He Couldn't Love

Henry sitting in a chair on his apartment's balcony all afternoon— enjoying the last rays of sun on an Indian Summer day— smoking a hashed laced joint, in a cozy dream, wanting to stay there.

8PM, the night air pulling him, there was a hidden secret at the end of it that was impossible to know. It was a beautiful women stripping slowly, never taking it all off. 

Out the door of his Queen’s apartment by 830PM, stopping by Chaim’s Deli to eat. He sat in the same booth and gave his order to the same waitress every night. 

Ruby his waitress getting real close to him, her face almost on his face. She says, “You know Henry I love you with all I have baby and want you, but you're a empty page when it comes to love.” Henry taken back says, “Jesus Christ Ruby are you going to take my order or slobber all over me?” He orders potato pancakes with apple sauce and a Vernor’s ginger ale which he spikes with cough syrup.  

Henry knew he was a slob when it came to love, that he could neither accept or give love. Love for him was kissing May at Siam Massage while getting a hand-job. 

Leaving Chaim’s and catching a taxi across town to Times Square, he sees “8 1/2” the Federico Fellini film is playing at the New Amsterdam Theater. He was just in time for the last show. 

The cowboy junky who was always under the marquee sees Henry and says, “I have mind blowing liquid heroin I’m selling in small blue vials” and “Henry you don’t know how to love, maybe this Italian film will teach you a lesson in humility and love.” Henry thinking, what the fuck, how would he know? 

Sitting in the back row he pours the vial of liquid heroin into a cup of iced Coca-Cola, before long he's off to elysian fields.

“8 1/2” a highly visual and fast moving film within a film. A view from behind the director and the cameraman and a view of Italian fancy, pasta eating and love mixed with an overload of bouncy, kaleidoscopic, om-pa-pa circus music in the background.  

Henry way deep into the opium, his libido, eros and anima magically linking with that of the “8/12” lead character Guido, Marcello Mastroianni. Guido and Henry on a mountain top standing before God, their souls laid bare for Him to see. (God looking like Sigmund Feud). 

God asking the pair— both staring blankly, dumb-fucked, “Did you have sex with your mothers?” And saying “You clowns don't know how to love, you're guilty of having sex out of wedlock. Say the Hale Mary prayer on every bead of the rosary over and over until your fingers bleed and your minds become numb.” 

“8 1/2” was without a proper ending. Guido, Fellini, the cameraman and the nympho prostitute Saraghina ending up where they began, no-where. 

Henry an atheist without a rosary to bleed on, unable to love, he couldn’t feel love. 

Did he have sex with his mother? Was he repressing the memory of it in his deep subconscious? The shrink he visited once a month at the welfare office was no fucking help—

In all things love, Henry was hopeless. 

The Zen Poet

Henry mucho hombre, awake while the sun was still shining—up early at 11AM, writing the afternoon away, the sacred Sanskrit text flowing through him and onto the empty white pages, it was nothing short of a fucking miracle. 

His last twenty-five stories could be summed up in outline form as follows—

A)  Going for a walk in New York City, seeing a movie.

B) Taking a bus trip out of New York State.

C) Going for a walk in New York City, smoking opium in Chinatown or eating a bowl of noodles.

D) Going to a poetry reading, listening to a poet read. 

***An exception***

Taking a trip to upstate New York.

Henry Miller put together an outline that he based all of stories and books on in one all night pot smoking session while staying in Big Sur in the forties. 

Henry is no Henry Miller, but he felt his last twenty-five stories were solid and his best work to date.  

Out the door of his Queens apartment at 8PM. 

It was fall on the East Coast, Henry had a taste for what they called, “Sugaring off” in Vermont. They would pour freshly harvested maple syrup into shallow two inch by two inch half spheres carved in rows into a block of ice. Then putting a popsicle stick into the cooling syrup and twisting the stick until the syrup hardened, making a soft maple syrup sucker— an out of the world taste. 

Maybe next year he thought. 

As usual Chaim's Deli, first stop. Thinking of “Sugaring off” he orders buckwheat pancakes with plenty of artificial maple syrup on top. He then washes the cakes down with coffee and Sabra liqueur mixed. It was Ruby his regular waitress’s day off. 

Leaving the deli at 830PM, walking face first into a cool pre-winter breeze, wrapping an Arab scarf around his head like he was in a sand storm, Beduin style.  

A poet, Gary Snyder, was reading at MaMO art museum in the Lower Eastside, near Soho. Henry had heard of him, he was Japhy Ryder in Kerouac’s “The Dharma Bums.” Snyder a holier than thou, pure as mountain snow Zen prophet and nature lover, less open, more disciplined and much more anal than the rest of the beats.  

Henry had to take a taxi to MaMO to make the reading on time, paying 25 bucks at the door—allot of money to hear a Zen monk read in that monks aren’t supposed to touch money. 

Sitting in the mid section of the auditorium, the smell of pachouli oil everywhere, Henry looking through a forest of dread locks and braided hair. 

Gary Snyder right on time, 9AM at center stage, standing  proud and tall, the great white buffalo staring the audience down as if he was Crazy Horse himself.    

As Snyder began reading, Henry realized that he hated everything about Gary Snyder’s sanctimonious and winsome poetry—

A small cricket

on the typescript page of

"Kyoto born in spring song"

grooms himself

in time with The Well-Tempered Clavier.

I quit typing and watch him through a glass.

How well articulated! How neat!

Henry getting up quickly at intermission and running for the exit, ending up stage left, at the wing of the stage. Per chance bumping into Gary Snyder, knocking him down. 

The poet gets up and looks at him saying, “ You should be aware of every step you take, walk softly and look yonder as though you where on top of five mountains.” 

Henry looks at the Zen poet and says, “ Get off of your fucking cloud Mr. Zen poet and take a yogic breath of the mind altering diesel fumes all around you when you walk in the city.”

Henry missed the  second half of Gary Snyder’s reading. Taking a taxi straight to the Bowery to party with the bums, getting wasted out of his gourd at “Suicide Hall,”  desperately needing to shake off the Zen poetry of Gary Snyder. 

Space Cowboys

Henry half in the bag, sleeping most the day, getting up at 8PM, showering then ready to rumble.

It was fall in Queens, the air summer dry, the night-time sky glowing red, a warning and an omen to sailors cruising the canyons of New York City, looking for everything in the world. 

Henry out of his apartment by 1030 PM walking to Chaim’s Deli, only a few steps away. 

Sitting in his favorite booth, the red vinyl seats were very worn, torn in places, covered with duct tape to keep the stuffing in. 

Ruby Henry’s regular waitress approaches saying, “Hi baby?” A warm greeting for an old friend, Henry with a big grin on his face. He orders a piece of noodle kugel and large espresso, pouring Southern Comfort in the coffee from a flask.

Walking out of the deli, saying good-bye to Ruby and Chaim, leaving a hefty tip because his welfare money was in. 

Henry looking for cheap thrills in the Bowery, going to a dive called “Suicide Hall.”  The bums were there, they were always there. They lived for the moment drinking cheap wine, Mad Dog 20-20 or Mogen David, drinking it with kerosene or lighter fluid for the extra kick.   

A few of them, those that could still stand were in the corner gambling on cockroach races. Others passed out in their own vomit, dying maybe. Henry standing with his back to the bar watching the show, Suicide Hall a odious and vile place, the bums screaming and pissing themselves like babies.  

Henry happy to get out of Suicide Hall, walking past bodies on the sidewalk. The Bowery an end game and sacred burial place for bums. 

Henry wanted to catch the midnight show at the New Amsterdam Theater in Times Square. A new film, “Easy Rider” was showing. 

In front of the New Amsterdam Theater, under the marquee, was the usual junk, keyed up, shaking, jiving, selling dope as he critiqued films. Saying,   ” “Easy Rider,”  an epic tale, take a few tabs of Chocolate Mescaline man, you won’t regret it.”  

Sitting in the back row, Henry coming on to the mescaline, lighting a joint, nobody seemed to care. 

“Easy Rider” opening scene, the sounds of “The Pusher,” cowboys Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda on motorcycles doing a cocaine deal with the pusher Phil Spector at LAX, heading across country on Harleys to find America.

Henry high on mescaline, the movie screen waxing, moving towards him—the cowboys on Harleys riding through wheat fields, the blades of wheat swaying to the sounds of “So You Want to be a Bird,” growing larger and longer, coming out of the screen towards Henry. 

Henry felt like he was inside and a part of the film, with the cowboys sitting around the campfire, talking to them, smoking grass with them,  

Henry in and out of consciousness, waking as the cowboys were at the Mardi Gras, then astral projecting outwards and upwards, levitating somewhere far away from the theater.   

Not remembering much of the film, but remembering being shaken by the usher and being asked to leave. 

The mescaline was very powerful, Henry still tripping as he left the New Amsterdam Theater, needing to crash and burn he goes to Siam Massage to get a rub-down from May, the two smoking dope and laughing. 

May asking him if he liked “Easy Rider?” He says, “ May I don’t remember much of the film, it was a romp I guess, two space cowboys on Harleys riding through the heavens, smoking allot of dope, banging some hippy chicks in a New Orlean's graveyard,” so on and so forth. 

He passes out in May’s lovely tattooed arms, spending the night at Siam Massage—

Henry at peace in an Asian angels arms, smiling inside.  

A Higher Calling

Henry in his Queens apartment at 9AM ready to go out for a walk in the city.

It was fall night at the end of October, Indian Summer before the cool arctic wind descended on the East Coast. 

Henry dressed to go, wearing a black suit with a white t-shirt and Converse low tops. 

And so on and so forth—total horse-shit, Henry writing mindless on automatic-pilot allot, writing dumb shit, thinking of Michael McClure for a second— a guy dressed up in a t-shirt and suit wearing an inverted wooden cross, looking priestly, selling Catholic angst about masturbating alter boys to Hollywood.   

Henry in his Queens apartment, unable to get out of bed, broken-hearted, drunk and junked up plenty— dumped by May(a non therapeutic sex working Asian chic and junky sucking every cock that came down the pike at Lee's Massage in Queens) regardless— still the best cock sucker in the universe. 

Henry wanting to be anywhere but in realty, drinking and snorting eight-balls, fighting it (realty) off, unable to look reality in the eye, he didn’t belong there.   

Henry the junk king in a dream, a million fingers massaging his cock and his soul lomi lomi style all at once, decidedly carnal and out of this world. Stuff that would scare the 9 to 5 stiffs.   

At 2AM May shows up at Henry’s apartment, screaming as she pounds oh his door, he lets her in. May looking shaggy, crying and begging him to take her back. He says, “You know I love you May but I sit at home in the day thinking about you sucking cock at Lee's Massage.”  May then says, “Yes I’m a cock sucker baby, but it’s a kind of higher calling for me, I feel that I make people happy, that I bring joy and happiness into their lives.”  

Henry dumb-fucked, sorry he let May in, getting a sick felling inside, wanting to escape somehow, unable to get a handle on cock sucking as a higher calling. Saying to May,” Baby thats wonderful, I’m happy that you have found G-d in your own way, well, my parakeet collapsed in his cage and I’m heart broken, baby I’m going to lay down, you better get back to work sweety, I’ll call you later.”

Henry feeling over powered, knocked out by May’s heart felt shtick, what could he say? May doing G-d’s work, it was something bigger than him, who was he to call her out? 

Henry a junk on crazy pay,  he was nobody to judge.     

The Opium Den

Henry in his Queens apartment, ready.

Summer nights in the city, tranquil, yet rough around the edges, there was a feeling that some shit could come down in a New York minute, anywhere. 

Chaim’s Deli, 10PM, Henry in his usual booth chating up his usual waitress, Ruby. He was hungry and ordered a large bowl of borsht with sour cream and allot of pepper, as well as some chopped chicken liver to spread on bagels. 

Henry hits the bricks around 11PM, blowing Ruby a kiss as he walks out, headed to the Village for some coffee, running and covering his face with a newspaper through the Bowery, wanting to by-pass the stank and bullshit of the bums.

Going to an all-night coffee shop, simply called “Joe,” ordering espresso with Irish Whiskey, eye-balling the joint. After a few Irish Coffees Henry heads to Chinatown, bored out of his gourd at Joe.   

The Village too conventional for him, the 9 to 5 working stiffs had taken it over, dressing like beatniks and hippies, weekend cool, still stiff in the day. He knew of a wonderful little opium den in Chinatown, above a Chinese Laundry.

By 1PM Henry was in Chinatown in front of Lee’s Chinese Laundry, he knew it well. 

The double doors to the entry were unlocked, marked by two red lanterns.  He makes his way up a dimly lit stairway to a long hallway.  At the end of the hallway there was a glowing yellow door, he could smell burnt tar opium. 

He knocks on the yellow door and an old Chinese lady, dressed traditionally, asks him to take off his street shoes and to put on a pair of cloth slippers. 

The room was dark, there were a dozen Chinamen laying parallel on straw mates in the opium den, either smoking opium or passed out in a dream. 

Henry loved the place, the old Chinese gal sets him up with a loaded pipe and a mat to lay on, sitting on a small wood stool next to him, lighting his pipe and saying, “ Oh we don’t see many foreign man here, only no good lazy Chinaman.”

Henry sucks in the smoke of burning opium, going into a dream. He sees himself hovering on the ceiling looking down at the others in the room, dreaming beautiful multicolored dreams, feeling warm inside, his body free from pain, outside of waking consciousness. 

At 9AM still in a dream, he feels a small hand tugging on and pushing his shoulder—  the opium maid says, “Pay and get out, go home.” 

On the street in Chinatown, he covers his eyes to avoid the glare of the red morning sun, just wanting to make it home, close his curtains and escape the daylight. 

He remembered little of the night in the opium den or the dreams he had, but he felt it was a pleasant, he felt wonderful inside. 

At home in bed feeling he could sleep a hundred years.  

The Rat's Wheel

Henry sitting uncomfortably bent on his futon, the frame staked up sofa-like, writing on a lap-top. 

It was a spring afternoon, mild, warm and lazy. A sweet scented air-tide flowing all the way from Central Park through the window of his Queen’s apartment— sent by the gods of spring, special delivery.   

Adjusting the futon frame in a more comfortable position, rolling a joint— wanting to stay in this moment forever. It was a beaming, rapturous moment, a light-bulb moment, Henry smiling inside, peeking. 

His cell phone ringing the sound of Honky Tonk Women, it was Mai from Siam Massage wanting to know if he was coming tonight? 

At the end of the month Henry’s crazy pay was below empty. He would have to be creative, only cheap thrills tonight.

Luckily Chaim let Henry run a tab at the deli.  Ruby his regular waitress happy to see him says, ”Jesus Christ Henry you’re radiating health, you were on deaths door just a few days ago.” He says, “ I spent four hours a day in the sauna at the YMCA for a week, black tar-like poison oozing out of my body and I did some inner work, tantric yoga stuff.”

He ordered a double pastrami and chicken liver sandwich on pumpernickel, as well as a glass of Fritz’s Cream soda, mixing it with Mescal. 

Henry dancing out of Chaim’s Deli, broke and on fire, walking to and into the Bowery. The Bums who fucked with him night after night couldn’t touch him tonight, they could see he was protected by armor blocking the Bum’s wino X-ray beams.

Stopping in Cheap Shots Tavern, a dive outside of the Bowery, a shit-hole for barflies. Barflies a cut above Bums, on their way to the Bowery, it was just a matter of time. For Henry Cheap Shots Tavern, just a place he went to drink at the end of the month, cheap thrills. 

He orders a shot of Mescal and a beer chaser. Sitting on a bar stool eyeing his image in a mirror line from age, behind the bar. He was thin, with a Mediterranean nose (broken more than once) a wrinkled half moon face protruding from a roundish hallo of unkept curly white hair. 

In a bar trance, feeling invisible, not wanting to be visible in the shit hole, Cheap Shots Tavern. 

Around midnight a hooker sits next to Henry, he had seen her before on 42 Street. She was black women, slender, wearing a jump suit with a large orange and blue afro wig on her head, something you would wear to a Denver Broncos game. 

She says to Henry, “ I haven't always been a hooker, I have a degree in Dental Hygienics, but when the sub-prime mortgage crisis hit,” and so on and so forth, he had heard the same story so many times.  He says, “Save it, I have heard it before, how about we slip out back to the alley and smoke a joint.” Henry lights a joint and passes it to Miss no name, knowing she had a alias, street name, like Cherry, Ripple, or Sweety. She puts her arms around him pulling him closer, dry humping him, pressing into him. He says, “Spare me baby, you might do some serious damage, let’s go back inside and have a drink.” After a few more drinks Miss no name says, “ I gotta go to work, thanks doll.”

2 AM Henry leaving Cheap Shot Lounge, waking up the following mourning on his futon fully dressed, wondering how he got home? His life a rollercoaster ride, stuck on a rat’s wheel.

A writer needs to look eyes wide open at the freak show, running a hundred miles a hour into it. He needs all of it— the good, the bad, the sublime, the vile, the just and the unjust. The wheel keeps on spinning, it doesn't stop for anybody. 

My Work is Awful

Henry,feeling beastly, burning up inside, cravin dope & junk. 

Did u see the film, “Night of the Iguana?"

The Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon fragile and breaking down in exile, pursued by a Lolita, down and out in Mexico, outside of Mexico City on the bay somewhere. 

Henry didn't care for Lolita's he preferred beautiful middle aged women.  

He, Henry, the writer, writing graphically, paint on the page. 

Henry dancing in the shadow of the Little Walters, Dylan Thomas's, Jack Kerouacs, William S. Burroughs, and the Hunter S. Thompsons of the world. 

There were more than a few on his list, the super heroes; including, Charles Bukowski, James Carver, Francis Bacon and Ernie Banks.

True champions of the the poetic, paintin, blues and sports world.  

They were from  a Century where g-ds roamed the desert plains, loaded and carrying little, outcast in their own way, outside of the world, breaking down allot. 

Henry surreal with a touch of fragrance, dried flowers and incense, great ganja,  vagina everywhere,  Henry loved it all.  

A lot of folks loved Henry’s stuff, an elite few, the high rollers and king pins. 

Henry,

—odd and way out there, rarely craving human touch and connection —

Cosmic Ray

Henry the schmendrik, still the golem— In Cham’s Deli sitting at his regular booth, his body stiff like he was in a cement suit. 

Ruby his regular waitress says “Henry you look awful, you are fifty shades of pale, its scary baby!”

Henry says” It’s OK  why——— I got a speed-ball and I’m  going into the head and shoot the moon kiddy-cat.” Ruby concerned, saying “You need help check into rehab.”  

He says to Ruby—

“On whose dime Mary Magadelena?”  

Henry the ghost, using day in and day out, breathing heavy, shivering, hunched over, looking a hundred years old, merely a shadow— walking out of Chaim’s Deli, forgetting to pay his tab. 

Chaim and Ruby liked ornery Henry and knew he would be back tomorrow evening. 

Walking eight blocks past Chaim’s Deli into the Bowery.  A bum comes out of a doorway and confronts him face to face, the bums breath smelling like butane and wine. Henry turns away, the bum says “I have seen you walking here before— you’re nothin, you’re a bum.” 

Henry hated the bums, in their moments of lucidity they all thought they were prophets, the Bowery full of Gandhis, Jesuses and Kahlil Gibrans. The bums thought everybody was a bum waiting to happen. 

Walking away from the Bowery, ignoring the hookers on 42nd Street, hobbling and breathing heavy, finally at the New Amsterdam Theater in Times Square. 

The same cowboy junky under the marquee of the New Amsterdam, night after night in the same weirdo position, bumping his pelvis in and out, cock-less Henry thought, with a corny cowboy hat on, in the same place pimping whatever he had, selling dope, cornering Henry saying “Cosmic Ray an awesome film, you like Ray Charles?  I got some nice a eight-balls?” The junk was the Roger Ebert of Times Square. 

The Bruce Conner art film “Cosmic Ray" was showing. Henry would get thoroughly wasted to better see the visuals — Sitting in the back row, drinking vodka and snorting cocaine. 

“Cosmic Ray”AKA Cosmic Ray Charles, a black & white film, a montage, images of atomic bombs, Mickey Mouse cartoons mixed with shorts of nude women fan dancing and connecting with the universe, luminous orbs flashing in dark rooms, multi-colored-light projecting outwards around the black thearter space.  

This is a trip, Henry thought, sprawled out in the back row with his feet on the seats in front of him. 

(There were two more weirdos in the front row, the only other people in the theater.) 

The film a cosmic-light-show, electric rays shooting out of the screen encircling the theater. A mix of A-bomb violence, sexy Negro music, Disneyland and very white powdered women with small tits and lovely nipples.  

The cowboy under the marquee says to Henry as he leaves the theater after the film “Tripped-out hey?” 

Wanting to go home, Henry gets a taxi at Times Square. 

Getting in the taxi, the driver a white guy with a mohawk haircut ranting on about Richard Nixon, calling Nixon a crook and a hustler, saying Pat Nixon was a paste-up doll. 

Henry close to passing out, trying to stay awake, vomiting, car sick, covering his mouth with his hand not wanting to dirty the taxi. The taxi in Queens in front of his apartment. 

The taxi driver shaking his head back and forth, saying Agnew was a do nothing VP, not knowing that Henry puked in the back of his taxi. 

Henry gets out of the cab and hands the driver his fare through the front window, dodging a bullet, making tracks to his apartment, escaping the wrath of the taxi driver.

Wondering, as he walked the stairs to his apartment—

How the NYPD would respond to a "Vomit call" from a taxi driver with a mohawk who hated Nixon? 

  

  

The Last Act

A cold and rainy night in Queens, Henry could feel it in his bones. 

He wanted to get out of Queens to dry his bones and get in touch with his anima. Onwards and outwards to the desert, any desert. 

Henry would take the bus—Queens to Taos, New Mexico. 

He would put together the usual traveling goodies—Mexican heroin, vodka, ganja,  cocaine and valium, then putting a few pairs of chinos, a few sweat shirts and pair of low-top Converse in a gym bag. He would ware his LL Bean hiking boots with two pairs of socks on the bus, he never wore underwear.   

It rained all the way to the bus station, Henry wrapped in a Native Indian blanket, hunched over, he couldn’t get warm. He was Ratso Rizzo and Joe Buck in the film Midnight Cowboy, wanting to get out of the New York winter and get to Florida, ASAP.  

On the bus and out of New York State, already in West Virginia, making a stop in Bluefield. A punk rocker with a guitar on his back, wearing a dirty leather jacket with SS Death Heads on the lapel and a broken mustache on his face, like the Mexican actor Cantanflas's mustache, sits down next to Henry. 

His name was GG Allin and he was on his way to Topeka to meet his brother for a club date. He then goes on to say he was junk sick, Henry handed him a small packet of heroin, Allin off to the head for a poke. 

GG Allin was shy and talked very little to Henry, nodding out mostly. Henry had read about the band The Murder Junkies, Allin’s band, the band infamous, shows busted up and raided by the cops. Allin would get naked on stage, throw up, take dumps in his silver Nazi Helmet, attack the audience, do the unimaginable with sweet potatoes and carrots—beyond idiosyncratic. 

The bus passing at a high rate of speed through cornfields on the left and right, parting the ocean of swirling green stalk and leaf.  Allin wakes up and ask Henry if they are in Kansas yet?  He invites Henry to the show in Topeka, Henry didn’t want to offend GG— whose show wasn’t his cup of tea, Henry was no punk as well and could live without penis theatrics and poo-flinging.

Wishing GG Allin all the best Henry declined the offer saying the desert was calling him as he handed GG a few small bags of heroin, for the good of the cause. 

Pulling into Santa Fe, New Mexico at 2AM, Henry gets off the bus and goes to the men’s room. He downs a half a pint of vodka, then does a speed-ball, a snort of cocaine mixed with heroin. 

At 5PM the bus pulls into Taos, Henry grabbing his gym bag off the luggage rack and making a b-line to the Taos Motel & RV Camp, passing out in bed fully dressed with boots on, sleeping 12 hours. 

That evening he cleans up, does a speed ball and heads to Roses’s, a cantina in Old Taos. He orders a Mexican breakfast and a Margarita. Out of no-where he hears gunshots, from a pistol he thinks.  Henry and the rest of the folks in Roses running out in panic-mode to she what was happening? 

Dennis Hopper was in the middle of Old Taos Square—AWOL from a cowboy movie set, still in outlaw costume. His six guns pointed in the air still smoking, falling to his knees, ranting incoherently, then passing out, collapsing.

Dennis Hopper’s now famous nervous breakdown in Taos, in front of the whole world or at least the whole town of Taos.  

The paramedics on the scene in minutes, Henry figured the show was over and that Hopper’s breakdown would be the last act.  

Henry making his way to the Pecos Valley,  hiking by day and taking the bus back to Taos in the night. Hiking more and more—way out there, meeting some Navajos and doing a sweat lodge with them. Cleansed, feeling at one, taking the bus back to Queens, feeling whole again. 

Henry found what he was looking for, for once —and it felt good!

The Wasted Night-watchman

Henry in bed all day with a sore throat, needing a hot drink, finally getting out of bed and dressing, on his way to Chaim’s Deli.

Sitting in a booth at Chaim's, Ruby his regular waitress approaches looking concerned and saying “You look ill Henry,” he says to Ruby “ I need some of that Jewish cure-all Ruby baby, a bowl of chicken soup with matzot.” Henry drinking Robetussin mixed with hot tea as well. 

Still in Chaim's, high from the cough syrup, he begins to day dream,  recollecting the time he spent working in the Sinai.

Henry lived the Sinai in the mid seventies.  It was geographically like Mars, treeless, surrounded by red mud and rusty iron ore colored hills. Most people living near or on the beach in straw huts, module housing units and caves. Henry sleeping on the beach, working as the night watchman for the Nama Bay Inn. 

Nama Bay was on the Red Sea side of the Sinai Peninsula, the Red Sea famous for beautiful coral.  The Bay attracted a mix of cultures, IDF Soldiers, UN soldiers, Bedouins, hippy travelers and divers from Europe. It was a big party, the UN people would arrive in their white deuce and a half trucks loaded up with Heineken beer in coolers and cases of Irish Bristol Creme. Everyone had hashish, the only people who had nothing to share were the hippies. They would perform for dope and booze, put on poetry readings and play music as the hippy girls did spirit-dancing shaking and showing their tits.

There were huts on the beach that served as bars and restaurants, The Last Oasis and The Parrot Fish to name a few.  

Henry’s job as night watchman was to make the rounds and keep an eye on the beach area, the bars, restaurants, the diving center, and the module motel.

One night Henry was in the lobby of the Nama Bay Inn talking to the night clerk, a Druze named Boaz came running in, looking whitish with a paper cup in hand, saying he was bit by a scorpion. Henry looks in the cup and sees the scorpion is dead, He looks at Boaz and says “You got it backwards Boaz, the scorpion is supposed to live and you're supposed to die!”

On free days Henry would go to the beach and smoke hashish. He had stepped on a broken bottle of Heineken while on his night time rounds. The coral in the Red Sea gave off a large amount of bacteria, so he had to stay out of the water or risk infection. 

High, lounging in a hammock at the beach he noticed a Israeli soldier girl walking on the beach, she was all tits and ass in her thong bikini. They began to talk, her father was a famous Israeli artist in Tel Aviv, Henry invited her to an abandoned module housing unit a couple hundred meters from the sea. The two sitting on the floor in a blanket, he rolls a joint mixing hashish with tobacco. Her name was Freida, she was a a real free-spirit, a beatnik. They began making out with out much formality, and then got it on, sweating in the desert heat. Freida later invited Henry to stay with her and her family in Tel Aviv. 

Henry was only in Nama Bay a few months but it seemed like years. He got into the habit of sleeping outside while there. For a long time after he left Nama Bay he slept on the floor or outside when he could. 

Henry’s time in Israel was a test of limits he thought, partying as much as he could. After a few years there he left for Greece via Haifa on a ship. 

Henry gazing outward at the Mediterranean Sea on a ship headed to Greece, in reflexion, wondering if his stay in Israel was enlightening?  Some modern day hedonist wisdom came to mind—

He who can party and screw the longest and hardest before he drops, WINS! 

Epigrams

Henry empty-headed, how about? —The longest journey begins with the first step, or — It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of the beginnings. 

Henry hated epigrams. 

Queens on a fall night, cool cobalt air pulling and blowing on you, inviting you to step into it. 

Leaving his apartment at 1030 PM, stoping at Chaim’s Deli for a late snack—matzo ball soup, chopped chicken liver spread on rye and Robatusin mixed with soda.  Ruby, Henry’s regular waitress, a good women working to put her son through college. 

Leaving Chiams at 1100 PM with no plans. 

Near Times Square a young asian gal wearing a white Ao Dai (an asian dress) and pumps open at the heal, says hello. Henry taken back, mesmerized by her winsome beauty. 

She asked him if they can go have a drink, Henry paralyzed and finding it hard to speak finally saying, “Sure doll.”

The two duck into a corner bar, Jimmy’s Place, they sit in a booth and order two gin martinis, exchanging names. Her name is Mai and she is right off the boat from Viet Nam, on the run from something. Mai asked him if he can help her get a green card.  

Henry living off of crazy-pay from month to month, romance for him a long chain of one-night-stands, feeling powerless, laid-low by Mais allure, he orders two more drinks, then says “What kind of work do you do Mai?” She tells him she is an exotic dancer, he says “Oh, no problem doll, the city is full of strip joints.”

After more than a few gin martinis Henry picks up the tab and says to Mai, “Lets get a rub down baby.”

They take a taxi to Siam Massage, Henry at the counter asking for Nam, then saying “We want a threesome.” 

Nam, Henry and Mai walking down a long hall glowing purple. They settle in a room draped in East Indian prints made radiant by candle light, smelling of jasmine and coconut, getting naked. Mai with natural tits, her body like white silk. 

The girls massage Henry, he is turgid, very turned on. They start making out, he lays lines of cocaine on a small mirror, the three snort it up, having a ball.  

Mai tells her story to Nam, it turns out Siam Massage is looking for a masseuse. No green card required, a couple hundred a day in tips, room and board. 

Henry as luck would have it was off the hook. He would have access to Mai at Siam Massage  without having to be responsible for her. 

Flowing water always finds its own level in the sand and the Lord works in strange ways—

More epigrams Henry thought. 

     

Donna Brown & Henry the Farmer

Henry musing—what’s it gonna be? A film, poetry reading, Thai massage, a trip out west? 

It was fall, a good time to take a trip. Henry savored the fall— brazen colored leaves losing chlorophyll, dying and falling off the tree, cremated in large piles, polluting the air, smelling sweet and woody.    

Henry knew of a commune near Summertown, Tennessee called “The Farm,” founded by Stephen Gaskin. 

Stephen a beatnik who was disenchanted with the Haight-Asbury scene in San Francisco enlists a group of like minded hippies to go on a pilgrimage out east, searching for a place to lay their straw-hats, a commune/home. 

In the early seventies Stephan leads the pilgrims to the promise land— a caravan of VW Bugs, vans and trucks on a road trip, driving east from San Francisco, settling on a couple thousand acres outside of Summertown, Tennessee. 

They are “Farmies,” eco-minded, anti-war, pot smoking, agro-midwives and high-tech lumber-jacks—ain’t that the shit Henry thought?    

Henry would take a trip to "The Farm." He packs a small gym bag with clean t-shirts and underwear then gets dope—Mexican heroin and bottles of Robitussin. 

The long bus ride from Queens to Summertown would be a dream sequence he figured, burnt leaves, worm, squirrel and rat eaten apples falling off of trees — Indian corn and skeletal scare-crows.

Henry sitting in the back of the bus, snorting heroin, drinking Robitussin mixed with Seven Up, sleepy and wasted.  

Then a thirty-something Black women with a nice shape sits next to him, eye-balling him and saying, “Are you OK sugar?”  He says, “I’m fine, lets party,” he hands her a plastic cup, Robitussen and Seven Up mix. 

She says “My name is Donna Brown you sure are cute," he says, “I’m Henry, I’m on crazy-pay.” Saying the first thing that came to mind.      

The two on a roll straight away, Donna Brown was on the run from the law and broke, Henry her golden goose.  

Henry was passed out as the bus drove through Summerville, Tennessee. He would never make it to the “The Farm.”  

They got off in Nashville, renting a small room, a dump in an area of Nashville called Black Bottom. The newly ordained couple mildly addicted to Heroin. 

It was fall in Nashville, cool some, the two drinking all the time, eating pinto beans out of cans and half frozen hot-dogs, getting off junk, Henry knew better than to go there.

After a few weeks of daily and nightly drinking, the couple decided to go out—a night on the town in Black Bottom. They stumbled into the first bar they saw, a real dive, Santa’s Pub, elves spray painted on the cinder block facade.

Henry was the only White guy in the bar. Blues and country music on the juke-box, Donna Brown orders Tequila, drinks a few shots then walks sexy-like around the joint, flirting, Henry still sitting, anxious. 

Donna Brown sits at a table with some Black men, huge men, offensive lineman huge, she talks and points at Henry. He knew what was coming, Henry slips out of Santa’s Pub through the bathroom window, leaving the bill for Donna Brown.  

Back at the room he packs quickly, hits the streets and hitch-hikes out of town, thinking the bar owner and the cops might look for him at the bus station. 

Once in Knoxville he catches a bus home to Queens. 

Maybe the heroin and Robitusin was the wrong mix for the trip? It was the Devil's mix, a curse he thought. 

Happy to be back in the city, Henry was no farmer.   

Chelsea Girls

Henry siting in a lawn chair on the balcony of his Queens apartment. 

The summer night cobalt blue, the air cool. Needing fuel he leaves the building and walks a few blocks to Chaim’s Deli. 

Sitting in his booth, Ruby his regular waitress greets him saying “Henry how the fuck are you doll?” Henry forks two fingers, opens his mouth and puts his tongue between the fingers, wagging the tongue,  giving the appearance of fellatio. Ruby does an about face and walks away, unreceptive.

After a meal of corn beef and cabbage, fries and a milkshake mixed with Kailua, Henry checks out of the deli and hits the pavement.  

Once again by-passing  the Bowery, walking fast, careful not to trip over bums passed out on the sidewalk, avoiding odorous puddles, wanting to get through quickly. 

Henry making his way to Times Square, to the New Amsterdam Theater, the Andy Warhol film “Chelsea Girls” was playing.   

Under the marquee a junky cowboy closes in on Henry and says “ Man the film is boring, it’s pathetic baby, how about a  8 ball of coke to get you through the thing dad?” Henry bought the cocaine from the cowboy taking a lick, then going across the street to Lenny’s Liquorland for a pint. 

He sat in the back row, so no-one could see him snorting coke and drinking. 

“Chelsea Girls” begins screening, Henry notices there are no credits, and that it was two reels shown side by side simultaneously, he recognized the Chelsea Hotel.  

The screen filled with Warhol’s factory denizens, Ondine, International Velvet, Gerald Malanga, Ingrid Superstar— it was a  gay film with allot of syringes full of speed being poked randomly in the players asses. Nobody was acting in the film, the “actors” were themselves. One girl on acid was walking in and out of scenes crying real tears, half aware she was being filmed,  then a priest slaps her—a real slap, to shut her up.  

The cocaine got Henry through twenty minutes of the art yarn, feeling lucky he could make a quick exit.

Henry comforted, walking, breathing yogic gulps of night air, looking up at the sky full of happy stars.

Henry bought a Village Voice from a blind man near Chaim’s Deli, close to home. He asked the blind man how he was doing and the blind man says, “ Life couldn’t be better baby!”

Henry  thinking—

Man this is it, the real stuff, far removed from the desperate life of the “Chelsea Girls”