If Dogs Run Free, So Will We

 

Henry's sitting in his study drinking El Buho mescal, chewing the worm, haunted by hallucinations, thinking the empty page in his typewriter is staring at him and sending out telepathic messages—

go fucking write,

NOW, moth-a fucker,

WRITE, WRITE ANYTHING.

The tribe— Henry, his Cuban wife Lucia, and their lover Summer Wynd are eating on the front porch of their Key West bungalow as the Chihuahuas, Che, and Mia beg for scraps. 

Their pet bird, Pedro the woodpecker is busy pecking on a high palm in the yard, sure it’s a Shortleaf pine. Lucia says, 

the neighbors are going to call city animal control again, Pedro’s noisy, it’s disturbing. Henry replies, 

fuck city animal control, they pick up dogs, keep em in the pound for 30 days, then gas em if no one claims em. Controlling anything is laughable— dogs in Key West don’t need to be controlled. Have you seen a pack of wilds running free in the city?  

If dogs run free, then why not we?

Just do your thing, and you’ll be king,

if dogs run free.

Dylan said that.

  

Most everyone wants to be free, right? 

Libertarians believe freedom is the most important value in life, knowing they can’t be free unless others are. Also believing that when people are free the world becomes more just, more prosperous, safer, and better for everyone.

A few months ago Lucia received her US citizenship, having completed the immigration process.  

Like Henry and Summer Wynd, she has embraced libertarianism— something she couldn't do while living in Cuba. 

Lucia was a Cuban celebrity, having acted in some of the countries most watched films of the 70s, such as— Havana Vampires, Soy Cuba, and Quick Amigos. She was Castro’s lover as well, one of many. 

Still on the front porch, drinking Mexican Coffee with Henry and Summer Wynd she tells them,

Cuban people dream of being free, it’s a pipe dream for them because freedom’s a dirty word in Cuba. 

I was drinking Chevaz Regal with Fidel in his Havana house one evening. One of his generals interrupts us and says,

El Presidente, la policía arrested a gang of libertarios in a Havana apartment, confiscating illegal books, then getting confessions. What should we do with the counter-revolutionary pigs señor? Lucia continues,

So, Fidel lights a cigar, he smoked the best, hand-rolled for him, taking a draw saying, educate the scoundrels, throw em in the hole!

Freedom rings in your ears as the oppressor steps on you— showing his fear.

In life, freedom comes and goes— but you're free when you're asleep.

Or, if death is what it’s cracked up to be, you can count on experiencing freedom in the form of a cerebral release, similar to an orgasm.

James Baldwin knows what freedom is, writing— 

You know and I know that this country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too early. We cannot be free until they are free. 

The tribe decides to go to the matinee show at the Tropic Cinema in downtown Keywest— a small remodeled art deco theater similar to The Majestic theater in the film The Majestic starring Jim Carrey.

After cleaning up and enjoying a toke, they pile onto the Vespa scooter, driving a short distance to the Tropic Cinema, parking in the bicycle lot.

Henry buys tickets, walking into the theater with the girls to their assigned seats.

The theater is nearly full so the threesome sits in the front row, finding three seats together, playing footsy, handsy, and find the weeny.

Dog Day Afternoon opens with a dissolved shot of a number of New York city-scenes shot outside on a hot summer day— the opening theme, Elton John's Amoreena is playing. 

As the film rolls the tribe forgets about fucking around, cocking their heads upward, unable to look away from the ardent film that grabs them from the get-go.

On a hot day in August 1972 first-time crooks Sonny Wortzik, his friend Salvatore Sal Naturile and Stevie attempt to rob the First Brooklyn Savings Bank. The plan, if they had one, goes astray when Stevie loses his nerve and flees.

As Sonny interrogates the tellers and bank manager, he discovers he and Sal have arrived after the daily pickup, and the bank only has $1,100 in cash.

After rummaging through the cash at the teller's stations, Sonny mysteriously picks up the daily audit book and burns it in a trash can. The smoke raises suspicion outside, and the barber across the street calls the cops. 

Soon, the building is surrounded by New York's finest so the two panicked robbers take the bank employees hostage.

Police Detective Sergeant Eugene Moretti calls the bank on a direct line installed by the cops, Sonny bluffs him saying he and Sal are prepared to kill the hostages.

Then, the bank security guard has an asthma attack and Sonny releases him as a display of good faith. Moretti persuades Sonny to step outside. 

Using the head teller as a shield Sonny begins a dialogue with Moretti telling him all the cops want to do is kill him, then shouting Attica, Attica, Attica, a reference to the recent Attica Prison riot where 43 prisoners were killed. The crowd that has gathered outside sympathizes with Sonny's Attica reference and screams approval.

As the bystanders cheer the robbers, the veneer of lucidity implodes and the urgency surrounding the scene is out the window— Sonny and Sal have become local heroes in the people's eyes.

Back inside the bank, Sonny realizes things are looking grim, so he brainstorms with Sal, who says nothing as Sonny rambles and comes up with a plan to get out of the mess.

On the phone with Moretti again, Sonny demands a vehicle to drive himself and Sal to the airport so they can board a jet. He also demands pizzas and cokes be brought to the bank employees— who aren't behaving like hostages and are beginning to enjoy the hostage-takers' company.

As night sets in, the bank's electricity is shut off and FBI Agent Sheldon takes command of the scene, implementing a more stern approach. Sonny walks outside to talk to the agent, asking him why the power has been shut off.

Agent Sheldon tells him, no more favors. 

Then, the agent asks Sonny to speak with his transgender wife Leon on the phone, hoping Leon can persuade him to surrender. 

Sonny agrees, then reaching into a paper bag and pulling out wades of dollar bills, throwing them in the direction of the crowd who goes crazy.  

Inside the bank, he's on the phone with Leon who's sitting in a barber chair across the street, the cops had plucked him out of Bellevue Hospital and brought him to the crime scene.

Leon uses the forum to bum rap Sonny, saying he attempted suicide to escape Sonny’s abuse, eventually turning down Sonny’s offer to join him and Sal in their escape.

Sonny's beginning to fall apart because of the pressure of the hostage situation and Leon's rejection of him. He tells the FBI Leon had nothing to do with the robbery. 

 

The call is then terminated by Leon, who’s sobbing and can’t handle the scene anymore. 

Then with the help of Mulvaney, the bank manager, Sonny sits at a bank desk and writes out his will, leaving money from his life insurance policy to Leon for a sex-change operation.  

When the requested limo-bus arrives, Sal herds the hostages outside, pointing his carbine in their direction to keep them in line. 

The group boards the limo-bus smiling, happy they are escaping the humdrum existence of working in a bank. Mulvaney the manager isn't happy though, wanting the ordeal to end so he can go home to his family.

Sonny walks around the vehicle checking through the open windows for hidden weapons or booby traps, then selecting Agent Murphy to drive. The limo-bus takes off for Kennedy airport, with a long line of police vehicles in tow.

Sonny sits in the front beside Agent Murphy who's driving with Sal behind. Murphy repeatedly asks Sal to point his gun at the roof so he won't accidentally shoot him if the vehicle hits a bump.

As they wait on the airport tarmac for the plane to taxi into position, Sal releases another hostage, who gives him her rosary beads for his first plane trip. 

Agent Murphy again reminds Sal to aim his gun away. Sal does, then, Agent Sheldon seizes Sonny's weapon from outside the vehicle through an open window, allowing Murphy to pull a revolver hidden in his armrest and shoot Sal in the head. Sonny is immediately arrested, and the hostages are freed.

The film ends as Sonny watches Sal's body being taken from the car on a stretcher. The on-screen text reveals  Sonny was sentenced to 20 years in prison and Leon, who changed his name to Elizabeth, gets her sex-change operation.

As Henry, Lucia, and Summer Wynd walk out of the Tropic Cinema they feel sad but uplifted, Lucia comments, 

Poor Sonny and Sal, they took a wrong turn, and now one is dead and the other is going to be in the hole for twenty years. Henry laughs saying, 

it's just a film baby, 

she snaps back,

no, it's a true story, the film is based on a magazine article. 

How do you know? 

The girl working the snack bar told me when I went to buy a Butterfingers.

Boarding the Vespa they drive to a nearby soul food restaurant.

Henry parks the scooter on the sidewalk and the girls get off. They laugh, realizing they could have walked. Inside Bee's Soul Food they sit in a booth— Bee’s serves southern fare. 

Bee's is in an old plantation-style house in Bahama village, a neighborhood settled by Bahamians who made their way there on boats in the 1800s, simply walking ashore, looking for a better life, which they found.  

These days the picturesque village has become trendy, and many descendants of the founding Bahamians, like Bee, have made a killing on property.

Inside the tribe sets in a booth, feeling at home in the moody and down-home environment, unchanged for years as evident by the peeling yellow wallpaper.

A shapely Black waitress in her 30s with a blond wig on in a green waitress uniform comes to the table and hands them menus saying,

My name's Lucinda, Welcome to Bee’s, we have a full bar could I bring you a drink before you order, Henry asks, 

What’s on tap Lucinda?

Cold 45 and Bud Ice,

how bout a pitcher of Colt 45 and 3 shots of Crown Royal? 

I’ll be back with your drinks, sir. 

The tribe looks over the menu, deciding what to order, Lucinda returns with the drinks. Henry orders for everyone, 

dear, we’ll have catfish, pulled pork, chicken, greens, some Hoppin John, and cornbread.

Soon, Lucinda brings another pitcher, setting it down, smiling broadly saying, 

your one lucky man havin two beautiful women. The room feels good, Henry smiles at Lucinda saying, 

how bout a drink doll? 

sure baby, I’ll have a Crown Royal. I don't like to drink alone will you all join me? 

Lucinda returns with the drinks. They lift the shots toward the heavens. Summer Wynd says, 

make a wish, Lucia says,

SEX, lots and lots of it. 

When the soul food comes they dig in, shaking their heads saying, 

 

yummy, ooh, wow,

 

Henry loaded and goes on, 

Bees, I love it, it's a hole in the wall, but the joint's warm, homey, man, every Friday night it's gonna Bees and sexy Lucinda.

 

The girls trance-eat, ignoring Henry who at times viewed the world through coke bottle lenses. Then Lucia throws a leg bone at him saying,

big talk pendejo, you don't have enough stick for Lucinda.

By their fourth pitcher of beer, they’ve forgotten about Dog Day Afternoon.

People forget things, but dogs don't.

Where's Hannah Wilke?

 

Fuck, shit, puke, staring at a blank page. 

It’s summer, 1978 in New York City.

The Serial killer David Berkowitz, Son of Sam, is convicted of murder after terrorizing New York for 12 months.

It was a big summer for movie openings for some, not for Henry. Grease opened on June 16, with Saturday Night Fever and Close Encounters of the Third Kind soon followed.

Both Grease and Saturday Night Fever ushered in an awful decade adrift in confetti, disco music, itchy polyester, and cocaine.

Steve Ruben, the owner of Studio 54 made it a point not to let anyone in his club who dressed like John Travolta's character in Saturday Night Fever, Tony Manero. 

Studios 54 was in its own stratosphere, elevated upwards into the Upper Room night after night—  a rocket blasting through the heavens. 

One evening Henry, who wore his hair braided and oiled Native Indian style, stood outside Studio 54, making it to the velvet rope and being rejected by the doorman Marc Beneke who says to him, 

go cut your hair and come back,

He never went back, pissed that the doorman told him to cut his hair, preferring dives and neighborhood bars to Studio 54. 

Writing’s junk, I do it for fun and will never be published.

If it sounds like writing, piss all over your typewriter.

The mental picture of a galled woman getting up from her chair and walking out of a poetry reading comes to mind— one of Henry's many cataloged nightmares.

In the late 70s, he jumped on the flow of consciousness bandwagon, handwriting stuff thoughtlessly on yellow legal pads a mile a minute, his mind vacillating between consciousness and unconsciousness.

He’d go to the village poetry slams nightly, patiently listening to hippy poets with names like Toad, Antler, Sage, or Ode read, hating their stuff.

When it was his turn at the podium he’d shamelessly read odious metaphor, so bad that people, mostly women, would get up and walk out of the coffee shop, feeling empowered after registering their disapproval. 

His woeful use of metaphor was repulsive. 

Like,

she had an unforgettable face thanks to a severe case of acne.

Or, 

the smell in the tavern was like the essence of vomit and a fart captured in a sealed jar.

And, 

when she spread her legs in the yard at night the moon showered cosmic rays on her beaver.

Even,

he hated the smell of bug spray so he gave cockroaches the run of the house. 

And,

The sun moves up and down like a whore in bed. 

 

During the readings, he behaved more like a carnival barker than a poet— insulting the walkouts, breathing heavily, slobbering into the microphone saying,

you’re not supposed to run out until I say— fetch.

Or, 

go buy a brain, it’s Black Friday.

Even, 

sweetie, that high horse you're ridden out on makes your ass look titanic. 

After a month of appalling recitations, the cafe owners catch on, 86ing him from the village poetry slams. But the ban has a side effect— Henry becomes an urban legend of bad prose.

During a conversation with Al Spats the raconteur over coffee and pie at a cafeteria in the Meatpacking district, Al tells him,

Henry, I’ve been to your readings. Your work isn’t about poetry, it’s about the dynamic of lousy metaphor sending the audience into a tale spin.

Word has gotten around that you’ve been 86’d from the village poetry scene, forget it, folks dead, Dylan killed it when he went electric.

Let's put together an art happening in the Meatpacking District that will rock the prevailing social and political order. 

He thanks Al Spats, shaking his hand and heading out. Al's ahead of his time, one of the first people in New York to dress in leather other than visiting rodeo cowboys.

It’s late afternoon, thirsty he walks eleven blocks to a bar he knows for happy hour— The Clockwork Lounge in the East Village. 

Inside, he sits at the bar. The joint is painted black and covered with graffiti from the ceiling to the checkerboard tile floor. He wonders why the barfly graffitist didn't spray paint on the floor? 

Graffiti, obsessive, and immoderate.

Graffiti, it’s vandalism ain’t it? Not fine art. 

Talking about graffiti in the hipster bar, The Clockwork Lounge, is like— a White man talking about Malcolm X or The Reverend Al Sharpton in a Harlem bar— shut the fuck up because there’s no way you can say the right thing. 

And then there’s Banksy— if you could delicately sledgehammer one of his graffiti masterpieces from the side of a building and put it back together like a jigsaw puzzle it might be worth millions.

Two Goombahs, owners of a pizza parlor in Hell’s Kitchen, did exactly that— bringing a fit-together Banksy graffiti piece, Cardinal Sin, chiseled from a building wall to a Manhattan art dealer in the back of a dump truck. The dealer walks outside to the parked truck, takes a look, and says,

I'll give u 60 bucks for it.

When it comes to graffiti there’s too much in the city. Most, the work of social misfits whacked on spray paint fumes. 

When New Yorkers see a subway covered with graffiti they shake their heads saying, 

another masterpiece.

Anyway, he's sitting at the bar in The Clockwork Lounge staring at a bumper sticker on the mirror that reads,

                  WORLD’S FAVORITE PUNK ROCK DIVE

The sticker has it’s own special brand of graffiti on it, written with Magic Marker in lousy penmanship reading, 

                   KEN SUCKS, KEN SUCKS, FUCK U KEN

He reckons Ken is the bartender and the loving words were written by a queer fan while Ken was busy in the men’s room.

He orders a boilermaker from the bartender and asks, 

are you Ken?

Yep, that'd be me.

I think you have an admirer, Ken. 

On his third drink, Henry eyeballs a radiant woman at the end of the bar. She's wearing a flannel shirt with jeans, and her hair is in rollers. He says, 

I’d like to buy the lady at the end of the bar a drink. 

Ken serves her another vodka martini. She stands with drink in hand, walking to Henry and sitting next to him saying, 

you're Henry Lucowski, I’ve been to your readings. Is it true you've been banned from village slams because of rotten prose?

They look at each other, laughing hardily,  bending at the stomach.

I’m Hannah Wilke, I’m an artist. He tells her,

I’ve seen your work at MoMa and been to your performances. What's with the wads of chewing gum on your face and body when you perform? She answers,

The gum is a perfect metaphor for the American woman—chew her up, get what you want out of her, throw her out, and pop in a new piece.

Henry finds her answer funny but doesn’t want to laugh because the wads of gum on her face and body during performances are legendary.

And, for Christ’s sake, he didn’t want to come off as sexist, knowing Hannah’s a radical feminist, but he floats a trick question anyway,  

can I call you baby? 

Only when we’re fucking Henry, never in public. Henry's still standing so he floats another one,

I’ve seen ultra-feminist slash radical lesbians at NYU who take testosterone to grow facial hair. She answers, 

Feminism isn’t about women with facial hair, it’s about systemic change for women in society. Honestly, I don’t need a man to tell me what to do, I only need his cock.

 

How can you separate one from the other? 

Yeah, that’s a problem. Henry let’s go to my loft, no sex though, I’m in a relationship,

Hannah,  you’re a national treasure.

Like Route 66 or The Cadillac Ranch? 

Yeah, that's right, let’s get a taxi. 

Hannah pays the bar tab, the new pals walk outside to Essex Street. She puts her forefingers in her mouth, whistling— giving off a high pitched shrilled sound causing his middle ear to ring.

A taxi stops and they get inside, sitting in the back seat. Hannah says to the hack, a Rastafarian who smells of ganja,

222 Bowery Street, the old YMCA.

The location is known as The Bunker. Once a YMCA rooming house for the down and out in the Bowery, and now a residence for famous artists— Claus Oldenburg, William Burroughs, Jean-Michael Basquiat, and occasionally Andy Warhol.

The Bunker is similar in character to The Chelsea Hotel, but the rooms are much larger, ten times the size of the Chelsea rooms. 

Hannah leads Henry through the arched doorway entrance of The Bunker. There's a white number over the entrance reading, 

                                                  222

They walk into the five-story brown brick building, he follows her up the steps to the 5th floor because Hannah believes The Bunker elevator is going to fall any day, something to do with astrology.

Room 505 is a large rectangular room with two arch windows, a hardwood floor, a quilt-covered mattress stacked on a homemade bed frame, a tiki bar strung with red pepper lights, and a coffee table in front of a sofa, both from Goodwill. 

She has painted the coffee table white with lined pink vaginas on it. Noticing he's staring at it she says,

I call the painted table, Marching Vaginas. 

Hannah mixes two vodka martinis at the tiki bar, hands one to Henry, and sits on the bed across from the red sofa where he's sitting, she asks him, 

will you give me a head massage?

She gets up from the bed, going to the sofa, lying face-up on it with her head in his lap. 

He fakes it, remembering what he can from Thai massage houses, rubbing her temples in a circular motion. Hannah says, 

Oh, that’s much better, I love it.

Henry, I want to do a performance piece with you tomorrow at midnight in the basement of MoMA— Venus and the Moon are coming together.

Sure, whataya have in mind?

Read the worst of your poetry, I'll place baskets of rotten fruit in the audience. As you're reading, I’ll sit in the audience, naked with wads of chewing gum on my face and body, and my hair in rollers. Then, I'll yell abusively, throwing fruit at you, encouraging the crowd to do the same.

He passes out on Hannah’s sofa and she sleeps on the bed. In the morning they go for coffee at Hester Street Cafe. 

After chocolate croissants and expresso, they go their own ways, he goes home. The plan is to meet in the basement of MoMA at 10 PM later that night.

Dutifully, Henry shows at 10, an hour and a half later he asks a MoMA usher,

is Hannah Wilke doing a performance piece at midnight? The usher says,

no, nothing scheduled.

Henry walks out of MoMA hailing a taxi, taking it to an all-night bar in the Bowery, The Last Second Saloon. 

Feeling dejected he sits alone in a corner booth, drinking boilermakers till he’s drunk silly, entertaining himself by watching the bums in the bar drink port, act out, and scream at each other, closing the dive at 6 AM. 

He never saw Hannah Wilke again.