Henry, Busted Again

It was summer in New York City, winter and spring had gone by in a whisper, time moving forward quickly, not stopping for anyone, like it had a mind of its own. 

Henry celebrated the 4th of July on the roof of his Queen’s apartment building with Ruby his sometimes girlfriend. 

Earlier he was preparing old clothing to donate to the Salvation Army and he found 2 hits of Owsley cooked LSD in the hidden pocket of the fringed leather vest he wore to the Woodstock Festival in 1969. 

As the sun goes down, he and Ruby carry an old mattress to the rooftop of his apartment building to lay on, they drop acid and drink red wine out of a leather wine pouch, sprinkling it into each other's mouths, laying on the mattress and looking up into the night sky.  

At 10 PM the fireworks show at Cunningham Park was going full blast in easy view of the couple,  they were so fucked up on acid that didn't see any of the show.   

The following day they wake up at noon on the rooftop. They go downstairs to his apartment and he mixes a pitcher of  Margaritas and brews a pot of coffee. Ruby says to him over coffee and a drink, 

I can’t remember much from last night, the trip was a scary experience for me, I will never take acid again, Henry says,

it was very different for me dear, I had a religious experience, I felt at one with the gods, my soul was open wide and I lost all concept of self, Ruby then says,

Henry, you're full of shit, you were fucked out of your cord and there were no gods anywhere! OK, gimme a kiss I gotta go to work.

She leaves, walking a short distance to  Chaim's Deli in Queens where she worked as a waitress.    

Henry had read an interview with Bob Dylan in Playboy or Rolling Stone Magazine a few years ago, Dylan talks about playing to a crowd of 60,000 people in a stadium, feeling on top of the world, like a god. After the show, he goes to his hotel room and lays in bed, smoking a cigarette, drinking some wine, realizing he feels like the loneliest person in the world. 

Not one of his 60,000 fans at the concert he played earlier were there to be his friend.  

The July 4th LSD trip with Ruby was like that for Henry, tripping on the roof, feeling like a god and the next day Ruby jacks him up, saying his LSD experience was bogus, then rushing off to work! 

Henry alone now, feeling empty and lonely. 

The same day Dave Spleen the editor of the underground rag, HEADBANGER telephones Henry with an assignment, a story on the black poet Langston Hughes, saying, 

Henry, Langston Hughes, he is black and he is cool baby, do your thing! 

Dubose Heyword wrote the following about Langston Hughes in the New York Herald Tribune, circa 1926, 

Langston Hughes, although only twenty-four years old, is already conspicuous in the group of Negro intellectuals who are dignifying Harlem with a genuine art life. . . . It is, however, as an individual poet, not as a member of a new and interesting literary group, or as a spokesman for a race that Langston Hughes must stand or fall. . . . Always intensely subjective, passionate, keenly sensitive to beauty and possessed of an unfaltering musical sense, Langston Hughes has given us a 'first book' that marks the opening of a career well worth watching.

Hughes fell at first, his early work was met with criticism from black intellectuals, who said his work showed the bad side of the black community. 

Hughe's rebuttal went like this,

I didn't know the upper-class Negroes well enough to write much about them. I knew only the people I had grown up with, and they weren't people whose shoes were always shined, who had been to Harvard, or who had heard of Bach. But they seemed to be good people, too.

Hughe's background was glaring and jumbled and it showed in his work. When his first book was published, he had already been a truck farmer, cook, waiter, sailor, and doorman at a nightclub in Paris, and had visited Mexico, West Africa, the Azores, the Canary Islands, Holland, France, and Italy.

In the 40s and 50s, Hughes wrote stories that centered around a character called Simple who lived in Harlem. Simple is an unsophisticated and down to earth black man, an optimistic sort who never gives up hope on tomorrow. 

Simple is full of common sense as well and he speaks to black people when he says,

the struggle is here and has to be won here. 

In even later work, written in the 60s, Hughes was criticized by the radical black community for not taking a political stance. Still, the common black man understood and loved Langston Hughes because they could relate to what he was writing about because he was writing about their experience. 

He believed in the verity and humanity of all people of every color.

Hughe's writing displayed a universal quality that every man could relate too, he was a black genius for all mankind who was especially loved by his community, the everyday black man and women. 

Henry puts the finishing touches on the Hughes story and faxes it to Dave Spleen at HEADBANGER Magazine.

It was 9 PM and he was hungry, he would take the subway from Queens to Times Square and go eat a big meal. 

It was a warm July night so he puts on a pair of Nike shorts, an OD green t-shirt and a pair of white low-top Converse All-Stars, no socks. 

He walks to the Rawson Street Station, at the entrance he buys a ticket from a clerk in a bulletproof box, then taking the escalator down into the subway tunnel. 

A pleasant looking college-age girl was playing violin there for tips. Henry knew the city and knew she would get rolled by a junky sooner or later. 

Maybe, she was a Juilliard student moonlighting in the subway tunnel for cheap thrills. 

Henry sitting alone as the subway pulls into Flushing Street Station, Flushing always a hot spot for him. A hefty black tranny with a blue wig on sits next to him, he gets the feeling he is boxed in. She is wearing glowing hot pants, high-healed gym shoe boots, and a wrap-around top.   

She was someone who made an effort to stand out and enjoyed the attention.      

She sits next to Henry and places her large cocoa colored hand on his naked leg, saying, 

Oh, baby, I’m so hot, I’m drippin doll, I just love your sexy legs, let’s get lost in an alleyway, why I’ll show you a time you will never forget. 

He felt trapped and reckons being friendly was the best approach. He-shes took a cocktail of meds, estrogen and the rest that made their body more feminine, the stuff made them crazy too. He says,

What’s your name? She says trying to make her mannish voice sound lady-like, 

my name is Precious doll, aren’t you sweet, then he says,

I’m Henry, I’m a columnist for the underground rag, HEADBANGER! Precious says, 

oh my god, you're Henry Lucowski, I’ve seen your picture in Headbanger, I run an ad for modeling and massage in the magazine's classified section.

Precious probably attracted art photographers like Diane Arbus, she could have been a Warhol superstar too! 

As the train pulls into 43 Street Times Square Station, they get up and exit the subway, Precious was thinking she and Henry were going to get lost in an alleyway and have some fun, but as soon as they got out of the train he gives Precious the slip, dashing up the steps to street level, escaping her in the swarming crowd.

  

He hadn’t eaten yet and was half drunk. In Times Square he goes for a late dinner to a joint called The Anchor Grill, a place to get a solid meal at the right price. It was Greek owned and operated. 

He goes in and sits down at a small table in a medium sized room, the walls were white-washed covered brick. The table clothe white as well, covered by a sheet of glass— that way the table clothe was safe from gravy, ketchup, mustard and coffee stains. 

A middle-aged waitress comes to his table, She has a huge pair of titas that no bra in the world could entirely hold in. She smiles a shy smile. Henry is there to eat copious amounts of food and he orders saying, 

Hi sexy, I’ll have the lamb chops, a cup of onion soup, scalloped potatoes, some green beans, a sheared salmon salad and a pitcher of ouzo and lemonade mixed. 

The waitress no feminist smiles when he calls her sexy, Henry would often throw sexist comments out there to test the waters, she then says to him,

You hungry or what? 

He nods his head and smiles and then she says,

My name is Jules enjoy your meal doll.

The meal, as one would expect at a Greek-owned and operated establishment, was plentiful and toothsome.  

It is 12 PM, Henry was loaded and dazed, he goes into the men's room and does a few lines of coke, then paying his bill and leaving The Anchor Grill. 

After walking just a few blocks, 2 strangers dressed like the undercover cop Serpico take both of his arms in tow and hustle him down an alleyway, he wasn’t sure if he was getting mugged or busted, but it was better to get mugged than to deal with cops. 

They are NYPD narcs, one of them flashes a badge as they push Henry up against a dumpster, frisking him they find an 8 ball of cocaine and an expired drivers license, one of them says,

you're going to the station Lucowski you dumb fuck, the white powder on your face was a dead give-away and we are on to what you’ve been doing in Chinatown with the Triad and the Chow family, we have evidence, Henry says,

Look, I gotta 8 ball but that’s it, Chinatown? I don’t know what you’re talken about, I don’t know anybody there, I go there to eat noodles on Chinese New years, that’s it I swear! 

Henry lying like a furry egg, he often went to smoke opium in the basement of Lee’s Laundry and he worked at times for John and May Chow, cleaning pipes in the den. 

Narcs would often say they had evidence of or knew something, well, there is a big difference between having evidence and saying you know something.  

Henry is handcuffed, read his rights and walked with cuffs on to the nearest police station which has a neon sign out front, reading— New York Police Department, so drunks would mistake the station for a bar and walk inside, only to be trapped by the cops and arrested.   

Once in the station not much happens, as for the evidence that Henry is connected with the Chinatown mob, there was none. He sits there for a few hours bull-shiting with the cops about the Mets and the Yanks, eating donuts and drinking coffee. 

By 3 AM the station was filled with hookers, drunks, and pickpockets. The front desk clerk, a sergeant, wanted  Henry out quickly it seemed, he writes a ticket for possession of less than an ounce of cocaine and says, 

Lucowski, this could mean some hard time upstate for you and a hefty fine, you will get a notice in the mail as to when your court date will be. 

Henry takes a taxi home, on the way he throws up, when he gets to Queens he slips out quickly and pays at the passenger-side window, hoping the driver wouldn't notice the pool of puke in the back. 

Donuts and coffee at the cop shop on top of the big meal at The Anchor Inn were too much. 

2 weeks later he gets a notice in the mail from the county criminal court saying, 

Due to the overabundance of cases on file in the court system your case, Henry Lucowski, reference number 84978663 has been rescinded. In the future remember to adhere to New York State and City laws.