My Best Friend Died

 

My best friend Slim, the guy with the biggest afro in Harlem started getting into the hard stuff after a while, junk. He wanted me to shoot up with him saying, 

you gotta try mainlining baby, you feel like nothing in the world can touch ya, like your back in your ma’s belly. All the shit that gets you in a flap, making you sweat, evaporates. I sell ten bags for Ricco and he gives me one, Henry answers succinctly, 

there are two things in the world that scar me, rats, and getting shots. So I’m out Slim, it’s your thing baby, I’ll hang with weed, Cuba Libres, and getting laid, that’s all I need to rock my boat.

Two months later Slim dies having scored a bag laced with strychnine from Rico.

Slim didn't have nobody, so he listed me as his guardian.  

I'm home and the phone rings, an office worker asks,

Are you Henry Lucowski? 

Yes, 

as you know your friend Slim Williams died of strychnine poisoning, he has no family so he listed you as his guardian. He was indigent so we will have to cremate him. 

There’s a long wait, but when Mr. Williams is cremated we’ll send you a small container of his ashes, just part of them. Perplexed I ask? 

What ya do with the rest of the ashes, I know there's a good size bag?  

We throw them in a secret place, probably Riker's Island.

OK dude my address is Henry Lucowski, 

20 Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003, USA

Thank you for your cooperation Mr. Lucowski.

In a few months, I'm delivered a Folgers Coffee size of bone chunks and ashes wrapped ornate container. 

I walk to Willis Avenue Bridge with the fancy container of Slim Williams' ashes and a Buddhist prayer book in hand. 

Reading a short Buddhist prayer for the dead—

Through your blessing, grace, and guidance, through the power of the light that streams from you:

May all your negative karma, destructive emotions, obscurations, and blockages be purified and removed.

Then casting Slim’s ashes into the Harlem River, watching them captured in the waft of the air, going anywhere.

I  feel guilt-ridden because Slim’s send-off was shallow and heartbreaking— with the importance of a speck of dust on a sidewalk in the city. 

When I grew up my parents weren't around. My dad was a traveling salesman who drove a pickup truck with a metal cargo box on the back, driving from Pennsylvania to Maine, selling sexy garments to exotic apparel shops.

My mom was a drunk who loved black men, in Harlem bars from dawn till dusk.

I was raised by my nanny, Nil, she was 20 and I was 10.

I loved Nil as a woman, and she loved me as a younger brother.

On weekends we’d go to the aquarium, the zoo, and to Mary’s Pancake House to eat, I liked the king-sized German cakes and she liked Buckwheat cakes. 

After pancakes, we’d go to Central Park Zoo— Nil loved the birdhouse and I loved petting the baby lions and tigers. I wanted to take a baby lion to the apartment, but when the tiger grew up it'd become Siegfried & Roy size job.

Nil loved the Birds of Paradise, their colorful sapphire wing spans, and the exotic tropical plants in their cages, growing in the winter, Anthuriums, and Jasmine.

One night late my ma, Betty, came home drunk, having had a nervous breakdown. Nil called 911 and the medics showed strapping my mother into a straight jacket. She was 46 and spent the rest of her life in various mental institutions. I never saw her again, but she had psycho genes that luckily bypassed me. 

As for my old man, he was good for a check every month to cover— rent, food, clothes, and money for Nil to buy extras.  He would send the check to her account.

My dad's name was Fred Lucowski, he visited six or so times a year. I didn’t have a male influence in my life and should have been gay, but wasn't.

I was a good student in 5th Grade, tops in my class in math, science, and English, 

But I was no athlete, I was uncoordinated, and my classmates called me a spaz. The gods bless us with certain talents.

Saturday night Nil and I were bored shitless so we went out. She was a 20-year-old Swedish beauty with natural blond hair, guys eyeballed her.

Neither of us drove, so we’d walk the streets of Manhattan at night, beautifully naive, open to everything, and on the run.

Nil goes to the liquor store and buys a bottle of Night Train Express, keeping it wrapped in a paper bag. We passed the booze back and forth like two Bowery bums, taking pulls as we walked, the low-down wine got me outstandingly high because I was only 10.

In the Meatpacking District, we went to a working man’s bar called Axels, looking like million other blue-collar joints— with a wooden bar and stools, and a hard brown tile floor. 

At the bar, there was a level of top-shelve booze, and bottles of rail booze in the speed rack for easy access. 

On the back bar, there was an old NCR cash register, and gallon jars of pigs' feet, hot dogs, and hardboiled eggs all pickled.

We walk into Axels and sat at an empty table, surrounded by Columbia and NYU students dressed like truck drivers and stevedores wearing jeans and safety boots— college kids slumming it for the weekend, Sinclair Lewis and Nelson Lichtenstein readers.

Merl haggard’s song Misery and Gin blares from a large speaker hung on a thick chain from the ceiling. 

Nil walks to the bar, the guys really looked her over.

She orders 2 vodka and orange juices.

Vodka and orange juice is the type of drink newbies drink because the orange juice taste overpowers vodka which is tasteless.

The bartender, an older man wearing a checkered shirt who has bushy eyebrows pours the drinks, looking at Henry, knowing the kid is underage, not caring because New Yorkers don’t give a shit about small things.

Coming from nowhere the bartender hacks snot open-mouthed, splashing Nil in the face. Unnerved, she takes a hanky from her purse, wipes herself, yells at the bartender,

COVER YOUR MOUTH NEXT TIME YOU HAWK ON SOMEONE, ASSHOLE. 

And the fucking bartender has the nerve to say,

sit on my face and you can drink free.

Nil lets both the drinks fly on the bartender, walking to me and saying, 

Let’s catch a taxi and go home, Henry.  

Slim & Henry

 

Slim and Henry were pals at Park East High School, neither went to class much, both had D averages, and the Park east official gave them diplomas to get rid of them.

They were a bad influence on the other students, dealing drugs, putting Xanax in the cafeteria soft drink dispensers, and so on. 

Henry was a long hair guy, with no ambition who loved to smoke dope and listen to the Grateful Dead.

Slim was 6 feet tall and weighed 160 pounds, a black guy with a monumental afro, the size of a garden shrub, from Harlem.

They worked at Carol’s House of Burgers, Carol made them wear hair nets, which itched there heads.

Slim was the burger, fry, and hash brown man, and Henry made coleslaw, salad, floats, and milk shacks.

The kitchen manager was a 75-year-old black man named Harpo. He talked about pussy and drinkin Crown Royal with old gals at Grady’s Place in Harlem. 

When Slim and Henry weren’t busy they’d listen to Harpo’s stories. He saw Robert Johnson play in 1938. And, Harpo was in the 92 Infantry Division, the only all-black unit during World War II. Their corp patch was a silhouette of a black buffalo.

He told us he didn’t want to go to war and regretted the killing on both sides. Saying,

there’s not a day I don’t think about the German kid I stuck with a bayonet. Slim ads,

we weren’t nothin but low-life niggers to the Nazis, if they caught a nigger they’d send him to the gas chamber same as a jew.

The all-black 92 Infantry Division was one of the most decorated units in World War II.

Carol walks into the kitchen and says, 

cut the bullshit, the lunchtime crowd's comin.

Carol’s House of Burgers closed at 8 PM. After work Slim and Henry would go to the Green Door for a drink. 

Sitting at the bar they eyeball two gals sitting in a booth, one is heavy with a sweet face, and the other is well-built and seductive. Slim says, 

the fat chick is mine I like, big women.

Slim asks the big girl,

could we buy you a drink? Let's sit together at the booth.

Slim and Henry go to the booth, the girls sit on one side and the boys on the other.

The exchange names, the gals names our 

Suzy and Martha, Martha the bigger girl says, 

I have my own apartment, it’s not far, let’s go party. Slim says, 

I got a bag of weed, and Henry says, 

I’ll buy a fifth of rum and some coke and mix Cuba Libres. 

Martha lives in a one-bedroom apartment, tastefully decorated, art deco, with second-hand furniture and framed paintings, copies of masters from The Salvation Army outlet. 

Henry makes a pitcher of Cuba Libres and Slim rolls a hand full of joints, soon they're all loaded.

Slim starts making out with Martha, they go into her bedroom, shut the door, and get it on. Henry asks Suzy if she likes sex, and she says, 

only with the man, I’m going to marry. Henry thinks to himself, 

so much for that, I’m not going to marry Suzy just to get into her pants, I don’t even know her, he says,

oh, that’s cool, I guess that makes you a virgin, Suzy answers stoney-faced, 

yes, I guess it does.

Slim and Martha come out of the bedroom, looking drained, they had a good time. 

Henry wants to escape the scene, he thinks Suzy is a jerk. He stands up and says, 

Slim we gotta go, I need to pay my electric bill or they're shut my electric off.

Slim and Martha hug and Henry and Suzy shake hands. Outside, as they walk on the sidewalk Henry says,

Suzy’s a fucking prude, Martha didn’t do nothin for me. Slim says,

Martha was one hot bitch baby, she made me cum three times. You see we brothas got this here special shaggin mojo, white woman be after me all the time. Henry says, 

let’s go to the Bronx zoo, Slim says, 

sure broh, 

Henry pays for Slim, Slim's always broke.

Slim says, 

let’s go to the monkey house.

The monkey house smells repugnant, looking like a monkey prison. 

Most of the monkeys are Rhesus, Slim notices right away saying to Henry, 

look at that mother fucken monkey over there he’s playing with himself, 

they break out in laughter, 

A large male Rhesus defecates laying one hand on the pile, picking it up, and throwing it through the bars so it splatters on Henry’s face. One of the handlers helps him wipe it off with a wet towel. Then Slim says, 

let’s get outta this mother fucken place, don’t take me to no mo fucken zoos, Henry.

To Tell You the Truth

 

I'm so bummed out that writing is my only hope. 

My readership has gone down so much that I might as well be writing to myself.

As well as writing to get my ass in gear, I take 200 MG of Bupropion a day. The byproduct is loss of appetite. 

Like Gandhi fasting for 135 days. Now wait a minute here, Gandhi fasted for 135 days? I think it's folklore. If you don't drink water for 24 hours you can die. I guess the Mahatma was drinking water at least.

I'm one of life's fuck- ups.

I' could never hold down a job and get just enough Social Security to survive in Thailand— if I was living in America I’d be living in a homeless tent city. 

I’m not a rational person, I’m impulsive, and it’s a constant battle between me vs. impulse. The byproduct is I do stupid shit that gets me in trouble, ignoring the advice of bright and sane people.  

When Robert Johnson sings about the blues, he’s singing about depression. The blues is depression, being broke, and without prospects.

If it wasn’t for writing and psycho dope I would slit my wrist with a razor blade on the pot in the bathroom until the last drop of blood left my body. 

I don’t have a gun to blow my brains out because foreigners in Thailand aren’t allowed to own them, but you can be sure the fucking Thais are well-armed.

On the fuck-up scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, I’d be a 9.

Maybe it’s Karma, maybe I was Hitler in my last life. 

Every day is an effort for me, I’m retired, scraping by in Thailand, unlike US retirees— Ole Joe, doing woodwork in the garage, building wood crap, or classy Chad on the golf course drinking beer and having a burger after 18 holes. 

I wake in the morning, and look around, feeling depressed when I realize where I am.

The cognizance shatters the breathtaking dreams of glorious sex with women I love and the feeling of being in otherworldly utopian environments.

The getting out of bed process is comparable to waking in a jail cell.

I see people who have made it, in small ways, not your Elon Musk types, just regular folks who own a liquor or hardware store and envy them 

I couldn’t galvanize myself to give a shit growing up, content with minimum wage, working in warehouses, or pumping gas,

although I drew the line at working at Mc Donalds or KFC because of the terrifying smells.

After work, I'd go home, get high, and watch sports and porno. 

So here I am today, 45 years old, living in Thailand because I can afford to— Without extra money to get massages, go to bars, getting by with enough money to feed my 12 dogs, and myself.

God help me if I have a heart attack or something, I'll have to go to a Thai public hospital and the doctors aren’t so hot.

My girlfriend Pinky is never home because she works on her parent's farm, 40 kilos north of Chiang Rai. 

She cuts rubber, a white liquid that seeps off the trees as you lacerate them with a blade in a circular motion. 

Her family grows— corn, rice, cocoa, and Kratom, which was legalized when ganja was legalized in Thailand. Kratom doesn’t do nothin for me, but the Thais like it.

I have a friend who’s the kind of guy you go to for advice, Andy, he suffers from depression like I do, we are on the same meds, Bupropion, only I take twice as much. 

Andy has a wonderful hill tribe wife, Nat, but he just scrapes by like I do, living cheap in Thailand, teaching English online, and his wife works as a maid. Anyway, he told me the other day, 

I wish I was never born. 

My wish is a mirror image of his, 

I wish I was dead.

Big talk, easy to say but it’s bullshit, I’m scared shitless of dying. The funny thing about dying is nobody gets a Get Out of Jail for Free, everybody kicks it eventually. 

I don’t wanna die, I’m a vegetarian, don’t drink, smoke cigarettes or ganja, and walk every day, big fucking deal I'm going to kick it anyway. 

Fuck who wants to make it to 94 but 83 would be nice. And, I would rather live on the beach in a tent than go to a nursing home. I pity the poor old bastards stuck in those ennoble 

jails.

I had a friend in high school in 1967, we went to New Trier, in Wilmette, Illinois, a well-to-do town. Where the actor Bill Murray grew up. 

His name was Tommy Sprague, a gifted basketball player. Somehow, in the white-bread suburb of Wilmette, he became a junky. 

My guess is he took the electric train from Wilmette's Linden Station, the last stop on the line, to the hood on the Southside— ghettos like, Back of the Yard, Hide Park, or Bridgeport, scoring there. 

Tommy would bring the junk home and shoot up in his bedroom. 

As you would think, the story has a sad ending. His father broke Tommy’s bedroom door down, finding him lying in bed dead from an overdose, He was only 17. Being precocious beyond his years is what killed him

So me, crying to you all, about my life seems kind of stupid doesn’t it? 

BBQ'd Rats & Sticky Rice

My last story, Jesus Krishna was a flop, I don’t think readers cared for the opening bit about the character who makes the Guinness World Records by filling an empty peanut butter jar with mucous, his own.

As for references to the King of Kings, it's apparent quasi and stoney-faced Jesus people don't care for writers fiddling around on the subject. Praising the Lord is the only road, but wrangling about the Lord's existence is blasphemy. 

Literati are overly sensitive in regard to vulgar images from second-rate writers, but fall all over Charles Bukowski when he writes—

I like shit, I liked to shit, I like turds but it was such terrible work creating them.

Stay with me, 

Bukowski’s loo scene may be more convivial if you read the entire paragraph.

Anyhow, after Marie left I sat in the kitchen and drank 3 cans of beer I found in the refrigerator. I never cared much for food. I’d heard of people’s love for food. But food only bored me. Liquid was o.k. but bulk was a drag down—I like turds but it was such terrible work creating them.

Very little unnerves me — blood, a Nazi soldier squished as he’s run over by a tank on TV, people who never stop talking— but rats and cockroaches petrify me. 

Particularly sewer rats that differ from country rats, which are clean and edible. 

While living in Asia a Thai pal, Dacha and I ate lunch in a bamboo hut. I order meatless green curry soup with rice and he has fried rats with sticky rice, showing off.

Suddenly it's pouring rand and the roof of the hut folds. None of the Thais say anything about getting soaked because Thais never complain. It’s a Buddhist thing, but I tease Dacha by saying,

the downpour is bad Buddha for eating rats.

Rats are pests Henry, 

You're heartless? They want the same things we want in life, to eat, sleep in a cozy nest, procreate, and live. They’re like Hamsters. Dacha says,

 rats taste like chicken. I tell him,

people say the same about wild meat— it tastes like chicken— alligator, snake, rabbit, or frog legs. The meat-eating talk sets me off, I’m a vegetarian—

I can’t eat living things, take pigs, I pity them with all my heart, they’re intelligent and sensitive, the swine herders don’t give a shit about the pig's feelings or beings, the red necks just see bacon. Eggs are basically embryos, and the Gods created milk for baby cows, not cocoa geriatrics to drink at bedtime. We should eat like monks.

You’re nuts Henry, Thai monks don’t follow strict diets, they eat what their disciples give em, pork, eggs, chicken, rice, tomatoes, and some eat pussy.

Thai monks eat pussy? Did you know Michael Douglas got throat cancer from that?

No, Google it, Henry reads from the webpage,

Michael Douglas said cunnilingus was the cause of his throat cancer. In particular, pointing his finger at the human papillomavirus, or HPV. And, 80 to 90% of people who engage in cunnilingus get it. Dacha laughs, 

That’s total bullshit, everyone you know would have it. Do you know anyone with HPV Henry? 

No, and the HPV shit ain’t gonna stop nobody from bush diving. 

A few years later, broke again, I go back to the US, because foreigners, as Thais refer to us no matter how long we've lived here, can't work in Thailand.

The American Embassy in Bangkok fronts me a plane ticket with a catch— pay back the money or go to jail. 

The ticket deal calls to mind a scene from the film The Godfather when Michael Corleone tells the Godfather, 

I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.

In the US, I find a cheap room in East Harlem, work in the service industry selling weed, paying off the plane ticket in a week.

I get out of bed one night, wearing shorts, a sweatshirt, rubber slippers, and stuffing my waist-length hair into a stocking cap.

It’s an animated Saturday night, I smoke a joint as I walk, the neon lights look prismatic— like being in a house of mirrors.

I pass a couple who’re arguing, the drunk woman yells at her husband—

get the fuck away from me, he squeezes his hand into a fist like he means to hit her. She yells at him again,

you fucker, 

he opens his arms towards her as an offering, pleading until she falls into his arms. A hundred strangers pass not noticing any of it. 

New Yorkers are famous for walking the city streets wearing blinders, wary of mishaps. 

There’s a story about a married couple fighting in their apartment, making a racket— a concerned neighbor knocks on the door, the wife opens the door, and the neighbor asks,

are you guys OK?

the wife punches him, bloodying his nose, rudely saying,

mind your own fucking business asshole, if we wanna have a row it’s our affair. 

The guy calls the cops on the outta-control wife. The cops show going with the bloodied guy to the pair's apartment, knock on the door saying, 

NYPD.

The pugilist wife opens the door, and one cop says,

Ma’am this gentleman says you assaulted him, bloodying his nose, and you smell like alcohol, she says, 

Oh him, he’s a drunk, everybody knows it, he runs into things. And by the way, I just finished gargling with Listerene. I’m going to bed

What can the cops do? It’s her word against his, no witnesses, and no surveillance cameras. 

The story instantiates the wisdom of New Yorkers for minding their own business.

Still walking I hit Chico’s bar for a drink. The drunks are loud, they hold the bullshit inside until they're loaded, then let it fly.

I notice a sad-eyed gal with long dark dreadlocks, wearing a bulky sweater sitting alone at a table in the back of the bar, asking her, 

could I buy you a drink? She says,

I’m the kind of girl people avoid, I’m a humpback.

Do you like beer? I’ll get a pitcher of German beer. 

I bring the pitcher and ask,

What’s your name? 

Twinkle, 

I’m Henry,

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, 

How I wonder what you are! 

Up above the world so high, 

Like a diamond in the sky. 

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, 

How I wonder what you are?

Twinkle says,

The little star feels like shit— people stare at me as I walk the street, I can’t cover this hump with makeup, I just wear bulky clothes.  

Twinkle the world is full of blemished people of all kinds. I’m bipolar and can’t hold down a job or stay in a relationship.

Where do you live Henry?

Not far, East Harlem, in a wee room.

We pick up a bottle of Wild Turkey at Tito’s Liquor. Inside, we sit on the bed, I tune the radio to a jazz station.

We pour a couple of drinks and talk, Twinkle grew up poor in an abusive family, her old man was a drunk janitor and her mother turned tricks to make ends meet. Twinkle says, 

I’m on disability insurance, it’s enough to get buy, I live at home.

They have another drink, Henry asks Twinkle,

do you like sex? She answers, 

nobody wants sex with a humpback. He assures her, 

I do, and Twinkle says, 

How about 69?