New York City in 1983, summertime in the capital of the world, a day when the streets poured forth the loathsome smell of festering garbage because the sanitation workers union was on strike, a day that was one helluva stinker.
Henry blue, sitting in front of his typewriter, musing on—how to write when blue? 10 years ago he was bogged down in a drawn-out depression. Maybe, feeling blue would only last a day or so this time, no worry. Any day he’d be on-high again, running-riot on the dopamine trail, yee-ha!
His Cuban wife Lucia walks in his office wearing a bra and some thong underpants, hugging and kissing him, saying,
Poor bebe? Madre has especial medicina!
She wrenches a 1/4 ounce of cocaine from her bra, sprinkling some on Henry's desk and dividing the crystal powder into 6 hefty lines. Lucia had scored from her Cuban hairdresser, Valencia who peddled dope to her clients. The fun couple proceed to snort up the goods and he says,
darling, go to the kitchen and make a pitcher of mojitos!
The dopamine cowboy rides a bucking Appaloosa to Mars, going from zilch and empty to I’ve got big plans, I can do anything in the world, begining to madly type a story for HEADBANGER Magazine.
New York City is America’s heroin capital. In the 70’s the ironclad Rockefeller laws, yellow propaganda that monikered heroin as a devilish drug that drove black men to crime, unfairly pointing the finger at black men even though middle-class whites were the majority of heroin users in the city at the time.
In the 80s city people of every kind would go to seedy single room welfare hotels with names like— Carlton Arms, Fifth Street Inn, and Uptowner to snort and shoot D, for Downtown which was sold for 3 to 400 dollars a gram in bags with brand names stamped on them, like —Poison, Overdose, Seven to Life, Comatose, No Exit or Once Ain’t Enough, labeled by dealers with dark senses of humor.
Richard Lloyd a guitarist with the band, Television, who played at CBGB, an East Manhattan dive bar that featured famous punk and new wave bands, tells this story about dope use in the city,
It grew to such an extent in Alphabet City that there were places where there were lines as if you were going to a hit movie. There was a door that you put your money in the slot at the top, you said what you wanted and the dope came out the bottom, whether you wanted heroin or cocaine. On the line were, old ladies, guys with briefcases and suits, drawn-out junkies, ordinary people, rock people, people that you recognized. Employees of the dealers would police the lines, they’d be like, single file, no singles, fives and tens only, tell the man what you want, put the money in and get off the block right away.
One guy, a writer by the name of Gunner Grim, decided he wanted to try junk, since a dealer hung out in the doorway of his building he didn’t have to go far, and he says,
It was essentially as easy and sometimes easier where I lived to score than it was to buy a taco.
When Gunner first tried heroin he simply left his apartment and bought from the first person who offered, saying,
I went into McDonald’s with this guy who then reached in and pulled a bag out of his ass. I was a, well, I guess that’s what happens.
William Burroughs the beat author who wrote Junky, Queer, Naked Lunch, and much more was a regular heroin user that wrote junked up, writing junked propelled him into heterogeneous spheres where he referenced parts of his work.
Perversely, for Burroughs and other junks, using heroin was better than the alternative— not doing it. Because in his words,
living the life of an American businessman, when his organism reaches maturity it can only start dying. A junkie on the other hand, exists in a state of constant physical emergency. With every hit, a junkie dies, as the drug’s effects dissipate, he is reborn. The junkie knows life because he has an intimate knowledge of death, unlike our American businessman, the junkie knows himself.
Heroin has put the kibosh on many lives, but it has been a major-league muse for artist such as Samuel Coleridge, Art Pepper, Pablo Picasso, Baudelaire, Ray Charles, Keith Richards, and Charlie Parker, just a few on the dubious scroll of ill-fame.
Is the heroin high worth the low? It’s highly unlikely. Initially, shooting junk gives you a blissful, peaceful feeling, you feel like you’re encased in psychic armor that nothing in the world can penetrate as it transports you to a place somewhere deep inside.
But, the feeling doesn’t last forever, the more junk you use the more your body adapts to it. Junks are prisoners of their addiction who spend their days and nights on streets hustling— peddling their asses as well as committing a host of other scams and rip-offs. Of course, celebrity junks don’t count, they don’t need to hustle to buy dope.
In the end, junks don’t get high, shooting up merely takes away the sick feeling of withdrawal.
Henry preferred psychedelic drugs and booze, avoiding amphetamines and opiates. At one point in his life, before he married Lucia, he was fucking 2 to 3 different women a week, women he met in bars and cafes. People who knew him seemed concerned, telling him he was a sex addict, but he figured they were jealous.
For a period he survived on crazy pay, until his Uncle Seymour Lucowski, who owned a coat hanger factory in Pennsylvania died, ponying up a hefty stipend for Henry, which liberated him— like Bukowski receiving his first royalty check from book sales and quitting his job at the post office.
To get crazy pay you had to be certifiably nuts, which for Henry meant reporting to the Queens Welfare Office every 90 days to be reevaluated by the shrinks, who diagnosed him as having an antisocial disorder, as well as addictions to drugs, alcohol, and sex. The diagnosis was only partly true, he was an addict all right, but sex addiction? What a crock!
As for having an antisocial disorder, he was robustly friendly and outgoing, except when it came to the shrinks at the welfare office, who he recognized as god-players with mega-egos educated to see through and diagnosis their patients, but the shrinks were clueless when it came to their own problems. At any rate, he played their games to keep the checks coming.
As the sun sets in Queens Lucia walks into Henry’s office and asks,
que pasa, bebe? And he answers,
Well, my enchilada, how bout we take the A-train to Manhattan, get somethin to eat and catch Joseph Beuys's performance opus at MoMA tonight? Looking perplexed she says,
enchilada? I’m your enchilada? How corny! He laughs saying,
We’re very fortunate to live in New York darling, the city is rich in culture. Anyway, I want to write a review on Joseph Beuys's performance, I Like America, and America Likes Me.
They dress for the evening, Lucia wearing ragged blues jeans, a white t-shirt that reads,
WEIRD
BUT
SEXY
and pink high heels. She’s braless and her thimble size nipples are evident, extending from under her t-shirt. Henry in all black, a sleeveless Levi shirt and jeans, wearing his long white hair in dual braids, Native Indian style.
The hippest couple in the city walk to the Flushing Street Station and catch the A-train to 42 Street in Manhattan, where they exit, going up the steps to street level and walking to Morning Star Restaurant, a Greek-owned and operated 24-hour joint that served a variety of American food. A big size older black women walks to their booth, saying with a smile,
we don’t have specials, just good food, Whatta you all have? Henry orders,
I'll have a club sandwich and my wife will have Eggs Benedict!
Lucia wanted to try Eggs Benedict because none of the cantinas in Cuba served it.
As the food is served, Henry asks,
How bout a pitcher of Michelob mixed with tomato juice? Then saying to Lucia,
MoMA is just a hop, skip and jump from here, before the happening Joseph Beuys likes to kibitz with museum-goers in the lobby, he’s a hoot and not young, he was a gunner on a Stuka during World War 2. She asks,
Is he a Nazi? Henry laughs and says,
My god no, he’s way nuts babe, he believes his work heals his audience. She wonders,
how? He answers,
the healing that happens when the audience is transported out of their 9-5 commonplace world for a few hours.
After eating they order another pitcher of beer with tomato juice. Between swigs of beer, they walk to the WC to snort cocaine. The waitress figures something is going on, walking to their table and saying,
are you all OK? Henry answers,
Oh, yes ma’am, you see we’re both diabetic, we went to the restroom to inject our insulin because we're shy and don’t want people here to get the wrong idea.
Henry was a skilled liar, but whatever came out of his mouth was god’s own truth, he was a writer and good writers are good liars.
By 830 they are standing in front of MoMA with a small crowd waiting to see the Joseph Beuys performance piece, I Like America, and America Likes Me. They hear a siren and then see a red 1970 Cadillac Hightop Superior ambulance moving slowly towards the museum, which parks at the entrance. The back door of the ambulance is pulled open and a body covered from head to toe with thick grey industrial felt in a gurney, followed by a coyote in a cage are rolled into MoMA by helpers.
The small crowd pays 20 bucks a head to MoMA ushers and is led downstairs to the basement. Henry shows his press pass saying,
HEADBANGER Magazine, I’m writing a review, and the usher says,
you’re Henry Lucowski, I’m a fan! And he answers,
call me Henry.
The couple walks downstairs to a cement room which is the size of a basketball court and divided in half by a wall of chicken wire. They sit in folding chairs with the others, gazing through the chicken wire they see a thin man with pronounced cheek-bones wearing a 40s style Fedora sitting on a pile of hay holding a wooden cane upright and eyeballing a coyote. The wild dog-like animal is dragging a man-size piece of industrial felt about, shaking its head violently, trying to rip the felt apart. Beuys then begins tugging the felt the coyote is wrestling with and the 2 struggle to gain control of the material until tired. Lucia says to Henry,
Jesucristo, what is this? He tells her what he thinks speaking softly,
he’s a shaman filling the emptiness of the western material world with felt, as he evokes the power of the coyote spirit.
Que? You see THAT, in THIS?
I Like America, and America Likes me went on for 3 days, until Joseph Beuys, wrapped in rough felt was taken away in the same Cadillac Ambulance with the coyote, who he finally bonded with.
Henry and Lucia ride a taxi back to Queens after viewing I Like America, and America Likes Me for an hour. Henry feels uplifted, but Lucia is unconvinced and at a loss for words.
