The Subway to Times Square is a Masterpiece

Henry up at 10 AM, ready for breakfast— a Veggiemite sandwich on rye toast with Belgium mustard and a boilermaker with a raw egg inside. 

After a couple of boilermakers, he could get the Veggiemite down. It was awful stuff, concocted by the British chef, Xavier Marcel Boulestin in the 1930s to get revenge on Australia for leaving the British Commonwealth in 1901. Nobody in the world could handle the fishy caca-like odor and smack of Veggiemite apart from macho ozzy jackeroos with knackers the size of red kangaroos and Henry after a few boilermakers.  

Dave Spleen the editor of the irrelevant underground rag, Headbanger had asked Henry to do a piece on Hunter S. Thompson. Spleen would call him on the phone and say,

Hey babe, can you do a bit on Hunter Thompson in the next 24 hours?

Dave Spleen, the hippest man in the world, asking him if he would do a bit on this or that— without any mandate and big chatter because Henry needed latitude. 

Some folks say Gonzo journalism was dropped from Mars to Earth sometime between 1971 and 1972 when Hunter S. Thompson was hired by Sports Illustrated to cover a motorcycle race in Las Vegas.

Hunter opens the story by documenting the list of stimulates he takes with him, mescaline, tequila, a case of Budweiser, LSD, 2 ounces of weed, uppers, downers, and anything else you can envision. 

There was scant reference in the 2500 word story to the motorcycle race, instead, it chronicles Hunter’s trip to Las Vegas, a high octane, dope-fueled rampage into the lizard kingdom.   

Hunter says it like this,

a savage journey into the heart of the American dream.

The all-American magazine for jocks, Sports Illustrated didn’t accept the story and didn’t pay Hunter, but when Jann Wenner, editor of Rolling Stone magazine, read it and his reactions was,

we were flat knocked out!

Wenner hires Hunter as a freelance correspondent, their relationship goes on to become a legendary roller coaster ride. Hunter’s essays for Rolling Stone were second to none. All of the writers at the magazine, then and now are mere shadows to Hunter.    

Hunter, the apologist of freak power goes on to pour hefty doses of Gonzo coulis on American politics, causes de célébrité, conspiracy theories and high profile sporting events for Rolling Stone, as well as writing his own books—Kingdom of Fear, Generation of Swine, The Great Shark Hunt and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Fear and Loathing was later made into a Hollywood film starring his close friend, Johnny Depp.  

In 1971 Hunter lost his job at Rolling Stone Magazine. He and Ralph Steadmen were sent to Zaire at great expense by Jann Wenner to cover the Ali, Foremen fight. Hunter was on the outs with Rolling Stone before he left for Zaire and this assignment was his last chance to redeem himself. 

The day of the fight Hunter and Ralph Steadmen 
got thoroughly ripped at their hotel on a bottle of Jules Robin Vintage Cognac—only the gods know how they got their hands on it in Muslim Zaire, but some say it was a gift from the countries dictator, Mubuto Sese Seko.  

The reprobate duo never made it to Rumble in the Jungle as Ali called the fight. The adolescent in Hunter just didn’t feel like going. In the end, there was no story for Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone magazine on the greatest sporting event of the 20th Century.

Then his second wife, Anita Thompson left him because he brought hookers and groupies to his house outside of Aspen that was called the Owl Farm, parading them around naked in front of her.

There were a number of things that lead to it—constant boozing and doping, the divorce from Anita, but Hunter lapses into chronic depression which is followed by another bout of writer's block, which he had experienced on and off during his writing career. 

When the final count is in he only knows why he was depressed and couldn't write, but on February 20, 2005, Hunter S. Thompson walks outside to a picnic table at the Owl Farm and sits down at a wooden picnic table and blows his brains out.  

He speaks of the why of the suicide in his suicide note.

No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun—  anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax – This won’t hurt.

Henry sends the finished Hunter S. Thompson story to Headbanger at 9 PM by fax, it was so hot that it set a Queen’s telephone pole ablaze! 

Anyway, he had been drinking Bud Light all day and was hungry.

He dresses for the cool fall night in a leather coat with a scarf, thick socks, and red hightop Converse All-Stars. He would go to Jimmy's Dinner in Times Square to eat a massive breakfast  ceremoniously in honor of Hunter S. Thompson, who often said,

breakfast is the only meal worth eating!

Breakfast a sacrament Hunter carried out in a prescribed order, but that’s another story.

To save time Henry would forgo walking and would take the subway from Queens to Times Square. He walks a short way to Rawson Street Station and scrambles down the steps into the subway tunnel. The station was painted drab grey and green, he walks by a bum passed out who is soaked in urine, lying on a bench, some might call this local color. 

He goes to the platform and stands close the tracks staring at and fantasizing about stepping on the 3rd rail, wondering if his rubber souled Converse All-Stars would interrupt the current flow from frying him to a crisp?

Then the number 7 train to Times Square arrives, the brakes give off a repulsive high-pitched sound like chalk squeaking on a blackboard. 

Henry boards the number 7 train, the cars are covered with graffiti, some New Yorkers referred to the spray-painted trains as masterpieces— their wrath was masked in humor.

He sits next to an old lady who is nodding out again and again. She was struggling to stay awake because sleeping in public was faux pas for the silent generation. When number 7 hits 49th Street Station at Times Square, Henry nudges the old girl on the shoulder waking her, she thanks him and gets off the train walking out ahead of him. 

As he exits the station stairwell he is hit in the face with a gust of cool night air and the smell of beer, burnt rubber, and hot tamales, he feels alive. 

Henry gets to Junior’s Dinner at 9 45 PM, he walks inside and sits at the counter on a swivel stool ordering grits, fried eggs, cornbread, black-eyed peas, poached catfish and a vodka and orange juice, with plenty of hot sauce. 

After dinner and more than a few drinks, he walks to Chinatown to puff opium in the basement of Lee’s Laundry. 

At Lees, he goes to the alley-side of the 4 level brick building to an unpainted metal door and knocks hard. The door swings open and he is greeted by an elderly Chinese woman, May, who is always there. May is dressed in a drab dark blue traditional Chinese suit, wearing her grey hair in a single braid. She says to him,

Henwee, not see in rong time!

He follows May down some metal steps to the basement, it is dark but he can see a dozen or so people, black guys, Chinamen and 3 or so ladyboys in dresses, all passed out and with their heads on wooden blocks and laying on rice mates. She leads him to his rice mate that also has a block to lay your head on when your out, he sits down and waits a half hour until May returns with an opium pipe, the bowl is packed tight with black tar opium that is rounded off at top. She lights the pipe and Henry puffs away until he nodes outs.  

Going to the opium den in the basement of Lee’s Laundry was raw and rugged, the place had been open for years and was owned by the Chinatown mafia or Pen Wang who paid off New York Citie's finest to look the other way. 

There was a Chinese bouncer who sat at a desk in a small dirty brick room beyond the den who helped May pack the opium into pipe bowls and clean the pipes, he looked like an NFL offensive lineman. Smoking junk was at all like boozing, Lee’s patrons weren’t looking for a fight, they were there to forget, dream and because they were hooked on junk.  

Henry off in a dream, laying on a rice mate with his head on a small wood antique block. He dreams he is flying with angels in Elysium hovering as he waits to descend as a spirit to earth to be placed in a mother's womb.

  

Flying with angels on all sides was a feeling beyond divine, a feeling of being surrounded by love and wholehearted acquiescence on all sides.  

It was the stuff of Dante’s Divine Comedy. 

Then, angelic Henry wakes in his mother’s womb, feeling nurtured and peaceful until he hears screaming as his head is wrenched by a large mitt and he is pulled out of his out of her womb only to be blinded by bright light and slapped on his ass by the same meat hook that pulled him out. 

3 years later his mother, Helen Lucowski takes him on an outing to Coney Island Beach. They are on the Boardwalk and Helen runs into some friends she knows who offer her a beer and she starts sucking them down and partying. 

In the meantime, little Henry has worked his way out of his stroller and is walking around. He jumps into the sea, he begins to go under, not trying to save himself, everything goes into a spiral around him and then he sees a light at the end of a tunnel and he hears happy voices and chatter, he is back again flying with angels in Elysium, it is glorious. 

Then Helen notices he has flown the coop and lets out a big scream, a lifeguard comes and dives off the Boardwalk and pulls little Henry out, resuscitating him, little Henry looks up and blows out seawater mixed with puke into the lifeguard's face and thinks,

RATS, back again!

Girly Bouquet and Tickle

Henry, doin time, gettin down, gettin on n goin roun, cursin n squirmin, excludin n usurp-in— nothin.

Oh, home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play, where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day.

Where the air is so pure, and the zephyrs so free and the breezes so balmy and light, that I would not exchange my home on the range, for all of the cities so bright.

It was noon in Queens, Henry was working on an assignment for the irrelevant underground rag, Headbanger. His editor, Dave Spleen had asked him to write a short piece on Ezra Pound. 

Ezra Pound, up on high with a few other celebrated contributors of 20th Century English language poetry. 

  

The only poetry that should be allowed in a state is hymns to the gods and paeans in praise of good men—so saith the long-headed salt of the Plaka, Socrates!

A poet’s political rants can be on the odd occasion threatening to western political governments. But, Ezra Pound rattled the green twig of the US authorities during the second world war when he delivered a series of Fascist broadcasts on Roman radio hailing Herr Hitler for,

having seen the Jew puke in the German democracy.

In May of 1945 Pound was arrested in Italy and locked up in a 6ft by 6ft cell that he called the guerrilla cage, consequently having a nervous breakdown. The US Army then transferred him to Washington DC, where he would go on trial for treason. 

A plea of insanity was accepted by the court which had no intentions of sending the lionized American poet to jail. He was moved to Saint Elizabeths Hospital outside of DC, where he would stay for the next 12 years. The hospital a place he coldly referred to as the bughouse. When he was released from the bughouse he moved back to Italy where he would stay the rest of his life. 

Unlike many noted poets of the 20th Century, Ezra Pound wasn’t alcoholic, but he was hounded throughout his poetic life by Fascist convictions and mental fragility— fortuitously delivered from it all when in his inner sanctum, writing. 

Pound’s magnum opus, Cantos, is an incomplete work that is over 800 pages, with 116 sections. In the 1920s and later he wrote haiku or hokku asian style poetry, much of which was only one sentence. For example,

In a Station of the Metro

 The apparition of these faces in the crowd:

Petals on a wet, black bough.

By 9 PM Henry had finished his piece for Headbanger. Upon finishing his research on Ezra Pound he was left with the feeling that Pound was a woeful brain box who didn’t have sense enough to get out of the rain. 

Anyway, he hadn’t been to Chaim’s deli for a coon’s age so he gussies up some and hops, skips and jumps a few blocks to the deli in downtown Queens. 

Chaim’s Deli was built in the early 60s, it 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, where the flying fuck have you been? I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age! 

Wondering what particular parlance— in a coon’s age was? He says,

a coon’s age?  I was here a month ago, you could be right in that the average raccoon’s lifespan is a year due to disease and human interference, you know when the coons burrow into wooden awnings or get caught eating out of a garbage can, life is tough for raccoons everywhere these days.

Ruby looks at Henry in an odd way and says,

What are you on Henry, have you completely lost it? 

He orders a pastrami sandwich and a double Jack Daniels and soda, his head cast down, feeling like he had stepped in raccoon shit.

Ruby laughs and walks to the kitchen. 

He drinks 9 or so double Jack Daniels and sodas feeling contrite, knowing Ruby was keen on getting his goat.

Henry leaves Chaim’s Deli at 1030 PM, loaded to boot and ignoring Ruby—a childish attempt to get even with her. 

Leaving Queen’s, walking, and eventually reaching the Bowery. A bum they call Shit Can comes up to him and gets in his face, breathing on him. Shit Can’s breath smelled like rocket fuel and puke hybrid, He then screams at Henry as though Henry was deaf,

Hey Bud, howza bout yus and me get us a can of Sterno and make us some smoke to drink? There aint nothin like it, it’ll knock yus out!

Henry pulls himself away from Shit Can, saying,

That shit will kill you, you know! Do you like Jack Daniels Shit Can? 

Shit Can’s face had scar tissue on top of scar tissue from being punched by the other bums. He looks up at Henry, grimacing weakly and says,

I don’t reckon I ever had any of it. 

Henry walks to the closest bar, a place called 

King Eddy’s Saloon and buys 2 pints of Jack Daniels wrapped tightly in a paper bag and gives the bum a pint.  

Shit Can lights up and looks at Henry like he's Jesus feeding the multitude. 

As he is leaving the Bowery he looks up into the sky, seeing a shooting star, feeling good inside, as though the Gods were looking down on the city and something big was going to happen. 

By midnight he was in Times Square longing for a taste of girly bouquet and tickle. As he is walking Times Square he sees a red neon sign that reads,

ROSELAND BALLROOM 

Taxi Dance Hall  

He goes to the ticket booth in the front of the hall and the lady vendor says,

one dance 3.50, ten dances for 30 bucks,

Henry buys a whopping 30 bucks worth of tickets, he couldn’t dance and cared little for it, but he wanted to get close and grind with a gal in a dress, wearing makeup who smelled like a rose. 

Roseland Ballroom was a large open hall that doubled as a roller rink. The dance floor was made of wood, scuffed up plenty, Henry reckoned the ballroom was built in the 20s. 

There was a mess of card-tables and chairs surrounding the dance floor, which was divided in half by a tall hanging red velvet curtain that had a pronounced musty smell. Burning some incense would have been a nice touch, but you could hardly call the joint, hip. 

Henry shocked, it was boys on one side and girls on the other. The girls attractive in their rented silk dresses and made up real nice, but the guys? Well, you could say they were an odd lot—old guys, younger guys with pot-marked faces, guys that limped and butt-ugly guys. 

It was obvious the common denominator was— buying a ticket for a dance at a taxi dance hall was the only way they were going to get close to a woman.  

The music came from a couple mobile speakers that were in front of the moldy red velvet curtain. It was slow tempo, old dance riffs, Guy Lombardo and Lawrence Welk stuff, no up-tempo cha-chas or boogie— the misfits who came to Roseland Ballroom were there for one reason, to get up close with a woman and grind it out, and if they were lucky, a dry hump.  

Henry like the others, a misfit, wanting to get close to a woman without jumping through a lot of hoops. Well, he walks over to the girl's side, the gals sitting with blank looks on their faces. He notices the only black girl in the group and hands her all his tickets, she smiles as she places the tickets in her dress pocket, saying, 

Hi sweety, I’m Butterfly, what’s your name? Do you like slow dancin? 

Henry smiles and says,

Why, I’m Henry doll, but I gotta tell ya, I’m not much of a dancer, then Butterfly says,

You just follow me Henry and hold on tight baby!

He was hot for Butterfly already, she was cocoa-skinned with dyed blond hair in double braids, a body build from the dance floor up and a huge chest and bum to boot. 

She was discreet but she was a pro and she wanted to give Henry a go for his money. He had picked her knowing that black women were golden. 

As they get to the dance floor, Penny Serenade by the Guy Lombardo Orchestra was playing. They start dancing in classic ballroom position, minutes later Henry pulls her close to him, rubbing against her, Butterfly didn’t resist.  

By the 10th dance, he wanted more tickets, it was 130 AM. Butterfly says she could sell him tickets so he buys 10 more. He was turgid from grinding on her, he wanted to fuck Butterfly and he says,

What time does this place close? I don’t know if I can grind much longer, I’m getting horny, then she says,

2 AM, we can go get a cheap room in Harlem, but it’s gonna cost you! Henry says,

How much? And Butterfly says, 

150 per hour, 

he agrees, at the same time the ballroom closes Henry runs out of tickets. 

The two get a taxi to Harlem and go to a cheap hotel called the Fifth Avenue Deluxe, Butterfly gets a short time rate. 

The room was simple, just a bed, a toilet and a desk with a chair and a mirror. They strip off their clothes quickly, once in bed Butterfly lights a joint, Henry has the pint of Jack Daniels he bought in the Bowery. She goes down oh him, he shoots a load in her mouth in a few minutes and then turns her over doggy style and they ball like crazy for another 20 minutes or so. 

After awhile, Henry dresses and heads for the door, saying,

That was great babe, I suppose we could have talked some, but I got so turned on dancing with you at the ballroom, you know what I mean!

Butterfly a cool lady laughs, Henry hits the bricks, walking back to Queens. 

As he walks, he looks into the night sky which is lit up by the light bouncing off the skyscrapers. It was New York City, a fall night sometime between 1970, there was just nothing like it anywhere!