Henry lived in a small efficiency apartment in Queens that was mostly empty. He didn’t have much and he would tell people he lived in Zen-centered simplicity, which was— an embellishment that hid the naked truth, Henry couldn’t afford furniture.
Everything he owned was on the floor, a futon, on the floor, a swing fan, on the floor, an IBM Electric Typewriter, on the floor, some large pillows for lounging when high, on the floor, and an old coffee table, technically not on the floor because it had legs.
When Dave Spleen, the editor of the irrelevant underground rag, Headbanger, visited Henry he would sit on the radiator. If it was winter and the radiator was hot he would put a pillow or wooden fruit box on it, Spleen was lucky he didn't catch fire.
Now the money part, not a pretty picture, Henry was on crazy-pay, 1,123 US dollars a month and 130 dollars for each article he penned for Headbanger, 3 articles a month, 5 sometimes. His income was below the poverty level, hardly enough to support his habits.
Luckily, he had a small inheritance from his uncle, Franky Lucowski who owned a coat hanger factory in Pennsylvania and had died of the clap. Franky would bang the latina women who worked in the factory, eventually getting the clap.
Well, as they say, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
Henry buys a few kilos of cocaine with the money from Uncle Franky. It was enough to get him started pushing the shit around Queens.
His regular clients were the staff at Chaim’s Deli, where he ate most nights. It's common knowledge that people in the restaurant business partied after hours and everyone at Chaim’s including Chaim, an Orthodox Jew, did blow, usually partying in the deli after hours or going to a bar in the neighborhood called The London Irish Pub, a joint beloved by the Jews of Queens.
Henry up at 10 AM, going into the kitchen to make a pitcher of Margaritas, liver protein as he called it.
Dave Spleen calls him at 1030 AM, in his usual hip, and to the point manner asking,
Sherman Alexie, Indian, hot stuff do a bit on him, I want it in 24 hours, OK babe.
Henry had never heard of the guy. He finishes breakfast, a pitcher of Margaritas, and a pot of percolated coffee.
He heads out the door quickly, wearing his Mets pajama top and a pair of cut-offs, walking to East Flushing Library in Queens to research Sherman Alexie. He is carrying a cheap leather briefcase he had found in a dumpster, it is filled with pencils and legal pads.
As he walks he is overtaken by a school of piranhas on their way to the financial district. They are carrying magnificent briefcases, walking at the speed of light. He does his best to kept pace with them, he feels big and important like them. Looking closer at their faces he sees they’re jumpy about money, shit scared the stuff might evaporate.
Sherman Alexie is a Spokane Indian who was born on a reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. He writes about his early life in the short story Superman and Me.
His mother had a minimum wage job which was middle-class by Indian standards. But, like most Indians on the reservation, they were poor. His father was an avid reader and the family house was cluttered with piles of books that would often cave in and collapse. It was a task walking around the place without tripping on a book.
In Superman and Me Sherman talks about learning to read when he was 3, reading a comic book, and associating the panels with the written narrative.
One day he picks up a book, examining it hard, the words were clear as mud, and as if the gods were blowing in his ear, he sees that the words on the pages are corralled into paragraphs. Sherman says it like this,
I didn't have the vocabulary to say "paragraph," but I realized that a paragraph was a fence that held words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose. They had some specific reason for being inside the same fence.
Still 3, the tiny native prodigy dropped from mars, begins to see the world in paragraphs, in his own words,
This knowledge delighted me. I began to think of everything in terms of paragraphs. Our reservation was a small paragraph within the United States. My family's house was a paragraph, distinct from the other paragraphs of the LeBrets to the north, the Fords to our south, and the Tribal School to the west. Inside our house, each family member existed as a separate paragraph but still had genetics and common experiences to link us. Now, using this logic, I can see my changed family as an essay of seven paragraphs: mother, father, older brother, the deceased sister, my younger twin sisters, and our adopted little brother.
By the age of 5 he is in kindergarten reading The Grapes of Wrath while the other kids are busting their balls reading, Dick, Spot, and Jane.
Sherman the wunderkind was seen as an oddball on the reservation, Indian kids weren't supposed to be geniuses.
In 1985 Sherman Alexie applies and is accepted to Jesuit Gonzaga University in Spokane, one of a few Indian kids to make it to college from his reservation.
Initially, his work focused on the troubles of Indian life on the reservation, alcoholism, poverty, and despair. Later as he matures as a writer his work is less focussed on Indianness. Sherman begins weighing what it is to be human, as demonstrated in the following poem,
Grief calls us to the Things to the Things of This World
The eyes open to a blue telephone
In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.
I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,
Proctologist, urologist, or priest?
Who is blessed among us and most deserves
The first call? I choose my father because
He’s astounded by bathroom telephones.
I dial home. My mother answers. “Hey, Ma,”
I say, “Can I talk to Poppa?” She gasps,
And then I remember that my father
Has been dead for nearly a year. “Shit, Mom,”
I say. “I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry—
How did I forget?” “It’s okay,” she says.
“I made him a cup of instant coffee
This morning and left it on the table—
Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—
And I didn’t realize my mistake
Until this afternoon.” My mother laughs
At the angels who wait for us to pause
During the most ordinary of days
And sing our praise to forgetfulness
Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.
Those angels burden and unbalance us.
Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.
Those angels, forever falling, snare us
And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.
Not about Indianness, just a family dealing with the loss of a loved one voicing tender humor.
Calling home to talk with your father, forgetting that he died a year ago is either pitiful or funny, take your choice. For Sherman and his mom, that they both forgot the father died is cozy funny.
“It’s okay,” she says.
“I made him a cup of instant coffee
This morning and left it on the table—
Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—
And I didn’t realize my mistake
Until this afternoon.”
The bit about angels is off the charts superb. Angels doing their best to fuck with us here on earth, maybe they think they are doing us a favor.
they slap our souls with their cold wings.
Those angels burden and unbalance us.
Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.
Henry leaves the East Flushing Library and heads home with plenty of notes and plenty in mind.
Back at his apartment he opens a bottle of Jack Daniels and boils some brats in a burnt black gallon can which he places on the stove.
It is 130 PM and Henry remembers he has an appointment at the Queens Welfare Office for his annual physical.
The administrators— shrinks, doctors, nurses, and caseworkers, all social welfare workers who didn't give a flying shit about welfare. All of them at the bottom of the health care food chain, dead meat in their perspective space at the welfare office, waiting to punch out at 530 PM.
There were thousands of hard-up folks passing in and out of the doors of the welfare office every day, mere shadows to the social welfare workers.
The highlight of the welfare worker's day was gossiping as to who was fucking who in which broom closet or X ing off their calendars, anxiously awaiting the weekend.
Henry shows up at the Welfare Office at 230 PM, one hour late. He then makes his way through the bleak gray halls to the infirmary, takes a number and sits down.
He is given a medical history form to fill out and told to sit down and wait. Henry an hour late for his appointment.
The form the usual stuff, asking about blood pressure, chronic illness, your families medical history, medications you take, alcohol, drug use and so on.
Henry borrows a pen from the desk clerk and fills out the form, jotting down anything that came to mind.
He felt awkward around doctors, doctors, gods who did everything right, everyone respected them, they were rich and their hands were always clean.
Henry had body odor and he bit his nails. He was on the outs, jobless, he was godless and bad mannered. He was a loser and the doctors were winners.
He tried to talk smart to doctors because he felt small and buglike next to them.
Mr. Lucowski, go to Room 7, Dr. Sphincter’s office.
He goes to Room 7 and sits down, the doctor says,
Hello, Henry, I’m Dr. Sphincter, you’re here today for a general physical that will establish your eligibility for welfare. I’m going to ask you a few questions which will be followed by an anal exam and some X-rays.
Anal exam? The guy's name is Sphincter?
Henry felt queer! Sphincter says,
OK let’s get started,
Are you on any medication? Henry says,
if u mean pharma dope, yes the stuff I get here,
this a lie, Henry thought pharma dope was a CIA conspiracy, cooked up at the Pentagon with stuff in it that would subdue radical thought.
Do you use alcohol or drugs and if so which ones and how often? Henry says,
All of them all the time,
How about your bowels? Henry says,
what about em?
Are you regular? Henry says,
Occasionally on good days, yes, but I get constipated after I smoke opium in Chinatown. I have read that Hitler’s feces was gunmetal gray, mine is too, but I can assure you I’m not a Nazi, Sphincter says,
take it up with Dr. Hiccup the Psychiatrist, now lay on the examination table, turn on your side and drop your pants below your knees.
Sphincter puts on his rubber gloves and lubes up, which seemed perversely sexual to Henry.
He inserts 2 fingers into Henry’s rectum and it feels like 10, probing about, pushing on glands that were most likely hemorrhoids with the tips of his fingers. Henry says,
Fuuucck that hurts! Are you enjoying yourself Sphincter, you bleeding sadist? The Doctor finishes and says,
OK, that’s it, the nurse will direct you to the X-Ray department, I will pass the results of your physical on to your Psychiatrist, DR. Hiccup.
He runs out of Queen's Welfare full speed ahead, Henry hated the fucking place and thought Queen's Welfare Office was a step away from Riker’s Island and that Riker’s Island was a step away from Auschwitz, all of them with certain things in common.
Queen’s Welfare, Riker’s Island, Auschwitz, mental hospitals, orphanages and prisons all over the world— places a sadist can go and have the time of his life and get paid for it.
It took Henry a half hour to walk from the Queen's Welfare Office to his apartment. In his apartment he gets a phone call from a Miss Pibow from the welfare office, it went like this,
Hello, Mr. Lucowski my name is Miss Pibow, I’m a social worker at Queens Welfare Office. I’m calling to inform you that Dr. Hiccup and Dr. Sphincter have filed a Disqualification Consent Agreement against you, you are banned from the grounds of the Queens Welfare Office indefinitely and your Social Security Disability payments will be canceled as of next month. Henry then says,
What? Miss Pibow answers,
As a result of a lengthy dialogue, your doctors have diagnosed you with a particular psychosis, homicidal ideation, and they think you are a borderline Nazi. Henry says,
Wait a minute, OK, my feces is the same color as Hitlers but I'm no Nazi, I eat at a kosher deli every day. Just between you and me Miss Pibow it's common knowledge that most shrinks are outta their cords and I can assure you Dr. Sphincter has a permanent installation up his ass. Miss Pibow says,
Watch your language Lucowski, if you think the Disqualification Consent Agreement was filed unjustly you can go to the Legal Aid Society and sue the welfare office, good luck with that! And then Miss Pibow laughs. Henry says as Miss Pibow hangs up,
HEIL HITLER!
The shit at the welfare office, accused of being a killer Nazi just wasn't true He was an artist, a talented writer, a fragile being. Henry laid in bed the next few days, drinking, smoking pot and swallowing downers. It was his way to deal with anger.
Institutions— welfare offices, prisons, governments, rehab centers, schools, colleges, the great alienators that often fail to cultivate and inversely through the actions of the stoney-hearted drive people underground.
That was Henry’s excuse for dropping out if anyone asked.
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