Leather

In the early 70s, I bought a 65 Dodge Polara Station wagon with a V8 engine from Randy Smeltzer for 200 dollars. His family owned Smeltzer Leather, a factory on the Milwaukee River. 

They made leather clothes and purses, and, Randy gave me a pair of leather pants. You could wear them for months, occasionally dry cleaning them.

Bikers like the Outlaws, Bandidos, and Hells Angels had a unique approach to caring for leather. Pissing and puking on a new leather vest.

The Smeltzer factory belched the smoke of brewing chemicals, venting it through open windows with fans, and letting the goo bleed into Milwaukee River.  

Out for a drink at Ernst Bar, I tell Randy, 

your leather factory pollutes the river and the rest of the city, he says, 

it’s commerce Henry, the world needs quality leather products, 

Whataya gonna say? I tell him, 

I see Randy.

We ordered a pitcher of German beer.

Randy was a numerologist, I tell him, 

I slept with Cindy Waxman a week ago. 

So Randy does the numbers on Cindy Waxman with a pen on the back of a paper place mate, using calculus to do a numerical horoscope telling me,

she has the clap, 

I buy penicillin tablets from Walgreens, feeling like slut. 

At my East Side apartment, I pack a few things, leaving behind, furniture, pots, a TV, oriental carpets, owing 2 months' rent, 

minus the deposits.

I schlep a mattress, a woven straw mat, and pillows downstairs, fashioning an area to sleep in the wagon bed. 

Upstairs— I toss some clothes in a duffle bag.

I don't care for guns, knives, or brass knuckles, I had a Bowie knife which I threw in the Kinnickinnic River, watching it float south.

At a 7 11 in Waukegan, Illinois, I buy a styrofoam cooler, filling it with ice, beer, 2 pints of Jack Daniels, and some ham and cheese sandwiches.  

I read a short story by Ernst Lang, 

I drive through a tunnel on the bed of the Hudson River, take Highway 57 to 70, then 80 West listening to country music on the station wagon radio. 

George Jones, Merle Haggard, and Willy Nelson are my favorites, I like to braid my hair like Willy.

In rural Pennsylvania, I turn off the highway and parallel park at a cornfield, getting out of the car and picking a green ear of corn, pulling the pubic-like hair out, and husking the ear, the corn is rubbering and good for nothing.

Feeling car sick and bored with driving, I park my car at Toledo Municipal Airport, grab my duffle bag, abandoning the wagon and all the shit inside. 

At the airport, I buy a one-way ticket to Los Angeles on US Air. 

My seat's in the middle of the fuselage, next to a Catholic priest. I'm not interested in religion so we have little to say to one another. 

4 hours later the jet lands at LAX, I grab my bag at the baggage carousel, then catch a shuttle bus to the Sunset Strip, where I check in the Flamingo Motel, it's 2 stories with a swimming pool, the desk clerk asks, 

short or long time? I ask,

do you have a monthly rate? 

He gives me a monthly rate of 350 dollars.

After showering, I walk the Strip, where there's every kind of action your heart desires, it's an odd mix of people.

I step into Lal-LAh massage, asking the mamasan, 

how bout a middle-aged Filipina with a big ass? 

I get a straight massage because I can’t get it up. 

Needing a drink, I duck into the Uptown bar, sitting in a booth and ordering a pitcher of Miller Lite.

The batender says, 

my names Johnny, who are you?

Henry Lucowski, 

Johnny has hair like Elvis, dyed blue-black and slicked back. He says,

fella you look like Elvis’ can you tend bar, 

I sure can, 

Okay, you can work days starting tomorrow. 

So, the dye is cast, at 10 every morning after coffee, I smear sunblock all over my face and walk the blazing hot sidewalks of the strip to the Uptown Bar.

I was a sunblock fanatic because my Uncle Hank lost his nose to sinus cancer, instead of paying surgeons to rebuild it, he had an artist weld a metal nose, sanding, and shining it.

Uncle Hank would place the polished metal nose in his empty probosci socket, keeping it in place using a buckskin tie wrapped around his head. 

Losing your nose to cancer isn't easy for anyone.

Back Pain

 

While swimming at Dog Beach I threw my back out, wading ashore, I walk in pain.

I call 911 on my cell phone from the parking lot, when the first responders arrive I get in the back of the ambulance without assistance, laying on my back. 

When I reach Key West General Hospital the Er intern suggest I stay a night or 2. A nurse finds a vein in my left hand and inserts an IV, it's painless. Some people are freaked out by needles, but I didn’t flinch. 

My back problem was muscular, later, Don the bartender at the Hooch Bar on Duval asked me why I didn’t opt for back surgery and I say, 

Are you kidding Don? I wouldn’t let them touch my back with a scalpel. 

There are a number of types of back surgery—Foraminotomy, Discectomy, or disk replacement. Googling back surgery, I was surprised to see the operations are still commonly done today. 

As a kid in the 60s, it seemed like every man and his brother were getting their spinal cords operated on. 

Many doctors would recommend surgery whether the patient needed it or not, to make money— This a scam similar to the guy who goes house to house in the suburbs knocking on doors offering to tar driveways for a couple hundred bucks. If he gets a job he sprays on a coat of tar-colored paint in minutes, which is useless.

I requested a private room, willing to pay extra because the thought of being in a room with another patient who is shitting in a platinum bowl disgusts me. 

Once in my room laying in bed on my back, a shapely nurse comes in and I fantasize about putting my hand up her dress, but wouldn't dare.

She gives me 2 trigger point injections and 1 of morphine, the trigger point shots helped but the morphine was disappointing— I didn’t catch the train to junkville, but It relieved the pain. 

Getting shots of morphine called to mind William Burroughs's book Junky, these excerpts are priceless, 

When my wife saw I was getting the habit again, she did something she had never done before. I was cooking up a shot two days after I'd connected with Old Ike. My wife grabbed the spoon and threw the junk on the floor. I slapped her twice across the face and she threw herself on the bed, sobbing—

or,

I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness—

The following day I ring the call button, the nurse walks in and  I say, 

I want the doctor to discharge me now!

I realized the stiff and thin plastic-covered mattress was spurring on my back and I needed a drink. No booze allowed in the hospital except in the doctor's lounge.

The cashier walks into my room. My bill is 2500 dollars for one night, I transfer the money via cell phone banking. 

It wasn’t worth the dough, the pharmacy gives me a bag of pills, outside on my way to the Hooch Bar on Duvall, I hand the meds to a bum sitting on the sidewalk. 

At the bar I order a boilermaker, drop a shot of whiskey into a mug of beer, and down it, ordering another. The booze relieves my back pain better than medication.

An old surfer with blond hair wearing a pair of Hawaiian shorts, who's shirtless sits 2 stools away from me and avows loudly, 

I’m Crazy Horse, the poet laureate of Florida. 

I ask him, 

have you published any books hoss? 

My work is in my head I do spontaneous recitation, 

I tell him, 

Oh yeah, that’s what I figured, 

Crazy Horse stands on his bar stool to recite a poem for the bums in the dark bar.

the moon yells to the sun, 

sun what do you see? 

i see mister moon

 firing the imaginations  

of earth dwellers to smooch

and fornicate in their chevys

on saturn nights hidden 

 on  hilltops with 

bushes and waving palms

Don the bartender tells Crazy Horse, 

shut the fuck up with the bullshit,  I’ll  buy you a drink, whataya have, 

I’ll have what that guy, pointing at Henry, is drinking, a boilermaker.

Crazy Horse downs the drink in one gulp, and Henry buys him 2 more, the poet knocks em back and staggers out of the Hooch Bar to talk to the moon.

 Crazy Horse helped me forget my back pain, he put on quite a show. 

Modern Art, Flying, & Pole Dancing

 

 

Five more minutes, I thought. If I can lay here five more minutes and allow my food to digest that’s all I need. 

Then I’ll lay two pillows against the baseboard of the bed and write about New York City.

Performance Art is scheduled at MoMa this month and at the Rico Shoe Cafe. 

My flight leaves from Key West International Airport in the afternoon. 

It’s early winter in the city I pack sweat socks, long khakis, jungle boots, sweatshirts, and a field jacket.  

I dress like I’m going to war, riding the Vespa, parking it at the airport. 

At the TWA  counter, they weigh my bag, I beg the agent, 

give me a seat next to a beautiful woman, in her 50s, with a good shape, 

no problem sir, enjoy your flight. 

I have a drink at the Conch Lounge, a shot of Gold Tequila, then another, I’m a paranoid flyer, sure this plane, Flight 366, is going to crash. I freak out when the plane vibrates, shit can happen, rivets can fall out, wings can fracture.

One passenger, an old Japanese lady, sprang up, hitting her head on the coach compartment— knocked out with a concussion.

I read about Madame Nogasu in Modern Mechanics or Popular Aviation.

Madame Nogasu, never flew again. She was awarded a lifetime air pass on TWA and a settlement of 200,000 dollars.  

TWA was Howard Hughe’s airline, he wore long hair and a beard before the Beatles and was an obsessive-compulsive junky. 

Flight 366 takes off at 2:34 PM.

I sit in seat 27C, an aisle seat. 

A drag queen puts her large handbag in the coach compartment, steps over my legs sitting in the B seat next to me. 

She’s hot in a Cleopatra wig with purple lipstick, braless in a low-cut dress showing off her tit job.

We hit it off right away, they turn the seat belt light off at 20,000 feet, and the ladyboy, Thelma Lou, undoes my seatbelt, it tickles, I feel torrid, Thelma Lou says, 

don’t cum in your pants cowboy. 

Queers have talent, William Burroughs, and Tennessee Williams, were queer Gods.

The Night of the Iguana by Williams, I know the plot from start to finish. 

The Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon in The Night of the Iguana was bipolar and so was Tennessee Williams, who wrote the play and the screenplay. Writers write about themselves. 

I’m a manic depressive on medication, I don’t like to write about it, people don’t need to be educated on depression. 

Anyone who’s been depressed knows it feels like shit. Thelma Lou tells me,

I’m Cher in the drag show at the Tarzan Club.

You’ve got one hellova shape, Thelma Lou.

You’re a naughty boy, you like gay sex? 

No, I can’t get it up, gay or straight, I don’t like sex. 

Good for you, We are what we are, dumb, evil, brilliant, handsome, crippled, bent, or gifted. You're bent and pretty Henry. 

TWA flight blah, blah, blah lands and the passengers are in a frenzy to get off the fucking plane. 

Henry and Thelma Lou take a taxi to the Chelsea Hotel, she has an apartment on the top floor decorated like a Tiki Bar.

Later they go out, dressing warm. Hannah Wilkes’ show is at the Tarzan Club, it’s a go-go bar where tranny and straight women poll dance— a non-smoking place where you can drink, but bring plenty of money. 

We sit at a small metal table. 

It’s a spartan club, unlike the techno clubs in the city.  

There’s no doorman, no lines of people, anybody can get in, it's a club for anonymous people with mostly 80s music.

Henry and Thelma Lou walk to Hanna Wilkes who’s standing at the bar, her hair's in rollers and wrapped in a Gucci scarf, she's wearing jeans, boots, a mohair sweater, and a man's sport coat.

Can I buy you a drink, Miss Wilkes?

yeah, a martini,

he introduces himself and his friend, 

I'm Henry and she's Thelma Lou. Wilkes wonders,

are you artists? 

She’s a dancer and I write, are you going to perform tonight?

no, the owner doesn’t pay, the dancers live on tips, this is a dump, I’m not a stripper, I hate it, let's go to the Whitehorse. 

Hanna, Henry, and Thelma Lou walk 10 blocks to the Whitehorse, eating in a booth— steak, lobster, with caviar sauce pasta, and pitchers of 0.0 Heineken. They share a hash cookie for dessert. 

Henry pays the bill it's over 200 dollars.

They take a cab to Hannah's loft in the Hassidic neighborhood. 

Hannah unlocks a rusted metal door and they take a freight elevator to the 5th floor, entering a large brick and wood-beamed space with furniture and a bar. Her abstract paintings are on the walls. Hannah's work is soft and reflects nature. We drink rum and coke and the artist says desperately,

I want to write plays, it’s cheaper and not messy like painting.