New York City is an odd place, you get the feeling when the world ends, the apocalypse will hit The Big Apple first.
During the eighties, I was seventeen. Years later, I still think about the car accident that killed my parents.
I was at our families Queens apartment, the phone rings, it's city attorney Frank Pearce who says,
Henry Lucowski?
yeah,
this is tough as hell for me, Henry, but Irving and Zelda Lucowski are dead, they were in a horrific car accident.
Your dad’s Caddy was totaled, tangled up in a ball, their bodies were in pieces, and the firemen were forced to use a circular metal saw and grabber tool to pick out their body pieces.
There's little more left of them than shards in the mortuary cabinets at the city morgue.
They died broke and there's no will. Consequently, we’re looking at an indigent burial in a pine box on Hart Island.
Got ya Frank, the odious details of my parents' deaths are gut-churning but praise Allah they didn't know what hit em.
Facing death I was immobile in a hospital bed getting worked over by Nurse Butterworth.
I left without seeing the doctor, paying by credit card, saying,
mail me the paperwork, I'll sign it and get it back to you.
Rent was due at the Queen’s apartment, I couldn’t pay, so I decided to ditch the fucking place, leaving everything behind— furniture, kitchen goods, clothes, decades-old family photos.
I empty what's left in the refrigerator into black baggies, throwing the food in the dumpster out back, without cleaning the apartment.
It's a hassle to sell or transport trucks full of stuff to Goodwill, so escaping the responsibility felt intensely liberating.
Now, I'm sharing a room at a youth hostel in East Harlem, bunking with people on the verge of homelessness.
Then finding work washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant on the Lower East Side, Big Wong.
It was a lousy job, I had to wash everything by hand and was the only white guy in the kitchen. The Chinamen ordered me around, they had accents ,
Laowa, clean dishes, woks, silva— wok faster, faster.
Laowa's a demeaning Chinese term for white people,
The owner, Lee Wong, stuffed Kleenex inside his jockey shorts, when he was dressed you'd think he was hung, only his wife and lover knew the real deal.
Business at the restaurant was on a cash-only basis. Big Wong, was too tight to pay the 1.5% fee on credit card transactions.
Lee Wong knew how to hold on to money, he didn't gamble like most Chinese, he had what he wanted— he was a Chinamen with a big dick whose books were in the black.
I worked silly in the kitchen which was rarely cleaned, covered with grime and grease. Big Wong was too cheap to buy a conveyor dishwasher, in three weeks my hands were wrinkled, chapped, and red. Big Wong wouldn't even spring for a pair of rubber gloves.
One evening I walked out during the dinner rush— the Chinamen and I were from different planets. Only a few jobs are as tortuous as washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant, being a circus geek is one.
The rare birds in Big Wong's loathsome kitchen— the noodle makers, waiters, wok cooks, and fry men, were temperamental and screamed all the time.
Back then I didn't give a shit about nothin, and still don't, but it wasn't enough to insulate me from the bullshit at Big Wong.
I take off my cheap paper cap, light it with a Zippo and throw it in the air, watching it burn. The screaming in the kitchen reaches an even higher pitch as I leave the kitchen.
I make a b-line to Hector's Check Cashing, cashing my last check from Big Wong before he cancels it, hopefully beating him to the punch.
If there's something better than being free, without a fucking boss, I don't know what it is.
I buy a fifth of whiskey and rolling papers at Zero's Corner Market. Outside, I meet a black guy I know, Grady, I wanna score.
He's a sharp dresser with the biggest Afro in East Harlem, as big as a shrub. Wearing plaid pants, a Run DMC t-shirt, and a pair of Air Jordans, he laughs and says,
hey white boy, I got dimes,
let me smell it,
the herb smells sweet, I buy two.
The White Horse Tavern is a brick building painted white in Lower Manhattan that was built in 1880.
During the bars' heyday, from the fifties till the early sixties, there was a list of bygone regulars that reads like the Who’s Who of the American art and literature scene— Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, James Baldwin, Anaïs Nin, the painters Jackson Pollack and Robert Motherwell, and electric folk singer Bob Dylan.
Legend has it that a young Hunter S. Thompson, who was employed as a copyboy at Time Magazine, worked on his first novel, The Rum Diary there.
Jack Kerouac was 86’d from The White Horse night after night because he was a pathetic drunk, insulting people and fist-fighting at the drop of a hat
In 1953 Dylan Thomas set up camp in the Horse while in New York, reciting verses of Do Not go Gently into the Good Night to an attentive audience of bargoers, knowing they were in the presence of one of the world's best poets.
In 1953, after drinking eighteen straight shots of whiskey, Thomas pays his tab, staggers to his apartment in Chelsea, walks through the lobby, and up to his room, then laying on the sofa.
His girlfriend, Pamela Glendower, calls 911, the ambulance shows, and the medics work on him as the emergency vehicle races to St. Vincent's, a private Roman Catholic hospital.
Dylan Thomas's last words to his doctor before slipping into a coma were,
I had eighteen straight whiskeys, I think that's a record.
If you think about it, what an odd thing to say. Was drinking more important to Dylan Thomas than poetry? Maybe the booze and poetry escapades were part of the show, the image of the drunken poet that you gotta give Dylan Thomas credit for inventing.
Thomas dies after five days in St. Vincent's of pneumonia, he was only thirty-nine, a poster boy for AA and The Gifted Poets with Balls Association
I walk into the White Horse Tavern with great expectations, not surprised, there're no artists or literates, just tourists from Iowa. I Turn around and walk out.
In East Harlem, I go to a dump local winos call the Vomit Pit, famous for emitting the exclusive odor of barf.
I place my palms on the bar, it’s sticky and covered with grime. There's a cracked mirror behind the bar, like a funhouse mirror, you could trip out, looking at your fractured image.
I roll a joint at the bar, lighting it, puffing away, blowing smoke in the air, nobody cared except for one guy.
An art student, wearing an oversized pinstriped suit from Goodwill, no shirt, pink flip flops, and a Phil Spector and Andy Warhol fright wig introduces himself,
hey man, I’m Bones,
I'm Henry Lucowski,
I know what he wants, I pass him the joint and tell him,
finish it Bones, then he asks,
you like boiler makers, broh?
I order two boilermakers, Bones is out of the ordinary, an artist who's invented his expressly cryptic image.
The bartender is itching and scratching himself between serving drinks, it's a sideshow in the nastiest bar in New York City. I tell him,
two boiler makers.
He's a junk whose head is somewhere else, not in the bar really. He pours two shots of Mellow Corn whiskey, the worst whiskey in America, then draws two mugs of Old English 800, awful beer tasting like metal sediments.
Bones and I drop the shots into the mugs, he downs his drink taking a long gulp without looking up, I ask him,
you thirsty Bones? He says,
I gotta a half-ounce of coke. I tell him,
let me see it,
he lays a baggie of white powder on the bar, I taste it, it's baby laxative. I have no idea what he's thinking.
You must be stark mad Bones? He disappears into a dark area of the bar.
Some people said Bones was a Satanist, I didn't believe it, he was too nice.
Doing my best to forget about my parent's car accident, it helps to say to myself,
there's nothing I can do about it.
It works because there wasn't a fucking thing in the world I could do to bring them back. Maybe Bones could do
a seance or something.
My parents were instantly killed, praise Ala, avoiding a long and drawn-out illness, immobile in a hospital bed, and getting worked over by Nurse Ratched.
Nearly broke, I pay my tab at the Vomit pit. I get my bag at the hostel and go to the Greyhound station, buying a ticket to Woodstock, up north. My karma is dried up in New York City, I'm the king of poxy karma.
By car, it’s a two-hour trip from The Rotten Apple to Woodstock. Going by bus takes four hours, the Greyhound zig-zags its way to Woodstock, stopping at small towns along the way— Mohonk Lake, Clintondale, Modena, and of course Walden, where Theroux wrote On Walden Pond, written exclusively for tree huggers and crystal suckers. A big seller in Sedona, Arizona.
Before the ride, I buy half a dozen bottles of paregoric without a script from an old Black pharmacist who says as I walk out,
you'll be trippin on the shit white boy.
I sit in the back of the bus, near the head, I had the runs from the rotgut hooch I drank at the Vomit Pit, downing a bottle of paregoric in a few gulps, then another, and another.
As the high comes on the bus is pulling out of the station. I feel like I'm falling into myself, obliviously to the world around me, even the sweating noxious-smelling fat man sitting next to me.
The bus driver wakes me at Woodstock.
I don't know anyone in town so I go to a bar, Maggie's, it was like Heaven on earth compared to the Vomit Pit.
The bartender's a hulking, 6' 8", weighting three hundred pounds maybe. He asks,
where you from, man?
New York,
You're a long hair so I'll save you the trouble of going to Yasgurs farm— there are no Woodstock plaques or flags, just acres, and acres of cows, grass, and cowshit.
People think anyone with long hair is a hippy.
I tell the linebacker,
I ain’t no hippy, I need a job.
are you on dope?
No sir, never touch it. I just lost my parents a few weeks ago, they died in a car accident.
Sorry to hear that, what’s your name pal?
Henry Lucowski sir,
I’m Vinny, you seem like a good kid, tell ya what, my sister owns a joint up the street, great food, when ya walk outta here turn left and you can't miss it, Sylvia’s. Your drinks on the house pal.
It’s 2PM, I look in Sylvia’s, it's empty except for a middle-aged lady sitting at a corner table with a calculator going over the restaurant's books. Slyvia is sexy for her age, she looks like Ann Margaret. I walk to her table telling her,
ma’am your brother told me you need an experienced dishwasher, I worked at Big Wong on the Lower East Side. She says,
Big Wong’s huh? Chinamen are tough to work for, how long did you work there? I lie,
three years ma’am,
is it Ok if I call them for a reference?
Sure, if you speak Chinese.
Being called ma’am makes me feel old, I'm Sylvia, what’s your name?
Henry Lucowski,
you Polish?
I don’t know what I am.
Can you start tonight?
Yes,
I'll pay you a hundred and twenty-five dollars a week, you can have free meals, and there’s an empty room upstairs for you. My brother Vinny's as big as a house ain't he? He's one tough son of a bitch, he was offered a football scholarship to the University of Buffalo, but hurt his knee in high school.
Franky the bartender will show you around, relax awhile and come to the kitchen at five, the dinner crowd shows at eight,
Yes, Sylvia.
Franky the bartender is as cool as they come. He has a perfect pompadour, sprayed back tight, dyed blue-black like Elvis's hair, wearing a red vest, tuxedo pants, and patent leather shoes. He confides in me as we walk up the stairs.
Sylvia’s a hot old gal ain’t she? Half the guys in town wanna get in her pants. Do you get high?
Yes, you got a source for weed and stuff?
Yeah, I'm the source, I make more money dealing than tending bar.
The room was nice, early American with Ethen Allen furniture, and curtains stamped with images of George Washington.
Frankie rolls a joint of kush weed, as we smoke he asks,
how’s the weed, Henry?
Excellent, very excellent, then Frankie the bartender says,
the kitchen staff gets high too, they buy from me, you know how it goes, people in the restaurant business love cocaine. She ya later downstairs,
OK, Franky,
Sylvia’s kitchen has a conveyor dishwasher, something the Chinamen were too cheap to buy.
The Pots and pans were washed by hand in a deep platinum sink. The used water flowed through a grease pit and was discharged into the river. Woodstock was no hippy town, money was more important than pollution to the towns' folks.
From 8PM till 11PM things are steady in the kitchen, nothing I can’t handle, the conveyer dishwasher is a boon.
I finish by midnight and walk upstairs, showering and going to bed.
The next three months are the same, steady, Sylvia’s closes on Monday.
I decide to hitchhike to Roosevelt National Park, It’s twenty miles out of Woodstock.
I wear khaki cut-offs, gym shoes, a ripped faded yellow T, and a straw hat, my coconut-oiled hair reaches my waist.
At noon I walk out of town to Cosmo Drive, hitchhiking. A Lincoln Continental stops, a middle-aged guy wearing a lot of gold, says,
get in, I'm Larry Bigalow, I'm Union President round here. I ask him,
president of what union? He says,
All of em,
oh, I see, could you drop me off at Roosevelt National Park?
Sure, you gotta union card son?
Do I need one Mr. Bigalow?
Yeah, if your gonna live in Woodstock,
OK.
Big Bigalow hands me his card, I open the heavy car door and step out saying,
thanks, Mr. union president,
OK son, no problem, watch out for the critters, bears, wolves, and wild pigs,
Sure will.
I walk to the ranger station showing him my New York State ID, and he says,
people with New York State IDs who are on foot get in for free.
Later, like an idiot I walk into a Crown of Thorns field, soon my arms and legs are punctured, and bloody. I think of Mel Gibson's film The Passion of Christ, the sadistic Roman soldiers beating the living piss out of poor Jesus as he walks up the Villa Delarosa dragging his heavy cross.
I walk to the end of the Crown of Thorns field, self-flagellating, doing it for Jesus, like the Catholic freaks who walk Roman streets, whipping their backs bloody, thinking they are doing Jesus a favor.
Back at the ranger station, he says,
Next time stay out of the Crown of Thorns bushes, son, don't you know nothing about nature?
I from Queens, fair game in the woods I guess. The ranger says,
You’re a bloody mess, I'll call an ambulance.
Thank you, Sherif, or Sherif Ranger, which do you prefer?
People call me Ranger Bob,
AOK, Ranger Bob.
The ambulance shows quickly as u would expect. I got the feeling the responders were hoping for something worse, bloodier, like a person being mauled by a bear.
They take me to the emergency room where a nurse cleans my legs and arms with alcohol and gauze.
I walk to Sylvia’s restaurant, using my key to unlock the front door, then locking it behind me.
I grab a six from the bar fridge, walk upstairs to the All American Ethan Allen room, roll a joint, elevate my legs on a pillow, turn the radio on to Pure Jazz, New York City, listening to the Pharoh Sanders riff— Astral Traveling, and thinking,
I'm the king of poxy karma.