that case, where were all of the people? I would really just like to see someone and ask them what the hell they thought of all this madness. The birds were definitely not in favor of it. They had flown and taken up new perches on the wires that connected the electric mesh with the bump-'um clouds. They were pointing accusing wings at me.

‘Birds!’ I screamed. ‘Get the hell away from that goddamn electric stuff. Don't you know that as soon as someone pays another quarter to ride, you're going to be electrocuted?’ The birds didn't seem to be as interested in their preservation as they went about chirping back and forth and pointing at me.

‘Then stay the hell there!’ I said, still rising. ‘At least one problem will be solved. When I see someone get into one of those clouds, I'll be able to find out what gives around here.’

I came to a theory at that time that I had died and gone to hell. I was very disappointed in the fact that hell was a lot like earth. The real exception so far was that there was no sun. Was it day? It was light. I came to the conclusion that the sun had been only a giant electric bulb that God had at last decided to turn out. In that case, what was I doing here? Maybe I was in hell, after all. According to the Norse legends, the center of the earth was ruled by a giant demon named Satyr, who had been banished to that internal oblivion by Odin for attempting a revolution that would have taken power away from Odin and Thor. But where was the heat? Giant demon? Satyr was rising to the surface. Did he have hair? Evidently. I was caught on top of Satyr's head, and there would soon be another conflict with Odin and Thor. I was going to a battle with a front-row seat.

No sooner had I come to my conclusion when I stopped rising. The trees had only their faces above the surface. The birds flew back to their stations at the trees’ topmost branches. Their singing had ceased, along with their gestures toward me. I was surrounded by a wall of silence.

PLASTIC PATTERN PEOPLE

(preface to a poem) like, will you come back to the real? black people – oh – walking cool – oh – silly woman crying over
AS THE WORLD TURNS
– like, can't you dig that you have no tears to spare/like, can't you see that the chains that bound your limbs now bind your mind? making you relate to silly, make-believe, fairy-tale-type
shit! like, will you come back to the real and see that Snow White was just that, and a thousand shades later won't get it.

THE POEM

glad to get high and see the slow-motion world,

just to reach and touch the half-notes floating.

world spinning (orbit) quicker than 9/8 Dave Brubeck, we

come now frantically searching for Thomas More

rainbow villages.

up on suddenly Charlie Mingus and Ahmed Abdul-Malik to