Ordinance 547981

It was one of those days, it was the dog days of summer, sometime between 1970 and 1980. 

11 AM, Henry sitting in front of his IBM Electric typewriter in his apartment, aired-out and contented, lost in the creative process as a small table fan on the floor blew a steady stream of cool air on him. The sound of the swaying table fan was hypnotic. He had made some lemonade which he mixed with Jack Daniels. 

Earlier, that morning over coffee he had read The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, a short read, 277 pages.  

Anyone who went to high school has read The Catcher in the Rye, usually assigned as a text in the sophomore year. 

The Catcher in the Rye, recounting adolescence angst, underage drinking, depression and lost love. Henry reckoned assigning Catcher to fifteen-year-olds was like pouring grain alcohol on a blazing campfire. 

He had read Catcher when he was fifteen but the affect on him wasn’t fiery, it was much the opposite, moreover, he felt solace knowing Holden Caulfield was out there busted flat and boozing, going through a rite of passage— a grand and marvelous initiation to adulthood. 

J.D. Salinger wrote The Catcher in the Rye in 1951, thereafter withdrawing from the world.

He was  hypersensitive sort who thought too much, a guy obsessed with himself, quack religions and health food who built walls around his life to keep the world out. 

Salinger was an oddball and a gifted writer—  but Henry wasn’t a fan. The two were unalike, Henry open to it all, knocking down the walls and letting the freaks in.      

Henry happy that his Catcher and J.D. Salinger foray was over. He had read Catcher twice in his life and wouldn't read it again— let’s leave it at that. 

At sundown, he dresses and cleans up, it was 8 PM and he was hungry so he walked the short distance to Chaim's Deli.

When he got to Chaim’s Deli, he saw a sign in the window that read, 

CLOSED FOR PASSOVER

Henry didn’t know Chaim was religious, but, others had warned him to beware of religiosity because it could strike you down at any time without warning, he was a recovering Catholic and serene atheist.

He catches a taxi to Manhattan and goes to a Thai restaurant called Pad Thai, going inside and sitting at the bar, ordering a pint of Sangsom whiskey and some soda. The piped in Essan music was gentle and it was relaxing—he looks around the joint seeing that the Thai waitresses were in all respects, from head to toe, stunning. His Uncle Fredrick, a Viet Nam Veteran who had done R & R time in Bangkok always said that Thai women were the most beautiful women in the world.

He orders egg rolls and only eats one. He then finishes the pint off and leaves Pad Thai, waiing each waitress as he passes, the girls smiling sweet smiles that could thaw ice.

It was 10 PM and most folks where home in bed watching Johnny Carson on TV. Henry didn’t have a TV, but he listened to Met’s games on WFAN, day games only because it was a neurotic necessity for him to be in the city at night— New York City at night was his muse.

As he walks through the city-canyons of Manhattan he feels both humbled and awe-struck. It was a city where good existed side by side with bad, bums sleeping in doorways, the rich, the famous and the hardworking middle-class, all of them hungry for and wanting one thing or the other. 

He ends up at Jimmy’s Corner in Times Square, the bar was rectangular shaped like a hallway in an apartment building, the walls were lined with Christmas lights, dollar bills and oddball pictures in cheap frames of sports and celebrity memorabilia.  

The bartender, a black guy with a silver mustache and shortly cropped grey hair greets Henry as he sits at the bar saying,

Howzit broh? Check out our menu.

Henry orders fried clams, potato tots, and a boilermaker, the place feels good to him. Soul and blues music could be heard from the speakers on the walls, the music was so loud that you couldn’t have a conversation, as a result, folks were shaking their heads and talking with hands a lot.  

After eating and a few drinks, Henry heads to the men’s room to snort some cocaine. There is a handsome woman with a shapely body standing there looking in the mirror, she was wearing a business suit and black heels. Henry says, 

Sorry sweetie, I thought this was the men’s room, then she says laughing,

Sorry, I honestly thought this was a gender-neutral loo handsome.

Henry locks the door behind him and  lays some hefty lines down on a small pocket mirror that he places on the sink saying,

I’m Henry Lucowski, maybe you've seen my short stories in the irrelevant rag Headbanger, she then says after snorting a line,

no, I haven’t read Headbanger, it sounds like a liberal rag, I’m a card-carrying Republican, let's not talk politics Henry, oh, my name is Audrey Cummings, he then says,

let’s get outta here Audrey, the music is too loud and I want to talk to you.

The two walk down 8th Avenue to Central Park, going into the park and then sitting on a bench near Azalea Pond, Audrey talks some about her life saying,

I’ve never married, I guess you could say I’m married to my work, I’m an assistant to Alderman Steven Matteo, one of two Republicans on the City Council, then Henry says, 

Nice, are you a virgin? Audrey says,

oh no Henry, not hardly, I love sex, it’s beautiful, he then says bluntly as he pulls her closer to him,

Do you like nature babe? Getting nude in the bush? Audrey says,

Oh my God yes, Henry!

They walk a few steps to grassy patch that is between some bushes and the water, then laying down. Henry lifts her skirt up over her head and rips her pantyhose open, then going down on her, his cock is uber hard, he goes inside her and she screams, as they begin to get it on they are blinded by a flashlight. It is a Park Ranger who says,

Fornication is strictly prohibited in Central Park under Ordinance 547981, I’m going to have to take you in, Henry says,

I just wanna know, did Sheriff Taylor give you your bullet this morning Barney? The Park Ranger says,

OK, smart ass that’s enough lip outta you!

Audrey and Henry walk with the Park Ranger to the Central Park Jail, a small holding cell, and office, Audrey says, 

The ticket is no problem Henry when I go to work tomorrow at City Hall I will take care of it. 

They were in Central Park Jail for an hour or so and then released, Audrey tells Henry,

I’m tired dear, gotta work tomorrow, call you soon, bye sweets!

She gives him a hug and walks away as she stuffs the ticket into her purse. 

He never saw Audrey again, he looked for her at Jimmy’s Corner a few nights the following week without luck. It was clear that getting busted with her knickers down in the bush during coitus was humiliating for the Audrey.

He didn’t think about that night the rest of the summer or ever again. It was just another memory for him that he would file in the trash.

It wasn't that Henry didn't feel anything, but a cold heart was a safe heart. 



  

Me Padre, la Cucaracha

Henry was naked and sitting cross-legged in front of his IBM electric typewriter, the windows in his Queen’s apartment were wide open and the curtains blowing wildly. It was noon, sometime between 1970 and 1980, springtime in the New York City. City earth was thawing, becoming pulpy as waking seeds that would grow into flowers broke open. 

He remembered reading Hemingway in high school. Hemingway a true grit writer, manly, a guy who would spend hours on a fishing boat reeling in a Blue Marlin, the father of the short sentence. 

Reading in high school and then college Henry became familiar with opening paragraphs like this one in Farewell to Arms.

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.

Henry sips on a Jack and soda as he reads Hemingways opening paragraph, wondering if it was a teaser? 

He picks up a copy of Phillip Exley’s A Fan’s Notes to look at Exley’s opening paragraph. 

On Sunday, the eleventh of November, 196—, while sitting at the bar of the New Parrot Restaurant in my hometown, Watertown, New York, awaiting the telecast of the New York Giants—Dallas Cowboys football game, I had what, at the time, I took to be a heart attack.

Exley’s opening paragraph a stunner, it roused Henry, it was truly marvelous—short and succinct. He tells you where he is, what he is doing and what kind of guy he is. The heart attack which turns out to be a nervous breakdown is an event he builds his story on.  

Hemingway’s opening paragraph speaks of the natural environment he lived in and of the soldiers marching by, not much more. Henry thought the paragraph was vague, giving you just enough to spark your interest. 

He wonders if his opening paragraph was like Exley’s, or like Hemingway’s and Exley’s, or unlike both.

This proving that a writer is dumb-fucked when it came to critiquing his own work.

Reading all three of the opening paragraphs and not knowing who the authors were, you might say they were all on par. You might like Henry’s paragraph more than Hemingways.  

It was 8 PM, Henry still naked, puts on a pair of baggy khaki shorts tied at the middle with a rope instead of a belt because he didn’t own a belt, a Met’s t-shirt with a Hawaiian shirt over it and an old straw hat that was ruffled at the rim. 

After walking a few blocks he reaches Chaim’s Deli. The deli was a single level brick building occupying the corner of a downtown street, the entire corner was windowed. Henry sat at his usual booth which had a good view of the street. Ruby his sometimes woman and regular waitress comes to his table and says,

Henry, not bein cheeky or nothin, but you look like a clown. He says,

yeah, a clown trapped in the body of a male stripper, they both laugh and Ruby says,

whataya have sexy? Henry says,

in honor of clowns everywhere, I’ll have a head of stepped on and dirty old lettuce, some rotten bananas, and a large multicolored sucker on a wooden stick to hammer other clowns with, Ruby says,

Henry, you’re such an ass! And he says,

OK, babe, how bout a pastrami sandwich on toasted rye with mustard, some well done french fries, cole slaw and a Jack and Coke.

After eating he says goodbye, pays his bill and leaves. 

It was a spring night in New York City, pure magic. You could smell a mixture of barbecue, burning incense and spilled beer in the air.      

Henry on his way to Manhattan, thinking to himself—

Everybody in the city is going to get laid tonight except me.

It takes him an hour to walk to Lower Manhattan, he goes to Chinatown. He sees a three-story brown brick building with a bar on the first level. The joint has no name, no sign, he can see dim red light inside. 

He walks in thinking it might be a whore house and sits at the bar next to a few resident barflies. They are drunks full of regret, down on their luck, boozing for whatever reason. He sees a printed sign taped to the mirror that reads—

A BEER AND A SHOT TWO BUCKS, PAY WHEN SERVED, NO SPITTING, NO DRUGS. 

He orders a beer and a shot, thinking—

I feel like one of the three lost souls in Sartre’s No Exit, it is eerie here. 

The bartender a middle-aged Chinese woman with a day-glow purple wig on her head, wearing a pair of black polyester pants, slippers and a white t-shirt serves him and says nothing.

After a few drinks, feeling lonely in the creepy dim red light ambiance of the place, he lays six large lines of cocaine on the bar and asked the bartender, 

mamasan I’m Henry! How bout some blow?   

She lights up like a slot machine that hits jackpot, and says,

May love coke Henry, you handsome boy, May suck your cock Henry, make you hot baby! 

They snort the coke and Henry has another drink, then leaving the joint without saying much, no sucky-sucky, it was midnight. 

The bar with no name or sign was queer, grey and existential. 

Henry was attracted to people and places on the edge which occupied an unmapped and hidden world lost in the cracks and crevices of the city.

Henry walks to Midtown Manhattan and goes to a local bar near the Chelsea Hotel called Billymark’s West. It’s a friendly neighborhood bar, he walks in and sits at the bar, the room is filled with locals. 

Billymark’s had a great jukebox— whole albums, the Stone’s Exile on Mainstream, the Beatles Revolver and Merle Haggard. One of the owners, Mark would occasionally say through a bullhorn,

THIS AINT NO DISCO!

People dancing on the barroom floor, alone and together, men with women, women with women and men with men, it was anything goes New York City. 

A woman that looked to be Henry’s age 43, with a mountainous head of curly hair comes up to him at the bar and wraps an arm around him, saying,

I know you, you’re Henry Lucowski, I have read your short stories in the irrelevant underground rag, Headbanger. I’m Marie Howe, perhaps you’ve heard of me, I’m the poet laureate of New York and I teach at Brooklyn College. Henry says,

the poet laureate of New York huh? Some call me the poet laureate of Chaim’s Deli, regardless, your one hot piece of tail babe— before you start in on me, I’m not sexist, but I do speak with a forked tongue at times, I yearn for the old days when a man could still be a man. Marie says,

OK, Henry, I’m reading this month at the New York City Zen Center, stop by, ok gotta go, bye now!

That was it, Marie gone in a flash! Henry often tested women by making overtly sexist remarks to see if they were cool, well, Marie didn’t pass the test.

It was 1 AM, Henry pays his tab at Billymark’s and decides to go back to Chinatown. As he walked the dark streets and alleyways he has an epiphany—all the booze, drugs and sex in the world can't fill the black hole in your soul. BUT, smoking opium would fill your soul for a few hours anyway.

He reaches Sam’s Laundry and walks to the side door in the alleyway, he knocks hard on the door and an elderly Chinese woman who was always there opens it, saying,

Henry, not see you long time, careful dark in basement!

She leads him to a mat on the cold basement floor, he lays on the mat and she hands him a pipe with a padded mound of tar opium in the bowl. It didn’t take much, he lights it and takes a deep draw.

He dreams he is walking in a field teeming with red flowers as far as the eye can see. He sits down to rest and hears the sound of something thrashing through the flowers, wanting to hide he sits motionless.  

A bug-size man, like a cockroach standing on its hind legs, pushes his way through two flower stems, coming up to Henry. In awe, he sees it is his long-dead father Benny Lucowksi
in miniature. Benny doesn’t waste any time and starts shrieking at Henry, going into a tirade, saying, 

you’re a drunk like your mother Helen, you’re no good, you’re lazy, you sit on your ass all day, get a job!

Benny continues yelling at Henry, his voice stomach-tuning and munchkin-like. Henry stands and looks down on his father, then following an urge he steps on Benny, squishing him into pus. 

Henry wakes up feeling relieved as though a thousand pound gorilla had been lifted off his back. He walks back to Queens, smiling all the way. 

The following week he had an appointment with his shrink at the welfare office, Dr. Hiccup. He recounted his dream in the session, Hiccup electrified, asking Henry question after question about his feelings relating to his parents. 

Henry nodding his head as he looks at his watch, happy that his 45-minute session with Hiccup was ending, thinking,

It was his dream, and neither Freud or Hiccup could piss on it!   

     When I waked, I cried to dream again.  

                                         William Shakespeare

Nothing Good or Bad

There are twenty-million things in this world that folks want, but you only need a few.

Give me some weed, wine, easy women, and song.

Chances are you wanted the world and you didn’t get it.

Give me some weed, wine, easy women, and song.

Henry up at noon, singing in the shower, then drying himself and wrapping up in a towel, walking a few steps to his IBM Electric typewriter, still wet, ready to work.

It was sometime between 1970 and 1980, a crisp fall day, the sun doing his job, beaming bright, smiling down on his little brother, Earth. 

Henry up all night reading Deer Park by Norman Mailer. Written in 1955, a wild book about the moonless underbelly of Hollywood— a world full of commies, pimps, cocaine, ganja, booze, fucking for fame, fun and dirty money. 

An environment in which— the mob fucked the police over, the rich fucked the poor over and McCarthy fucked the celebrities over. 

Reading Deer Park you get the feeling that  Hollywood Babylon and the world was going to implode at any moment, birthing an apocalyptic cloud of Palm Spring’s desert dust that rises into the sky. 

Norman Mailer a sundry genius, a Zeus-like figure with a head full of curly electrified white hair, big ears, and king-sized brain. 

He was an enigma, the hipster who couldn’t bear homosexuals, a hipster who could be a mother fucker.   

When he ran for mayor of NYC in 1969 he described himself as being to the left and right of everyone else in the race, a left-conservative. 

Later that year when asked by the New York Times in an interview to describe himself using one word he says— improvisational. 

Winging it as he went along kept his tuned up his mind. In a state of hyper-awareness, Mailer divined which way the wind blew in the American century, thankfully he wrote about it.

Later in the afternoon, Henry took a break from writing— he stares into space for a few minutes, then turning his radio to 99.5, WBAI, NYC blues. Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder playing Statesboro Blues, Muddy Waters singing King Bee.  

He lights a joint and takes a deep drag, high and going deeper into the blues, feeling grand, on cloud nine. 

Seeing scenes of Jack Kerouac, breaking open a Benzedrine inhaler, taking out the speed-soaked cotton strip and putting it in a cup of hot coffee—Kerouac on fire, hearing jazz like he never heard it before, multi-colored-rhythmic notes taking flight into Elysium Fields. 

9 PM, Henry had worked enough and he was hungry. He cleans up and puts on a knee-length brown leather coat and wraps a red and white silk scarf around his neck.

Hunter S. Thompson said, 

breakfast is the only meal of the day!

With that in mind, Henry takes a taxi to a 24-hour breakfast place, the Time Deli Cafe in Times Square. He orders a stake of Buckwheat pancakes, three eggs over-hard, bacon, grits and coffee mixed with Sabra liqueur to wash things down.

After a kingly 10 PM breakfast, he walks around Times Square, looking for anything and everything, wanting it all.

He notices a notices a neon sign, Olga’s Therapeutic Massage, somehow he new the joint was anything but therapeutic. 

He walks inside and eyeballs a garishly furnished room. Behind a small bar is a beefy Russian woman with weaved hair who says in a heavy Russian accent, 

would you like some wadka darlink? 

Standing at the bar he asked Olga for a double shot, she pours the shots and says,

My name is Olga darlink, there are six ladies here tonight, all from Ukraine, vat you want darlink? Full-service massage, fifty-fifty, coffee and cream, two on one, humpty-dumpty? 

Henry says, not knowing because he had never heard of fifty-fifty, coffee and cream or humpty-dumpty of all fucking things! 

full-service I guess,

Olga rings an electric bell and six stunning women, dressed in high heels and second-hand fashion dresses walk into the room and and line up, posing model-like. Henry then says,

How about the gal in the green dress on the left? Olga says a few words in Russian and the gal in green walks up to him saying,

hello dear, I’m Svetlana, I’ll be your hostess tonight. 

She takes him by the hand, leading him down a long dimly lit hall that was lined with flower patterned wall-paper, they reach a red door and walk inside.

Henry surprised to see a full sized bed and a leather sofa, not a massage table. Svetlana lights some candles and then takes off her dress—she is wearing a garter belt with black stockings, a push-up bra, and underpants open at the crotch. Turned on he sees that her bush is shaved in a heart shape. 

Svetlana pours two shots of vodka and hands one to him, they are sitting next to each other on the sofa in front of a coffee table and she says,

Oh, darling I simply hate this life, I’m so bored with it, night after night I cater to old and sweaty fatsos, I just close my eyes and pray the pigs will cum soon.  

Henry surprised Svetlana has bared her soul to him lays a dozen fat lines of cocaine on the table, rolling up a dollar bill and saying,

Here you go doll, this should raise your spirits!

She pours two more shots of vodka and they snort the lines. 

Svetlana tilts her head up, leaning back on the sofa, her eyeballs rolling upwards into her head, she says,

Oh, I’m so high darling, Henry you're a life-saver, a guy like you is an easy lover. 

She then unzips his pants and licks his cock and balls with her tongue for an eternity, then swallowing all his cock deep-throat style. 

They strip down and fall into bed, fucking like wild animals, then settling into more romantic love, deeply kissing french style later coming together. 

They lay back in the bed and Henry rolls a joint, Svetlana says to him,

during the day I study cooking at the Institute of Culinary Education, I have another year, I can’t wait to finish so I can stop selling my pussy to the fucking pigs that come here!

Then, a bell rings in the room and she says, 

oh, times up baby here's my phone number, I want to see you again soon, not in this dump though. 

They get dressed and walk down the hallway to the small bar at the entryway. Svetlana does a kind of a curtsy and turns around and walks out of the room. Henry asks for the bill and it's a stunner, over 500 Dollars!

He didn't carry that much money and didn’t have a charge card. So he asked Olga if he could go to an ATM? She says, 

OK, Bruno will valk with you to make sure you not run on us! 

A mean looking Russian with a Bratva tattoo of Saint George on his neck walks in and grabs Henry's leather jacket with both fists, pulling Henry towards him so the two are face to face, Bruno simply says, 

don’t get smart with me motha fucker! 

Henry goes with Bruno to an ATM, withdraws 500 Dollars, knowing that he will have to eat canned beans for the rest of the month because he is broke, luckily he has a few bottles of Jack and some blow stashed away.

He gives Bruno the money and walks back to Queens, wondering if Svetlana’s hot pussy was worth the bucks. 

The next day he calls her and hears a recorded message saying that the number is out of service. 

It was a woeful experience, getting lied too by a Russian hooker and blowing 500 Dollars! 

In the end, what could one do but seek out the wisdom of the wiser man? 

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” – William Shakespeare