How About Your Bowels, Henry?

Henry out of his apartment early for once, he was up all night snorting cocaine and drinking Jack Daniels, the booze and dope fueled him, writing at the speed of sound, some of it good, some of it bad.  

It is 9AM, it is fall and spring, a killer sunny day, the year is somewhere between 1970 and 1980. Henry leaving his Queen digs for Central Park, for a walk and to drink coffee at a cafe called Last Exit in the park. 

When he gets to the park he makes a B-line for Last Exit. He orders a double espresso and takes a seat outside on the patio. The park full of joggers, people walking their dogs, kids playing, old men sitting on benches. 

Henry inhaling the java and laying a few lines of cocaine out on the coffee table, then snorting em up and sipping Southern Comfort from a flask with a skull and bones on it.

Sitting at a small patio table, eyeballing the park goers moving about, Henry lapses into a dream— all the hubbub stops and people are motionless, standing in place. It is as though all molecular motion as far as he could see is transfixed, he savors the magic in the moment. Then after a few seconds which felt like an eternity, motion sets in again. 

It was noon, Henry had an appointment at the welfare office with a shrink, it was a quarterly thing, the bureau-crazy cats up on high needed to reevaluate and confirm that Henry was still crazy. 

He enters the welfare office, there is a line of misfortunates waiting to be frisked by security. Henry wonders if any of them could afford a gun, or even a bullet? The lot had to comply with whatever obstacles, and there were a million of them, that the welfare office set before them.

Henry getting padded down by security, the rent a cop finds a flask in his vest pocket. The guy says, 

no booze allowed, we will hold this and you can get it back on the way out. 

In the grey-walled waiting room, there are 50 or so people waiting to see shrinks, all on crazy pay like Henry. Henry sits for a half hour and his name is called by a nurse who is holding his paperwork,

Henry Lucowski, Room 103. 

In Room 103 he sits down on a wooden chair in front of the shrinks desk. The chair hard with no padding. Henry figured it was a ploy to keep people on edge, rattling their brains to get more information out of them. A new lady shrink introduces herself to him saying, 

my name is Doctor Hiccup, I will be conducting your quarterly interview.

The line of interrogation went like this—

Mr. Lucowski are your bowels moving regularly? Henry says,

oh yes doctor, I can assure you that I shit up a storm daily!

May I call you Henry? Henry, have you been sober and going to daily AA meetings? He answers,

Yes I just love AA, I wouldn’t miss a meeting, I'm sober as a saint!

Henry how is you social life, are you still isolating? Grinning like someone who is concealing a lie he says,

Doctor Hiccup I assure you that I’m the toast of the town!

Henry how about the visual and audio hallucinations? Henry snaps backs quickly saying,

I wouldn’t give em up for the world, they are a source of inspiration, they are magic, I’m a writer you know. Dr Hiccup then says,

Ok Henry that’s it for today, I’m going to double down on the Lexapro, you can pick up the meds at the pharmacy on the way out. 

Henry heads for the exit bypassing the pharmacy, he didn't want to take psychotropic dope, feeling that it deadened one’s senses— the shrinks on a mission to save the world with pharma-dope, in reality, pharma-dope erasing nut-job character and selfhood.  

Henry takes a taxi to Manhattan, it was noon already and he would go to MoMA to see what was happening.  He walks the halls of MoMA, blown over by all the great work hanging on the walls, work by the 20th Century masters of modern art—Picasso, Pollack, Warhol, Frida Kahlo, Larry Rivers and Francis Bacon to name a few.

Standing in front of and eyeballing the painting— The Sleeping Gypsy by Henri Rousseau, Henry is transfixed, drawn into the mood of the painting, the feeling one would get in the Mojave desert on a full moon night, a moody and quite otherworldly feeling, somewhere between heaven and earth on a desert island in the sky, above the clouds and on the way to the moon. 

As he turns and walks away from the Rousseau painting he notices a bohemian looking woman, with roughly cut black hair, she is wearing a loose fitting moss green dress and wooden clogs with droplets of paint on them. She is sitting on a MoMA bench looking hang-dog with her head down in her hands, crying. Not knowing why, Henry walks over to the women and says,

Isn’t the Rousseau painting a trip?  She then says, 

Oh, I love it, I came here to mourn, a few months ago I had a miscarriage while I was taking a bath in my Village loft. It was awful, my dead baby floating in bath water. All I could do was wrap its tiny body in a towel. I didn't want to know what sex it was. Henry says,

I’m so sorry darling, bad shit happens in life, we just have to move on.   

Henry sits down next to her on the bench and says, 

I’m Henry Lucowski, I’m a writer, what’s your name? She says, 

My name is Elizebeth Peyton, you can call me Liz, I’m a portrait painter, nice to meet you. Henry says,

Liz, I have seen your work exhibited here at MoMA, you’re more than a portrait painter, she says,

Yes, I guess so Henry, let’s get out of here and go to my loft in the village,

The two take a taxi to the Village, Liz’s loft is in an old brick warehouse, they walk up 3 flights of stairs, Liz’s door is unlocked—her loft is empty except for a paint-smeared brown leather sofa and a large round bed behind the sofa. The rest of the large room is filled with finished and half-finished portraits of famous people, Anne Leibowitz, Larry Rivers, Odell, Herbert Hunke, Paul Newman, Sting, Robert Maplethorp and Ed Koch to name a few.

Henry asked her,

Liz, did you fuck all the people you have painted? She says,

Yes, I fucked most of them, would you like a drink doll? 

She then goes behind a curtain and returns wearing a fluffy pink bathrobe, naked underneath. She is carrying a tray with 2 shot glasses and a bottle of Jack Daniels on it. 

She sits on the bed and asked Henry to come over and sit close to her, he sits on the edge of the bed and they bang down more than a shot. He lays 5 or 6 large size lines of cocaine on the tray which they snort up quickly. Liz’s robe opens as if by accident revealing a her vagina covered with blace whispy hair, and she says,

Henry, It's great to meet you, baby I’m feeling a whole lot better. 

She then moves closer to Henry and unzips his trousers, pulling his pants down below his knees, grabbing his cock and then going down on him saying, 

Henry baby you're hung like a horse. 

The two ball and booze it up for an hour or so, then at 4AM Liz walks behind the magic curtain and brings back a bottle of Xanax, both of them take a few and pass out. 

They wake up the following morning at noon and go to a Greek restaurant in the Village called Mykonos, ordering everything in the world to eat and Bloody Marys to boot. Liz says to Henry, 

You’re a real doll you know and I love you but you're not my type, nobody is my type, I’m a woman who needs privacy to work and a occasional freelance fuck. Henry then says,

no problem babe, I’m not looking to shack up or nothin, artist need lotsa space to do what we do, to create. 

After a big meal, the two go through the formality of exchanging phone numbers and email addresses of all fucking things, as though it would put some glue on the chance meeting of two misfits. 

Honestly, anybody would know the thing was doomed from the start, just a freelance fuck. 

It's Nothing, Like Nothing, Nothing at All

Henry with more than a few things on his mind, allot of it being written now.

A poem by the black poet Ismael Reed comes to mind, Henry remembered reading it in high school in the early sixties. The line that is edged in his consciousness was —I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra,

I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. Boning-up in

the ol’ West i bide my time. You should see

me pick off these tin cans whippersnappers. 

I write the motown long plays for the comeback of Osiris. Make them up when stars stare at sleeping

steer out here near the campfire. Women arrive

on the backs of goats and throw themselves on

my Bowie.

Ismael Reed later calling the OJ trial a telecommunicational lynching and so on—

Ismael was at his best, feral and juiced up on the boat of Ra, sitting at a campfire with ladies who come and go stage left and right on the backs of multicolored goats. 

Somewhere in the vast African nowhere land.

Henry itching some, he had been snorting smack in his Queen’s digs— 

thinking of Ray Charles, 

Wondering some, but knowing that the genius of Ray Charles was his music which was written in junk.  

Henry a lifetime user of every dope out there and booze too, laughing out loud when he thought of Keith Richards and Ray getting busted by flat foot cops, both saying to the cops,

I don’t bother anybody, I use that’s all, what business is it of yours? 

Henry had been holed up in his Queen’s digs for a month or so, going out occasionally to score dope or to buy staples, beans, rice, tortillas, and booze.

The time was late evening, somewhere between 1970 and 1980. It was time to revel, time to honor what was left of life, time to dance on the sacred sidewalks of New York City. 

The air was cool that evening, Henry dresses warm—black leather pants and a flannel shirt, then walking a few blocks to Chaim’s Deli.

Sitting in his favorite booth, Ruby his regular waitress walks over to him and gets in his face right away, saying,

Henry where have you been, don’t you answer your phone anymore? I have been trying to call you for the last month, Chaim figured you had overdosed for sure.

Henry a black and decomposing maggot-ridden corpse, that's the stuff.  

Henry then says to Ruby,

Ruby baby, you know me, I just got strung out you know, the usual same old. I'm famished doll, how about a Reuben sandwich, a plate of fries, some borsht and a bottle of cream soda to wash it down. 

Henry finishes his meal and then walks around the deli, thanking anybody he sees for being there, they were his family, everybody, all of them the family of man. 

Invigorated by the cool night air, in the Bowery, walking up to a group of bums hovering around a fire in a garbage can to keep warm and saying,

Jesus, I’ve missed you guys, good to see the bums of the Bowery alive and kicking!

It’s the bum’s resilience, what else could it be? 

Henry walking to Times Square to see a movie called Chappaqua, showing at the New Amsterdam Theater. He buys a ticket and looks around for the cowboy junk, who was usually under the marquee critiquing the films and selling dope. 

Inside the theater, he asked the usher what had happened to the cowboy junk? The usher says smiling, his teeth dripping green cheese,

oh, they locked him up in Ryker’s Isle for a while, my manager didn't like his action and had him committed.

Chappaqua was a mad-house of a film, made in the 60s. An autobiographic journey put together over 3 years by Conrad Rooks, a Joseph Conrad style spiral into darkness with a shit load of tripped out cameos and other contributions by Beat nobility and varied artist.     

Henry sits in the back row. He had a hit of acid he had found a few days ago in the pocket of the buckskin vest he wore to the Woodstock festival, he drops the small tab, washing it down with Jack Daniels out of the bottle, you could fuck in the aisles of the New Amsterdam if you wanted, it was that kind of place.  

The film shot in the style of a Robert Frank home movie, unclear, dark, in black and white. The images are Cocteau like and are taken from Frank stills. The music is very turned on, way out stuff by Ornette Coleman and Ravi Shankar. 

The opening scene, a camera pans a street in New York, unclear, black and white glowing images, then cutting to a bit of The Fugs playing in a club. 

After the number is finished the lead singer steps on and smashes sugar cubes of LSD into dust on stage as if to say— 

Let the trip begin. 

Henry coming on to the Woodstock Festival leftover acid as the film enters trip mode, it was magical timing, serendipity to boot.   

Everything peachy—I’m glad, I’m glad, I’m glad, the warm warm feeling of dope percolating inside your being as the glorious hallucinations raise up into Heaven. 

Allen Ginsburg playing finger cymbals as he chanted mantras of Hare Krishna.  

Now and forever spiraling upwards into a yellow circle of light, merging with something which ended the same way it started, oddly going nowhere.

Henry coming down off the acid as he leaves the New Amsterdam Theater, his mind blank—the usher asking him what he thought of the film Chappaqua? Henry replying,

it was nothing, like nothing, nothing at all. 

The thick and unhip usher with cheesy teeth didn't seem to get it.

If you think you’re getting a refund you're wrong, you know where the exit is, don't miss it Henry!

Henry walking out through the exit, walking all the way home to Queens, later waking in his bedroom and going to take a pee— 

Wondering why his pajamas where were hanging loosely on his body?    

A Trip to Behold

Henry in his Queens apartment drinking German beer— it was fall, the year was somewhere between 1970 and 1980. He's listening to a Met’s night game on the radio. What the score was didn't matter, he listened to the sound of the game like it was music, it relaxed him. 

He had been reading the stories of John Cheever over the past week, Cheever was a lion.

Cheever was a writer who placed language above plot, he was known as the suburban Chekov.  

He often said that alcohol was creative juice, saying,

The excitement of alcohol and the excitement of fantasy are similar.

And,

I stayed up late, drank a pint of bourbon, and worked like a streak on Thursday. I hope it has nothing to do with the degeneration of the tissues. 

Henry had seen the film, The Swimmer starring Burt Lancaster that was based on the Cheever story of the same name. He remembers Lancaster looking great in a swimsuit, going from pool to pool in a New England suburb, and the occasional make-out sessions with suburban housewives in two-piece swimsuits next to swimming pools. 

At one point the swimmer, Natty was his name, swims 4 miles in 8 different pools in one hour. As Henry watched the film he got the feeling that Natty was—going off the deep edge in the deep end of the swimming pool. Natty succeeded in escaping the mundane facts of his own existence regardless. 

Cheever saw stories in people he saw walking down the street, or in conversations he overheard, scraps that shaped his award-winning work. 

He saw the advent of modern life in the 20th Century as the end of communalism resulting in a rootlessness which lay at the heart of a new evil. 

Cheevers continued to believe in modern life though, his writing was partly an effort to find a—miracle resolve. 

His work a dialogue between good and evil spinning like a wheel in circular motion, the yin, and the yang. 

Henry was hungry by 830PM, so he showered, dressed and snorted a few lines of cocaine, the beer he drank during the day had deadened his mind.

He would leave his apartment building and take the short walk to Chaim’s Deli. When he gets there he sees a hand-printed sign on the door saying, 

Chaim's will be closed today for the Sabbath. 

This was a first, maybe Chaim had gotten religion and converted, Orthodox. 

Henry continues his walk, reaching the Bowery where he is greeted by a bum he had seen before, a bum they called Coffee Can. He says to Henry, 

are you hungry son? There is a free dinner at the Salvation over there, go get you some!

Henry walks to the Salvation Army, it is situated in a 4 story red brick building with a chapel, dining room and sleeping quarters with cots. He walks in and is greeted by a bum in a second-hand suit who is holding a bible, a sober bum Henry thought. The sober bum shakes his hand saying, 

this is God’s house there is no alcohol allowed here, enjoy your meal. 

The free meal is served cafeteria style—Henry grabs a plastic tray, some plastic ware, and a paper napkin.  Another sober bum, a fat lady in a tent-shaped dress fills a plate with navy beans, chunks of ham, cornbread, and okra, she hands the plate to him. There was a big vat of coffee at the end of the line and you could fill a cup if you pleased, no cream or sugar was offered, black coffee only.  

No booze, no cream and sugar, the Salvation Army had a hard-on for joy.  

It was institutional food, everything out of a can except for the cornbread, like a jail meal Henry thought, but the price was right and he was hungry. 

After eating at a long table with a group of sober bums, Henry heads for the door, the sober doorman asked,

Are you staying for the chapel service after the meal? Henry says,

No thanks Mac I’m an atheist, but all the best, see you next time. 

On the street again, Henry lights a joint and takes a slug of whiskey from a flask that was in his vest pocket, feeling relieved— he felt uncomfortable in churches and chapels, the idea of prayers being heard and processed by a spirit entity in the sky was repugnant to him.

He would go to the Village to hear the beat poet Michael McClure read. McClure studied with Robert Duncan and in 1955 got his start at the infamous and revolutionary Six Gallery reading in San Francisco that featured Allen Ginsberg ’s premier reading of Howl. 

McClure would read that night at a bar slash coffee shop called Last Exit. When Henry got there it was already packed with bookish type NYC hipsters, he stood at bar and orders a double Jack Daniels and soda. There was no smoking allowed in the place, Henry knew McClure didn’t smoke or drink and was a vegetarian— surely the reason he survived all of the Beats and is alive to this day. 

Michael McClure enters stage left, walking a few steps to a wooden podium, all the chatting and laughter stops. He then puts his hands together and raises them, Wai’ing the crowd Thai style, then getting right down to the poetry, shuffling through some typewritten papers and saying,

this is a poem  I wrote in honor of Jack Kerouac a brother, blessed be, eternal samadhi.

from The New Book/A Book of Torture

IN DARK HELL IN LIGHT ROOM IN UMBER AND CHROME I feel the swell of 

smoke the drain and flow of motion of exhaustion, the long sounds of cars the brown shadows on the wall. I sit or stand. Caught in the net of glints from corner table to dull plane from knob to floor, angles of flat light, daggers of beams. Staring at love's face. 

The telephone in cataleptic light. Matchflames of blue and red seen in the clear grain. 

Vita Nuova--No! The dead, dead, world. 

He read rhythmically as though he was playing a bongo drum, metrically but in variation.

McClure read 20 poems that night and time went by quickly. 

After the reading Henry walks up to Michael McClure who is still standing near the podium and says,

I’m Henry Lucowski, I’m a writer and a fan of all things literary,

McClure saying,

oh, Henry Lucowski my friend Allen Ginsberg tells me that you're an up and coming short story writer. 

Let me tell you this Henry, you're on a bountiful journey, it's a trip to behold. 

Henry shrugs and vigorously shakes Michael McClure’s hand with both his hands, then turning and walking out the cafe door. 

Instead of taking a taxi home to Queens he decides to walk.

Henry looks up at the sky as he walks. It was a cool fall night, the air crisp and fresh, stars glowing more than one color, blues and reds contrasting the orange crescent moon.

For now, Henry felt braced and sorted out. All of it, every bit of it was enough for him, it was exactly right as it was, no need a for a God to bog it down.