In Cuba Dogs Run Free!

It was a fall day in 1983 and the gods were hot under the collar, taking it out on the city, seeding the overhead clouds with a beastly drizzle, blighting the earthlings below with inimical feelings.  

Henry working on a story, feeling itchy inside, thinking he inhaled something bad, maybe an eensy-weensy soul-eating creature resembling a Maine lobster that is having its way as it moves about in his internal physiology. Only the gods knew for sure and physicians couldn't help. 

Lucia his Cuban wife, returns from the salon, exuberantly walking into Henry’s office clutching her large Gucci handbag, her expression is animated as she says,

I’m so happy, I was walking home from Valencia’s Salon, and I got the feeling somebody was following me, I turned rapida, and I see a tiny perro, a Chihuahua! Darling the gods sent the bebe to me!

She reaches into her bag and pulls out a tiny tea-colored Chihuahua small enough to fit in a beer mug, cradling the tiny creature saying, 

I love her so much, su nombre es Mia!

A Chihuahua, the ultimate feminine fashion accessory for Lucia— like Elizabeth Taylor who lovingly brought her Malta everywhere saying, 

I’ve never loved a dog like this in my life. It’s amazing. Sometimes I think there’s a person in there … There’s something to say for this kind of love— it’s unconditional. 

Henry sensed there wasn't anything in the world that would separate Lucia and Mia and he says,   

I’m all for it babe, I love dogs, but someone is surely looking for Mia and what kind of doggy-parents are we? You might lose Mia when you're loaded! Leering she says, 

eso es horrible Henry, I don’t care what you say, Mia is mine, mine mine! I love her!

That was it, he knew he was powerless — a mother's love for her baby rescinds all logic. 

As he works on his 2nd pitcher of mojitos, Lucia leaves the apartment to go to Wagging Tales Pet shop and Groomer in Queens buying Mia—dresses, beds, bowls, bones, making sure the new baby is, bathed, perfumed and manicured. On the way to Wagging Tales, she had looked around for missing pet posters on the trees or light posts, seeing a few but none with Mia’s petite canine mug on them. 

The phone rings, it’s Dave Spleen and before Henry can say hello, Dave is blabbering quick time, it was no secret that he was a speed freak.

Henry baby, our readers loved your bit on heroin, you touched folks, junk sales are up in the city! Just kidding, anyway my man, how bout a bit on homelessness in the Big Apple? Take your toothsome Latina wife to the village tonight and have dinner on me!

What bullshit, Dave Spleen was so tight that he breathed through his nose to keep his teeth from wearing out, the big shot often said— go have a meal on me, but for motormouth Spleen talk was cheap. 

Lucia back at the apartment with the new baby Mia, who has had her nails done and is sporting a lovely dress, Henry teasing says,

darling, Dave Spleen called and he mentioned the circus is in town and a company of dancing dogs escaped, should I call the circus, maybe there’s a reward for your baby! And she says, 

Don’t you dare, My little Mia can’t dance, she has 2 left feet.

The roots of New York City’s homeless problem can be traced back to economic hardships triggered by the Great Depression. By the 60s lack of affordable housing and policies of the mental health community affected the plight of the homeless. 

During this period city institutions released 60% of the 90,000 incarcerated patients at the behest of the NYC Department of Mental Health to cut cost by treating the released patients on an outpatient basis with new miracle drugs such as Prozac, Moban, and Polexin. The bold move was a washout that condemned hoards of Big Apple mental patients to the hazards of living on the streets.

By the 70’s the sight of homeless folks sleeping on the street was commonplace, many communing in the Bowery and other skid row areas. At this time the city set up emergency shelters in the Bowery, but this was like adding salt to a septic wound, the conditions inside the shelters where foul and many nightly residents caught tuberculosis, crabs or lice.       

At present, the conditions in the shelters have improved and shelter is available for those who want it, but many don’t want it, preferring to live free from the rules of the shelters such as curfews and sobriety. 

One Saturday morning the streets of Kips Bay, Manhattan resembled the Night of the Living Dead— A man whose face looked like it was covered with cow patties was passed out at the entrance of a playground with one leg resting on his walker. Another guy was snoring blissfully on a bed made of dirty seat cushions with a football as a pillow in the doorway of an empty store. And, others were laying on the sidewalks so that passer-byes had to step around them— of course, this kind or scene is nothing new for New Yorkers. 

The homeless or bums as they were once called are responsible for a lot of problems in the city such as—verbal and physical assaults, defecating on sidewalks or in doorways, whoring and petty crimes.

In the end, it will be easier to find a cure for HIV or cancer than to end homelessness in the city. Many of the surviving homeless lot gave up caring a long time ago, using cheap booze and dope to endure the wretchedness of street living. 

Homeless folks are polar-opposites of the wealthy homeowners in the city who detest them because they’re an eyesore and a new shelter in the neighborhood means property values will depreciate. Big Apple rich can be a heartless lot, boguu money desensitizes some.  

One solution might be to put the cities homeless in a rocket ship fired to the moon, then setting up a colony of module units and tents, and providing monthly lunar drops of food and other necessities.  

As Henry wraps up the bit on the city's homeless, he wonders if his fan base will take heed of the flat and jejune statistical story— a story that's a far cry from the enchantment of magic realism or the camp absurdities of his daily life with Lucia. 

As the sun is setting in Queens, Lucia dances into Henry’s office with little Mia following walking Chihuahua style, alternately lifting her front legs high, prancing like a Lipizzan, Lucia asks, 

darling, where will we take Mia tonight? Henry quizzically saying, 

Does this mean our social life is going to revolve around Mia? Pouting Lucia answers,

Mia is my comfort pet, we help each other!

They clean up and dress for their night out, Henry considering pet-friendly venues, for Lucia though, pet-friendly was of little concern, because she couldn't imagine anyone not loving her little Mia.    

Henry reckoned the only way to avoid bringing Mia everywhere was to buy another Chihuahua to keep her company at home when the couple went out.  

Lucia pulls a black A-line skirt over her head to her waist and zips it, then putting on a black t-shirt with pink lettering that reads,   

                                 O.C.D.

                              Obsessive

                             Chihuahua 

                               Disorder 

Henry wearing a black pin-striped Oxford shirt, and faded blue jeans. Little Mia is wearing her new pink tutu and her nails are painted pink to match. 

The threesome walk to Flushing Street Station, catching the A-train to the Village, Mia is safely tucked into Lucia’s large bag, occasionally poking her little head out for air and a look-see. They de-train at Astor Place Station in the Village and walk to a Rico’s, an Italian Restaurant with an outdoor cafe, getting seated straight away as a youngish hipster, white shirt, black pants brings menus, Henry orders, 

let’s see? A pitcher of Peroni Beer, a Caprese salad, Risotto Romano, and some Penne Milanese! 

As they sit and drink beer, Dave Spleen happens to be walking by on 11th Street with his wife Goldy, they sit down with Henry and Lucia for a drink, and Henry pulling Dave's chain says,

Dave, are you going to make good on the dinner invite? Reaching into his pocket looking flushed Dave says, 

Jesus, I forgot my wallet, can you believe it? Goldy and I are on our way to dinner at the in-laws, next time for sure.    

Then Goldy, who's allergic to canine saliva sneezes, spooking Mia who barks and then jumps out of Lucia’s bag to the ground, going at Dave, nipping him on his calf, Lucia promptly picks up Mia and says to Dave, 

you know what they say, if your dog doesn’t like someone, you probably shouldn’t either, Dave then says, 

Has the little mutt had a rabies shot? And Lucia answers, 

we just got her, she hasn’t been to the vet yet, to be on the safe side, get the shots Dave, all 30, it won’t hurt much! He abruptly jumps up and says,

Come on Goldy, let’s get outta here!

Lucia saw through Dave and she didn’t like phonies. Henry tolerated him because he was keen on writing for the freewheeling NYC rag, HEADBANGER Magazine—the cities last surviving free press magazine from the 60s. Dave had shortcomings, but he hadn't missed press time in 25 years. 

As Dave and Goldy leave Rico’s dinner is served, the couple enjoys the food, Mia is back in the large Gucci bag, enjoying the small bits of food Lucia feeds her, particularly the prosciutto cheese and bits of buttered Italian bread. 

After dinner they catch a taxi to Central Park, running into traffic on 6th Avenue, and finally reaching the park, getting out of the cab and walking the rolling walkways, little Mia following Lucia. After 20 minutes they tire and sit on a bench, Henry lights a joint and looks up into the sky, musing as he says,  

I wonder what's out there, beyond the stars? It could be anything, nobody knows really, some think they know, but they're just guessing, and most don't care at all because they're busy too thinking who the Giants are going to play on the weekend or what's for dinner. Lucia laughs saying, 

or have you ever thought that the cell structure of a tiny speck of fuzz caught between the lips of my labia could be a universe?  Henry laughing riotously says,

Yes, no doubt about it, your pussy is MY universe!

As they're laughing, a park ranger approaches and says, 

good evening my name is Officer Dick, earlier I saw you walking your dog, and your dog was unleashed, I will inform you that this is a violation of Central Park Ordinance 6352949, which reads as follows,

Officer Dick hands them a printed card that reads, 

Dogs are allowed off-leash when the Park is open 9:00 am to 1:00 am when the Park closes. Dogs must be on-leash at all times from 9:00 am until midnight, depending on the day of the month. 

Henry reads the card and says, 

wait a second officer, firstly, little Mia is a comfort pet, secondly, would you be kind enough to interpret this antithetical, Catch-22, can but can’t, horse shit ordinance? Officer Dick says, 

watch your language sir, we have an ordinance against foul language in the park you know! As for Ordinance 

6352949, odd days are leash-free and even days aren't. Today is an even day so unless your dog is a city certified comfort pet, I’m going to write you up. Henry wondering, 

I didn’t know you censored language in Central Park? Is there a language patrol unit? 

Officer Dick writes them up and hands Henry the ticket saying, 

the park closes at midnight, next time leash your pet!

As they walk out of Central Park to catch a taxi back to Queens, Lucia says, 

in Cuban dogs run free!  

You See THAT, in THIS?

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.