A Million to One Shot

Henry at home thinking about writing, writing easy for him, he didn’t get writer’s block— every week he would turn the music way up, pour some drinks and write a short story. 

As he began writing the story would unfold, as if it had a life of its own— it was like opening a can of worms, letting them out, following the little buggers around and then chucking the can. 

He would write every day, in the evening he would wrap it up, finished or not and then go out to eat. Later walking the streets of New York City, open to all of it, weirdos, those on the fringes and junk poets especially welcome. 

It was a fall night sometime between 1970 and 1980, winter a mean old man peering around the corner.  

Henry ready to go out, his hair uncombed and uncut, starting to grey, his face pale and drawn— wearing a knee-length black leather coat, pegged chinos, and low-cut red Converse All-Stars. 

He was 43 years old, out of hand and cool, he wasn’t going to make the cover of GQ anytime soon, that was his charm, not giving a shit. 

He leaves his Queen’s digs around 8 PM and walks to Chaim’s Deli, sitting alone as usual in a booth, his regular waitress Ruby walks to his table and says,

Why Henry, how you doin palsy? I’ve missed you, let's get together soon? He says,

How about tomorrow morning at my place? Ruby says,

Ok Henry, see you there!

She would clean his apartment and do his laundry by hand then hang it out to dry on his small balcony. 

Ruby a nice girl, motherly, an angel to boot.  

He orders dinner, 

Ruby, I’ll have some brisket, some hash browns, a bowl of chicken soup with dumplings and some green beans. Ruby writes down his order, winks at Henry and turns around, walking to the counter, shaking her money maker all the way to heaven. 

After noshing Henry says goodnight to the folks at the deli, walking out into the cool night air, going somewhere, anywhere.

He sees Siam Massage in the distance, not far from Chaim’s Deli, and goes inside, the place dimly lit with a black light for mood, there is a white plastic sofa, some cheap chairs, and a fake bamboo tree in a pot on the floor. The woman at the counter asked Henry, speaking in a heavy Viet Namese accent,

Hey baby, you cute, you want nice girl sucky, sucky, make you happy, happy? 

Henry would pass this time, it was the end of the month and he was short of cash, he laughs and then turns around and walks out.

Back on the street, he goes to a punk bar on the Lower East Side in Chinatown called Clockwork Bar, in the early days they booked the Ramones and Debby Harry—Henry liked blues mostly and could give a tinker's shit about Harry or the Ramones. 

In Manhattan at Clockwork Bar, a cramped place with a small stage covered everywhere with stickers and graffiti, dimly lit with red and blue lights. 

Henry sits at the bar and orders a Budweiser and a shot of whiskey. 

A tall and thin guy with red hair parted in the middle, his face drawn, he had eyes that pierced your soul, wearing a sports coat that was too large and of all fucking things a Ramones t-shirt, sits next to Henry. It was the poet and musician Jim Carroll, who introduces himself to Henry, Henry says, 

I’m Henry Lucowski, I’m a writer on welfare who is addicted to most things, Jim Carroll says in a quivering and fragile voice,  

nice to meet you, Henry— I'm reading later tonight, I hope you stay. 

Jim Carroll then going into to an extended rap saying,

You know Henry junk is a monkey run wild that has taken a big size bite of my potential and spit it out, ravaging my body and soul. I got junked up in my teens and never turned back really, it gave me a vision and blinded me at the same time. It is sad that getting vision required such great height, I would have rather been on the ground with others, everyone really, those I deeply care for. 

Jim Carroll buys Henry a drink and Henry lays some lines of cocaine on the table which they promptly snort. 

Soon it was time for Jim Carroll to read, he walks up to the stage and the music in the Clockwork Bar stops and then the crowd shuts up as though the Gods just walked in. 

Standing at a small podium on a small stage, he simply begins reading his poem The Distances without introduction. 

Henry amazed as Carroll reads his poem, not Beat or punk, more like the Romantic Poets or Yeats. 

of still another morning, mornings which are

always remaining behind for one thing or another

shivering in our faces of pride and blooming attitude.

in the draught of winter air my horse is screaming

you are welcoming the new day with your hair leaning

against the sand, feet dive like otters in the frost

and the sudden blue seems to abandon as you leap. 

O to make everything summer! soldiers move along lines

like wet motions in the violent shade’s reappearance.

  

Henry loving every bit of The Distance, its validity, the ancient and eternal quality of it, knowing now that Jim Carroll was the most underrated poet of any century, and one of the great poets of the 20Th Century.

After the reading people in the crowd rushing the stage with copies of Basketball Diaries for Jim Carroll to sign. 

It was clear that he didn’t like the attention, fame for him a burden, an unwanted golden cloak that was forced on him. 

He walks over to Henry who is still at the bar and says,

Let’s get outta here Henry, let’s go somewhere, anywhere! 

The two leave Clockwork Bar and get a taxi to Siam Massage in Queens. Carroll relieved to be free of the unwanted attention at the Bar. 

As they talked and laughed in the back seat of the taxi, it was clear they had bonded— two junks who lived to write, two junks who took the untraveled road. 

They walk into Siam Massage, the same Chinese woman is at the counter, Henry says,

We want a couple of gals that can suck the knobs off a hubcap.

Two lovely Asian girls appear and the four of them walk arm and arm down a dimly lit blue hallway to separate rooms. 

Henry falling asleep as he is getting massaged, wanting to go home and go to bed, it was 4 AM.

He leaves the massage joint and walks a few blocks to his Queen’s digs, wondering how it went for Jim Carroll at Siam Massage? 

Henry never saw Jim Carroll again. They—two overly sensitive souls, connecting at the heart for a night. 

It was a million to one shot alright.  

Only the Gods Know for Sure

Henry needed music to write, he liked all kinds of music, mostly blues and rock. Bukowski would write into the night listening to Brahms and Mahler, Buk fueled by drinks. 

Hunter S. Thompson would wake up at 3 PM in the afternoon and start the day with a screwdriver, a Dunhill cigarette, then snort some cocaine, then another cigarette, blaring loud music, rock & jazz from an oversize set of Bose speakers, assorted music, whatever moved him—  Miles Davis's album, Sketches of Spain, The Rolling Stone's album, Let it Bleed or the Brewer and Shiply's song, One Toke Over the Line. Typing away on an IBM electric typewriter, he had busted out a long time ago, breaking new ground as he went along.  

Henry had his own style, he didn’t write like anyone else. The books he saw on Twitter were unreadable to him, romance novels, spy books, mysteries and the like. 

The joy of writing for him was reading his own work. He figured truly bonafide writing ended sometime in the seventies, there weren’t any— Raymond Carvers, Phillip Exeters, Charles Bukowskis, Jack Kerouacs or Hunter S. Thompsons out there anymore.

It was the same reason, and only the Gods know the why or how of it, that today's culture wasn’t producing any Jesuss, Abraham Lincolns or Gandhis—maybe it was a gradual and insidious dumbing-down of culture from the seventies to the present.

Henry would stay wasted and keep writing, he would write drunk and edit sober. Editing sober on rare occasions only, when the liquor store was closed or wouldn’t deliver.  

Maybe the Gods had a plan for the world— They would send Jesus, Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln(and Elvis too) back when they were good and fucking ready. Face it, it was something that had to be left in Their hands, Man never got the shit that needed to be done right anyway, Man always fucking up in this way or that, even though the Gods put everything Man needed right in the freaking bread basket.

And so it goes, Henry looking for a quote that summed it up, the stuff of the Gods, the stuff of Man, the disappearance of real and original in the Twenty-First Century. But, there weren’t any quotes out there that nailed it down—one thing for sure, if the Gods knew they weren’t telling and Man didn't have a fucking clue. 

Enough of the sh—iittt, anyway

Going forward—

It was one of those days, a spring day in New York City, a day when people of all kinds were brazenly falling in love all over the place. A day to smoke dope on a quilted blanket, have a picnic and get wasted in Central Park—a drop-dead gorgeous and beauteous day, a day for anybody who tuned in and turned up the volume some.  

Henry writing in his Queens apartment with the windows open, the fresh spring air electrifying, tantalizing his senses. 

Sitting in front of an open window, looking out at nothing, waiting for the evening to go out into IT, wanting to meet IT head on. IT, the stuff the Gods were broadcasting in the sky, the love musk seeping through the clouds into the springtime air.        

Finally out the door at 8 PM, thinking of Hunter S. Thompson saying—breakfast is the only meal of the day, he walks to the Lucy's Cafe in the Bowery for some cheap eats. He orders eggs, toast, fried grits with fake maple syrup, kosher hot dogs, and spam. He washes the fair down with some brewed coffee and cream mixed with whiskey, all in all, great stuff. 

After eating Henry goes to Times Square lookin for cheap thrills, love out for Henry tonight, he didn’t feel wired for it regardless of what the Gods were seeding the clouds with.

Henry pays 9 dollars at the ticket booth of the last burlesque club in Times Square, a place called The Strand Arts Theater. It was a theater setting without a live band, the music was chosen by the strippers, piped in by the same guy who did the lights. 

Henry sits in the back row, the place was well, musty and mildewed, wet somehow, the painted cement floor seemed sticky.  

He breaks out a flask filled Jack Daniels and takes a few hefty gulps, then snorting some cocaine from a small bottle with a spoon, retro style —up for the show as they say. 

The first act was a gal who called herself Ivy Madison, a tall blond who wore her hair Marilyn Monroe style, she had oversized tits and nice legs,  she wore a red outfit with easy open and close seams and fishnet stockings.  She stripped to an album by the Tijuana Brass and some music from a Spaghetti Western, the music added drama. 

The shoes were the first to go, kicked backstage somewhere, the dress taken off in parts, and finally the gee string and nipples covered with pasties. As she exits the stage she tosses a key into to the audience of a few and Henry catches it.

He felt like the bridesmaid who catches the bridal bouquet, attached to key was a note written with a felt pen, come backstage to room 6.

The next act starts, a gal called Gypsy Daniels does a pole dance to Motley Crue. Henry walks backstage to room 6 and knocks on the unpainted metal door. Ivy opens the door, she is dressed already and says,

Let’s get outta here and go have a drink,

Henry says sure doll,

the two walk out the alley exit of The Strand Arts Theater.

They go to a joint called Rudy’s not far from the Strand Arts. Ivy orders a Seven and Seven and Henry a double Jack and soda. As they begin to talk he can tell that Ivy is educated and bright, he asked her,

why are you stripping? She says,

oh, it’s a long story baby, but after a bad marriage I was left in debt big time, I had to take the first job I could find and it happened to be at The Strand Arts, the pay is good and it’s easy. When I’m on stage it’s a turn on, my nipples get hard because I know guys are looking at me, horny for me, I don’t really focus much on the audience but we have a full house on the weekends and at the end of the month when guys get paid.  

After talking over a few drinks, Henry realizes that he likes Ivy, and says to her,

whatcha say we get a room and shack up for the night baby, she says,

Henry, that would do me just fine doll.

They get a room at a place called the Park Nightly Hotel not far from Rudy’s Bar, you could pay by the hour. 

In the room, Ivy says to him, 

I’m not a hooker Henry I like you, and he says,

I like you too baby, and maybe this can be a regular thing with us, not just a shack up for the night. 

Ivy takes off her black jeans and unzips her knee high fake snakeskin boots, not stripping really, Henry strips down as well to his boxer shorts.  

They lay in bed half-naked and talk for a while snorting cocaine and drinking Jack Daniels from a bottle, feeling warm, then Henry kisses Ivy on the lips, a deep nasty wet kiss, they ball for a while, it was semi-hot sex. 

Later, Ivy hands Henry a paper with her  phone number on it and says, 

I  gotta get some rest baby, let’s hook up in a few days and hang out, he agrees saying 

Ok, babe, I’d like that. 

Henry takes a taxi back to Queens, feeling drained, the next day he goes through his pants pockets and notices he has lost Ivy’s number.

That night he is back in the audience at the Strand Arts Theater, when Ivy comes on stage she looks at Henry and waves.

Maybe the God's had spritzed Henry and Ivy with some of that love musk, who knows? 

She Blind-sighted Him

Henry sick allot, almost everyday— it was one of those things, one thing or the other, headaches and joint pain, feeling powerless on a summer evening, somewhere between 1970 and 1980.  

Henry, 43 — years of daily drug and alcohol abuse had takin its toll all right. Laying in bed with his curtains shut tight, writing on an electric IBM typewriter, sipping Jack Daniels out of the bottle for medicinal purpose, all day into the evening. 

Then, when the sun goes down he can go out— because, the sun and any source of bright light made him feel uncomfortable, photophobic, which isn’t a phobia but is a sensitivity of the eyes to bright light. 

At any rate, in the evening he would take a hot shower and force himself to go outside and walk the city, working through his pain, ignoring his pain—oddly thinking if he missed a night of walking the city streets he would die, clearly death anxiety or as Freud called it Thanatophobia. 

And yes Henry had childhood issues to boot, he was raised by a deaf nanny, didn’t know who his father was and didn’t see his mother Helen Lucowski much because she would disappear on drunk benders with any bum who could keep up with her.

His deaf nanny, Nil could speak, but not clearly, she could read lips though, so when Henry wanted to make a point embracing this or that issue he would put his head in front Nil’s and exaggerate his lip movement and shake his head to make sure that Nil knew he meant business. 

Nil was in her thirties and attractive. Being deaf and having to stay at home with Henry most of the time limited her life, and she was a virgin. 

When Henry was 12 he tried to fuck her, but she fought him off.  He never hit on her again, but he drilled a small peephole into her bedroom through his bedroom closet and would watch her undress at night. She would masturbate from time to time, he enjoyed the show but wondered why she wouldn’t fuck? It was obvious she liked the feeling, maybe it was some kind of moral contention. 

Henry didn't know what made Nil tick, she did what was expected of her but not much more. She took care of Henry until he left home at 16. He never saw Nil or Helen Lucowski again. Later in life by chance he saw Helen’s obituary in the Queens Gazette—the only details given in the obituary were that she died of Psoriasis of the liver in Little Sisters of Poor Queens, Henry not surprised and thinking she was lucky to die in a warm bed and not in a Bowery dive.  

He often wondered if Nil popped that lovely cherry of hers, sure that she got laid eventually, wondering who the lucky sap was who got her cherry?     

After leaving home in the late 60s Henry shipped out with the Merchant Marines, this was a period of liberation for him and he took full advantage of the ship's library and exchanged books with other readers aboard— reading everything he could get his hands on, Henry Miller, The Buddhist Bible, The Bhagavad Gita, Lawrence Durrell, Hemingway, Tolstoy, Jerry Kozinski, Shakespear, Coleridge, Yeats, Whitman and allot more. Reading the Beats turned his world upside down. 

That’s some of it, the sordid and odd stuff of how Henry progressed into what he is— a sexist, underground, cult-hero who was too lazy to publish his work, hanging on to life, in constant pain, fighting-off the shit coming his way.  

Finally out the door of his Queen’s dig, needing to go anywhere, hungry and heading to Chaim’s Deli to nosh. 

Sitting at his regular booth his waitress Ruby greets him saying, 

Henry, you’re a sight for sore eyes, if you don’t show up to eat regularly everybody here thinks you have croaked in your apartment or something. 

Henry says,

I’m on my last breath all right Ruby, death is my constant companion, if I don’t keep on moving I will die in place, I think if I stop drinking Jack Daniels my heart will stop as well.

Ruby says,

I don’t know Henry I haven’t given up on you, and I love you doll, even though you’re not long for this world, hahaha!

Ruby’s laughter nervous and confused, the laughter of a half-truth spoken without much thought.   

Henry says,

How about a Kosher meal to bring a nearly dead man back to life? I’ll have some Gefilte Fish, Borsht, some brisket and a Bialy, and how about a tall Seven & Seven to wash it down. 

The meal brings Henry to life, walking out of Chaim’s Deli he says hello to everyone in the place on the way out, feeling like the world was his for the moment. 

After eating Henry walks the streets,  then lighting and smoking a joint. He reaches the Bowery, a bum, a guy they call Fried-liver smells the pot and says,

that shit doesn’t do nothin for me, why I’d take me a re-rolled butt and a big ole bottle of rotgut any ole time. 

He keeps walking thinking Fried-liver might have a few brain cells left but like Henry or any chronic boozer, Fried-liver could drop dead any moment. 

It was the Freudian thing surfacing again—nobody knows when they are going to die, it is impossible to calculate but everybody has a death and survival instinct, sometimes as in the case of chronic boozers and bums, the instincts are out of sync and balance. 

Anyway, Henry needed a drink and he found himself in Chelsea at a dive called Billymark’s West, EST 1956, a dark cave-like place with a jukebox, the walls covered with stained wood and framed posters. The regulars a weird tribe of folks, most of whom had been there drinking since noon, of course, Henry felt at home straight-away. 

Henry was drinking shots of Mescal, not hallucinating yet but feeling pretty good. He notices a MILF type slash X cheerleader type blond women walking in the door alone, she sits at the bar. He buys her a drink and she some comes over and sits next to him, he can see she is built from the floor up and looks as though she could be a Playboy Bunny, she then says,  

I’m Cindy Sherman I’m a Photographer, I have been putting together a show at MoMA, hanging my pictures, working all day and I need a drink dear, what’s your name? 

He says,

Henry Lucowski, I’m a soon dead underground cult figure and writer.

As Cindy Sherman talks on about her new show, Disasters and Fairy Tales, Henry could tell that she was more than just sexy, she had an intriguing face, like a Beat woman of the fifties, shrew-like.  She goes on to talk about her work to Henry and says,

You know in my portrait work, I photograph myself dressed up and made up in odd ways, wearing wigs, different type poses in other-worldly environments using diverse lighting. My goal is to deflect the gaze of the viewer and to turn them on to their own societal conditioning. 

Henry says, 

That’s really marvelous kitty cat, hahaha, just looking at you reorientates my sexual conditioning. 

Cindy Sherman gives Henry a nasty look and he senses things that things have turned bad quickly, she then says,  

Henry your very existence and who you are is everything wrong in the world that I'm trying to expose in my work. A sexist man in the world of oppressed women— the 60s pin-up girl who was supposed to be a good girl but still put out, the ambivalence and impossibility of the role that men have forced women into. 

Cindy Sherman then knocks him off his bar stool onto the dirty tiled floor and stomps on his face, breaking his nose, saying, 

That's from every woman in the world for every fucking sexist man in the world!

Everybody in the bar cheers and applauds.

Cindy Sherman the liberator then walks out the bar.

Henry gets up and the bartender hands him a bundled up towel filled with ice and says,

Well, champ you better get your nose looked at, 

Henry pays his bill and walks out of the bar, trying to hold his head up as his nose drips blood into the wet towel, humiliated and feeling awkward. 

He gets a taxi home to Queens, as he sits in the back seat he thinks to himself,

I didn't see it coming, that bitch stomped me good, she blind-sighted me all right!