The Subway to Times Square is a Masterpiece

Henry up at 10 AM, ready for breakfast— a Veggiemite sandwich on rye toast with Belgium mustard and a boilermaker with a raw egg inside. 

After a couple of boilermakers, he could get the Veggiemite down. It was awful stuff, concocted by the British chef, Xavier Marcel Boulestin in the 1930s to get revenge on Australia for leaving the British Commonwealth in 1901. Nobody in the world could handle the fishy caca-like odor and smack of Veggiemite apart from macho ozzy jackeroos with knackers the size of red kangaroos and Henry after a few boilermakers.  

Dave Spleen the editor of the irrelevant underground rag, Headbanger had asked Henry to do a piece on Hunter S. Thompson. Spleen would call him on the phone and say,

Hey babe, can you do a bit on Hunter Thompson in the next 24 hours?

Dave Spleen, the hippest man in the world, asking him if he would do a bit on this or that— without any mandate and big chatter because Henry needed latitude. 

Some folks say Gonzo journalism was dropped from Mars to Earth sometime between 1971 and 1972 when Hunter S. Thompson was hired by Sports Illustrated to cover a motorcycle race in Las Vegas.

Hunter opens the story by documenting the list of stimulates he takes with him, mescaline, tequila, a case of Budweiser, LSD, 2 ounces of weed, uppers, downers, and anything else you can envision. 

There was scant reference in the 2500 word story to the motorcycle race, instead, it chronicles Hunter’s trip to Las Vegas, a high octane, dope-fueled rampage into the lizard kingdom.   

Hunter says it like this,

a savage journey into the heart of the American dream.

The all-American magazine for jocks, Sports Illustrated didn’t accept the story and didn’t pay Hunter, but when Jann Wenner, editor of Rolling Stone magazine, read it and his reactions was,

we were flat knocked out!

Wenner hires Hunter as a freelance correspondent, their relationship goes on to become a legendary roller coaster ride. Hunter’s essays for Rolling Stone were second to none. All of the writers at the magazine, then and now are mere shadows to Hunter.    

Hunter, the apologist of freak power goes on to pour hefty doses of Gonzo coulis on American politics, causes de célébrité, conspiracy theories and high profile sporting events for Rolling Stone, as well as writing his own books—Kingdom of Fear, Generation of Swine, The Great Shark Hunt and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Fear and Loathing was later made into a Hollywood film starring his close friend, Johnny Depp.  

In 1971 Hunter lost his job at Rolling Stone Magazine. He and Ralph Steadmen were sent to Zaire at great expense by Jann Wenner to cover the Ali, Foremen fight. Hunter was on the outs with Rolling Stone before he left for Zaire and this assignment was his last chance to redeem himself. 

The day of the fight Hunter and Ralph Steadmen 
got thoroughly ripped at their hotel on a bottle of Jules Robin Vintage Cognac—only the gods know how they got their hands on it in Muslim Zaire, but some say it was a gift from the countries dictator, Mubuto Sese Seko.  

The reprobate duo never made it to Rumble in the Jungle as Ali called the fight. The adolescent in Hunter just didn’t feel like going. In the end, there was no story for Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone magazine on the greatest sporting event of the 20th Century.

Then his second wife, Anita Thompson left him because he brought hookers and groupies to his house outside of Aspen that was called the Owl Farm, parading them around naked in front of her.

There were a number of things that lead to it—constant boozing and doping, the divorce from Anita, but Hunter lapses into chronic depression which is followed by another bout of writer's block, which he had experienced on and off during his writing career. 

When the final count is in he only knows why he was depressed and couldn't write, but on February 20, 2005, Hunter S. Thompson walks outside to a picnic table at the Owl Farm and sits down at a wooden picnic table and blows his brains out.  

He speaks of the why of the suicide in his suicide note.

No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun—  anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax – This won’t hurt.

Henry sends the finished Hunter S. Thompson story to Headbanger at 9 PM by fax, it was so hot that it set a Queen’s telephone pole ablaze! 

Anyway, he had been drinking Bud Light all day and was hungry.

He dresses for the cool fall night in a leather coat with a scarf, thick socks, and red hightop Converse All-Stars. He would go to Jimmy's Dinner in Times Square to eat a massive breakfast  ceremoniously in honor of Hunter S. Thompson, who often said,

breakfast is the only meal worth eating!

Breakfast a sacrament Hunter carried out in a prescribed order, but that’s another story.

To save time Henry would forgo walking and would take the subway from Queens to Times Square. He walks a short way to Rawson Street Station and scrambles down the steps into the subway tunnel. The station was painted drab grey and green, he walks by a bum passed out who is soaked in urine, lying on a bench, some might call this local color. 

He goes to the platform and stands close the tracks staring at and fantasizing about stepping on the 3rd rail, wondering if his rubber souled Converse All-Stars would interrupt the current flow from frying him to a crisp?

Then the number 7 train to Times Square arrives, the brakes give off a repulsive high-pitched sound like chalk squeaking on a blackboard. 

Henry boards the number 7 train, the cars are covered with graffiti, some New Yorkers referred to the spray-painted trains as masterpieces— their wrath was masked in humor.

He sits next to an old lady who is nodding out again and again. She was struggling to stay awake because sleeping in public was faux pas for the silent generation. When number 7 hits 49th Street Station at Times Square, Henry nudges the old girl on the shoulder waking her, she thanks him and gets off the train walking out ahead of him. 

As he exits the station stairwell he is hit in the face with a gust of cool night air and the smell of beer, burnt rubber, and hot tamales, he feels alive. 

Henry gets to Junior’s Dinner at 9 45 PM, he walks inside and sits at the counter on a swivel stool ordering grits, fried eggs, cornbread, black-eyed peas, poached catfish and a vodka and orange juice, with plenty of hot sauce. 

After dinner and more than a few drinks, he walks to Chinatown to puff opium in the basement of Lee’s Laundry. 

At Lees, he goes to the alley-side of the 4 level brick building to an unpainted metal door and knocks hard. The door swings open and he is greeted by an elderly Chinese woman, May, who is always there. May is dressed in a drab dark blue traditional Chinese suit, wearing her grey hair in a single braid. She says to him,

Henwee, not see in rong time!

He follows May down some metal steps to the basement, it is dark but he can see a dozen or so people, black guys, Chinamen and 3 or so ladyboys in dresses, all passed out and with their heads on wooden blocks and laying on rice mates. She leads him to his rice mate that also has a block to lay your head on when your out, he sits down and waits a half hour until May returns with an opium pipe, the bowl is packed tight with black tar opium that is rounded off at top. She lights the pipe and Henry puffs away until he nodes outs.  

Going to the opium den in the basement of Lee’s Laundry was raw and rugged, the place had been open for years and was owned by the Chinatown mafia or Pen Wang who paid off New York Citie's finest to look the other way. 

There was a Chinese bouncer who sat at a desk in a small dirty brick room beyond the den who helped May pack the opium into pipe bowls and clean the pipes, he looked like an NFL offensive lineman. Smoking junk was at all like boozing, Lee’s patrons weren’t looking for a fight, they were there to forget, dream and because they were hooked on junk.  

Henry off in a dream, laying on a rice mate with his head on a small wood antique block. He dreams he is flying with angels in Elysium hovering as he waits to descend as a spirit to earth to be placed in a mother's womb.

  

Flying with angels on all sides was a feeling beyond divine, a feeling of being surrounded by love and wholehearted acquiescence on all sides.  

It was the stuff of Dante’s Divine Comedy. 

Then, angelic Henry wakes in his mother’s womb, feeling nurtured and peaceful until he hears screaming as his head is wrenched by a large mitt and he is pulled out of his out of her womb only to be blinded by bright light and slapped on his ass by the same meat hook that pulled him out. 

3 years later his mother, Helen Lucowski takes him on an outing to Coney Island Beach. They are on the Boardwalk and Helen runs into some friends she knows who offer her a beer and she starts sucking them down and partying. 

In the meantime, little Henry has worked his way out of his stroller and is walking around. He jumps into the sea, he begins to go under, not trying to save himself, everything goes into a spiral around him and then he sees a light at the end of a tunnel and he hears happy voices and chatter, he is back again flying with angels in Elysium, it is glorious. 

Then Helen notices he has flown the coop and lets out a big scream, a lifeguard comes and dives off the Boardwalk and pulls little Henry out, resuscitating him, little Henry looks up and blows out seawater mixed with puke into the lifeguard's face and thinks,

RATS, back again!

Girly Bouquet and Tickle

Henry, doin time, gettin down, gettin on n goin roun, cursin n squirmin, excludin n usurp-in— nothin.

Oh, home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play, where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day.

Where the air is so pure, and the zephyrs so free and the breezes so balmy and light, that I would not exchange my home on the range, for all of the cities so bright.

It was noon in Queens, Henry was working on an assignment for the irrelevant underground rag, Headbanger. His editor, Dave Spleen had asked him to write a short piece on Ezra Pound. 

Ezra Pound, up on high with a few other celebrated contributors of 20th Century English language poetry. 

  

The only poetry that should be allowed in a state is hymns to the gods and paeans in praise of good men—so saith the long-headed salt of the Plaka, Socrates!

A poet’s political rants can be on the odd occasion threatening to western political governments. But, Ezra Pound rattled the green twig of the US authorities during the second world war when he delivered a series of Fascist broadcasts on Roman radio hailing Herr Hitler for,

having seen the Jew puke in the German democracy.

In May of 1945 Pound was arrested in Italy and locked up in a 6ft by 6ft cell that he called the guerrilla cage, consequently having a nervous breakdown. The US Army then transferred him to Washington DC, where he would go on trial for treason. 

A plea of insanity was accepted by the court which had no intentions of sending the lionized American poet to jail. He was moved to Saint Elizabeths Hospital outside of DC, where he would stay for the next 12 years. The hospital a place he coldly referred to as the bughouse. When he was released from the bughouse he moved back to Italy where he would stay the rest of his life. 

Unlike many noted poets of the 20th Century, Ezra Pound wasn’t alcoholic, but he was hounded throughout his poetic life by Fascist convictions and mental fragility— fortuitously delivered from it all when in his inner sanctum, writing. 

Pound’s magnum opus, Cantos, is an incomplete work that is over 800 pages, with 116 sections. In the 1920s and later he wrote haiku or hokku asian style poetry, much of which was only one sentence. For example,

In a Station of the Metro

 The apparition of these faces in the crowd:

Petals on a wet, black bough.

By 9 PM Henry had finished his piece for Headbanger. Upon finishing his research on Ezra Pound he was left with the feeling that Pound was a woeful brain box who didn’t have sense enough to get out of the rain. 

Anyway, he hadn’t been to Chaim’s deli for a coon’s age so he gussies up some and hops, skips and jumps a few blocks to the deli in downtown Queens. 

Chaim’s Deli was built in the early 60s, it was a single level brick building occupying the corner of a downtown street, the entire corner was windowed. Henry sat at his usual booth which had a good view of the street. Ruby his sometimes woman and regular waitress comes to his table and says,

Henry, where the flying fuck have you been? I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age! 

Wondering what particular parlance— in a coon’s age was? He says,

a coon’s age?  I was here a month ago, you could be right in that the average raccoon’s lifespan is a year due to disease and human interference, you know when the coons burrow into wooden awnings or get caught eating out of a garbage can, life is tough for raccoons everywhere these days.

Ruby looks at Henry in an odd way and says,

What are you on Henry, have you completely lost it? 

He orders a pastrami sandwich and a double Jack Daniels and soda, his head cast down, feeling like he had stepped in raccoon shit.

Ruby laughs and walks to the kitchen. 

He drinks 9 or so double Jack Daniels and sodas feeling contrite, knowing Ruby was keen on getting his goat.

Henry leaves Chaim’s Deli at 1030 PM, loaded to boot and ignoring Ruby—a childish attempt to get even with her. 

Leaving Queen’s, walking, and eventually reaching the Bowery. A bum they call Shit Can comes up to him and gets in his face, breathing on him. Shit Can’s breath smelled like rocket fuel and puke hybrid, He then screams at Henry as though Henry was deaf,

Hey Bud, howza bout yus and me get us a can of Sterno and make us some smoke to drink? There aint nothin like it, it’ll knock yus out!

Henry pulls himself away from Shit Can, saying,

That shit will kill you, you know! Do you like Jack Daniels Shit Can? 

Shit Can’s face had scar tissue on top of scar tissue from being punched by the other bums. He looks up at Henry, grimacing weakly and says,

I don’t reckon I ever had any of it. 

Henry walks to the closest bar, a place called 

King Eddy’s Saloon and buys 2 pints of Jack Daniels wrapped tightly in a paper bag and gives the bum a pint.  

Shit Can lights up and looks at Henry like he's Jesus feeding the multitude. 

As he is leaving the Bowery he looks up into the sky, seeing a shooting star, feeling good inside, as though the Gods were looking down on the city and something big was going to happen. 

By midnight he was in Times Square longing for a taste of girly bouquet and tickle. As he is walking Times Square he sees a red neon sign that reads,

ROSELAND BALLROOM 

Taxi Dance Hall  

He goes to the ticket booth in the front of the hall and the lady vendor says,

one dance 3.50, ten dances for 30 bucks,

Henry buys a whopping 30 bucks worth of tickets, he couldn’t dance and cared little for it, but he wanted to get close and grind with a gal in a dress, wearing makeup who smelled like a rose. 

Roseland Ballroom was a large open hall that doubled as a roller rink. The dance floor was made of wood, scuffed up plenty, Henry reckoned the ballroom was built in the 20s. 

There was a mess of card-tables and chairs surrounding the dance floor, which was divided in half by a tall hanging red velvet curtain that had a pronounced musty smell. Burning some incense would have been a nice touch, but you could hardly call the joint, hip. 

Henry shocked, it was boys on one side and girls on the other. The girls attractive in their rented silk dresses and made up real nice, but the guys? Well, you could say they were an odd lot—old guys, younger guys with pot-marked faces, guys that limped and butt-ugly guys. 

It was obvious the common denominator was— buying a ticket for a dance at a taxi dance hall was the only way they were going to get close to a woman.  

The music came from a couple mobile speakers that were in front of the moldy red velvet curtain. It was slow tempo, old dance riffs, Guy Lombardo and Lawrence Welk stuff, no up-tempo cha-chas or boogie— the misfits who came to Roseland Ballroom were there for one reason, to get up close with a woman and grind it out, and if they were lucky, a dry hump.  

Henry like the others, a misfit, wanting to get close to a woman without jumping through a lot of hoops. Well, he walks over to the girl's side, the gals sitting with blank looks on their faces. He notices the only black girl in the group and hands her all his tickets, she smiles as she places the tickets in her dress pocket, saying, 

Hi sweety, I’m Butterfly, what’s your name? Do you like slow dancin? 

Henry smiles and says,

Why, I’m Henry doll, but I gotta tell ya, I’m not much of a dancer, then Butterfly says,

You just follow me Henry and hold on tight baby!

He was hot for Butterfly already, she was cocoa-skinned with dyed blond hair in double braids, a body build from the dance floor up and a huge chest and bum to boot. 

She was discreet but she was a pro and she wanted to give Henry a go for his money. He had picked her knowing that black women were golden. 

As they get to the dance floor, Penny Serenade by the Guy Lombardo Orchestra was playing. They start dancing in classic ballroom position, minutes later Henry pulls her close to him, rubbing against her, Butterfly didn’t resist.  

By the 10th dance, he wanted more tickets, it was 130 AM. Butterfly says she could sell him tickets so he buys 10 more. He was turgid from grinding on her, he wanted to fuck Butterfly and he says,

What time does this place close? I don’t know if I can grind much longer, I’m getting horny, then she says,

2 AM, we can go get a cheap room in Harlem, but it’s gonna cost you! Henry says,

How much? And Butterfly says, 

150 per hour, 

he agrees, at the same time the ballroom closes Henry runs out of tickets. 

The two get a taxi to Harlem and go to a cheap hotel called the Fifth Avenue Deluxe, Butterfly gets a short time rate. 

The room was simple, just a bed, a toilet and a desk with a chair and a mirror. They strip off their clothes quickly, once in bed Butterfly lights a joint, Henry has the pint of Jack Daniels he bought in the Bowery. She goes down oh him, he shoots a load in her mouth in a few minutes and then turns her over doggy style and they ball like crazy for another 20 minutes or so. 

After awhile, Henry dresses and heads for the door, saying,

That was great babe, I suppose we could have talked some, but I got so turned on dancing with you at the ballroom, you know what I mean!

Butterfly a cool lady laughs, Henry hits the bricks, walking back to Queens. 

As he walks, he looks into the night sky which is lit up by the light bouncing off the skyscrapers. It was New York City, a fall night sometime between 1970, there was just nothing like it anywhere!

Ordinance 547981

It was one of those days, it was the dog days of summer, sometime between 1970 and 1980. 

11 AM, Henry sitting in front of his IBM Electric typewriter in his apartment, aired-out and contented, lost in the creative process as a small table fan on the floor blew a steady stream of cool air on him. The sound of the swaying table fan was hypnotic. He had made some lemonade which he mixed with Jack Daniels. 

Earlier, that morning over coffee he had read The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, a short read, 277 pages.  

Anyone who went to high school has read The Catcher in the Rye, usually assigned as a text in the sophomore year. 

The Catcher in the Rye, recounting adolescence angst, underage drinking, depression and lost love. Henry reckoned assigning Catcher to fifteen-year-olds was like pouring grain alcohol on a blazing campfire. 

He had read Catcher when he was fifteen but the affect on him wasn’t fiery, it was much the opposite, moreover, he felt solace knowing Holden Caulfield was out there busted flat and boozing, going through a rite of passage— a grand and marvelous initiation to adulthood. 

J.D. Salinger wrote The Catcher in the Rye in 1951, thereafter withdrawing from the world.

He was  hypersensitive sort who thought too much, a guy obsessed with himself, quack religions and health food who built walls around his life to keep the world out. 

Salinger was an oddball and a gifted writer—  but Henry wasn’t a fan. The two were unalike, Henry open to it all, knocking down the walls and letting the freaks in.      

Henry happy that his Catcher and J.D. Salinger foray was over. He had read Catcher twice in his life and wouldn't read it again— let’s leave it at that. 

At sundown, he dresses and cleans up, it was 8 PM and he was hungry so he walked the short distance to Chaim's Deli.

When he got to Chaim’s Deli, he saw a sign in the window that read, 

CLOSED FOR PASSOVER

Henry didn’t know Chaim was religious, but, others had warned him to beware of religiosity because it could strike you down at any time without warning, he was a recovering Catholic and serene atheist.

He catches a taxi to Manhattan and goes to a Thai restaurant called Pad Thai, going inside and sitting at the bar, ordering a pint of Sangsom whiskey and some soda. The piped in Essan music was gentle and it was relaxing—he looks around the joint seeing that the Thai waitresses were in all respects, from head to toe, stunning. His Uncle Fredrick, a Viet Nam Veteran who had done R & R time in Bangkok always said that Thai women were the most beautiful women in the world.

He orders egg rolls and only eats one. He then finishes the pint off and leaves Pad Thai, waiing each waitress as he passes, the girls smiling sweet smiles that could thaw ice.

It was 10 PM and most folks where home in bed watching Johnny Carson on TV. Henry didn’t have a TV, but he listened to Met’s games on WFAN, day games only because it was a neurotic necessity for him to be in the city at night— New York City at night was his muse.

As he walks through the city-canyons of Manhattan he feels both humbled and awe-struck. It was a city where good existed side by side with bad, bums sleeping in doorways, the rich, the famous and the hardworking middle-class, all of them hungry for and wanting one thing or the other. 

He ends up at Jimmy’s Corner in Times Square, the bar was rectangular shaped like a hallway in an apartment building, the walls were lined with Christmas lights, dollar bills and oddball pictures in cheap frames of sports and celebrity memorabilia.  

The bartender, a black guy with a silver mustache and shortly cropped grey hair greets Henry as he sits at the bar saying,

Howzit broh? Check out our menu.

Henry orders fried clams, potato tots, and a boilermaker, the place feels good to him. Soul and blues music could be heard from the speakers on the walls, the music was so loud that you couldn’t have a conversation, as a result, folks were shaking their heads and talking with hands a lot.  

After eating and a few drinks, Henry heads to the men’s room to snort some cocaine. There is a handsome woman with a shapely body standing there looking in the mirror, she was wearing a business suit and black heels. Henry says, 

Sorry sweetie, I thought this was the men’s room, then she says laughing,

Sorry, I honestly thought this was a gender-neutral loo handsome.

Henry locks the door behind him and  lays some hefty lines down on a small pocket mirror that he places on the sink saying,

I’m Henry Lucowski, maybe you've seen my short stories in the irrelevant rag Headbanger, she then says after snorting a line,

no, I haven’t read Headbanger, it sounds like a liberal rag, I’m a card-carrying Republican, let's not talk politics Henry, oh, my name is Audrey Cummings, he then says,

let’s get outta here Audrey, the music is too loud and I want to talk to you.

The two walk down 8th Avenue to Central Park, going into the park and then sitting on a bench near Azalea Pond, Audrey talks some about her life saying,

I’ve never married, I guess you could say I’m married to my work, I’m an assistant to Alderman Steven Matteo, one of two Republicans on the City Council, then Henry says, 

Nice, are you a virgin? Audrey says,

oh no Henry, not hardly, I love sex, it’s beautiful, he then says bluntly as he pulls her closer to him,

Do you like nature babe? Getting nude in the bush? Audrey says,

Oh my God yes, Henry!

They walk a few steps to grassy patch that is between some bushes and the water, then laying down. Henry lifts her skirt up over her head and rips her pantyhose open, then going down on her, his cock is uber hard, he goes inside her and she screams, as they begin to get it on they are blinded by a flashlight. It is a Park Ranger who says,

Fornication is strictly prohibited in Central Park under Ordinance 547981, I’m going to have to take you in, Henry says,

I just wanna know, did Sheriff Taylor give you your bullet this morning Barney? The Park Ranger says,

OK, smart ass that’s enough lip outta you!

Audrey and Henry walk with the Park Ranger to the Central Park Jail, a small holding cell, and office, Audrey says, 

The ticket is no problem Henry when I go to work tomorrow at City Hall I will take care of it. 

They were in Central Park Jail for an hour or so and then released, Audrey tells Henry,

I’m tired dear, gotta work tomorrow, call you soon, bye sweets!

She gives him a hug and walks away as she stuffs the ticket into her purse. 

He never saw Audrey again, he looked for her at Jimmy’s Corner a few nights the following week without luck. It was clear that getting busted with her knickers down in the bush during coitus was humiliating for the Audrey.

He didn’t think about that night the rest of the summer or ever again. It was just another memory for him that he would file in the trash.

It wasn't that Henry didn't feel anything, but a cold heart was a safe heart. 



  

Me Padre, la Cucaracha

Henry was naked and sitting cross-legged in front of his IBM electric typewriter, the windows in his Queen’s apartment were wide open and the curtains blowing wildly. It was noon, sometime between 1970 and 1980, springtime in the New York City. City earth was thawing, becoming pulpy as waking seeds that would grow into flowers broke open. 

He remembered reading Hemingway in high school. Hemingway a true grit writer, manly, a guy who would spend hours on a fishing boat reeling in a Blue Marlin, the father of the short sentence. 

Reading in high school and then college Henry became familiar with opening paragraphs like this one in Farewell to Arms.

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.

Henry sips on a Jack and soda as he reads Hemingways opening paragraph, wondering if it was a teaser? 

He picks up a copy of Phillip Exley’s A Fan’s Notes to look at Exley’s opening paragraph. 

On Sunday, the eleventh of November, 196—, while sitting at the bar of the New Parrot Restaurant in my hometown, Watertown, New York, awaiting the telecast of the New York Giants—Dallas Cowboys football game, I had what, at the time, I took to be a heart attack.

Exley’s opening paragraph a stunner, it roused Henry, it was truly marvelous—short and succinct. He tells you where he is, what he is doing and what kind of guy he is. The heart attack which turns out to be a nervous breakdown is an event he builds his story on.  

Hemingway’s opening paragraph speaks of the natural environment he lived in and of the soldiers marching by, not much more. Henry thought the paragraph was vague, giving you just enough to spark your interest. 

He wonders if his opening paragraph was like Exley’s, or like Hemingway’s and Exley’s, or unlike both.

This proving that a writer is dumb-fucked when it came to critiquing his own work.

Reading all three of the opening paragraphs and not knowing who the authors were, you might say they were all on par. You might like Henry’s paragraph more than Hemingways.  

It was 8 PM, Henry still naked, puts on a pair of baggy khaki shorts tied at the middle with a rope instead of a belt because he didn’t own a belt, a Met’s t-shirt with a Hawaiian shirt over it and an old straw hat that was ruffled at the rim. 

After walking a few blocks he reaches Chaim’s Deli. The deli was a single level brick building occupying the corner of a downtown street, the entire corner was windowed. Henry sat at his usual booth which had a good view of the street. Ruby his sometimes woman and regular waitress comes to his table and says,

Henry, not bein cheeky or nothin, but you look like a clown. He says,

yeah, a clown trapped in the body of a male stripper, they both laugh and Ruby says,

whataya have sexy? Henry says,

in honor of clowns everywhere, I’ll have a head of stepped on and dirty old lettuce, some rotten bananas, and a large multicolored sucker on a wooden stick to hammer other clowns with, Ruby says,

Henry, you’re such an ass! And he says,

OK, babe, how bout a pastrami sandwich on toasted rye with mustard, some well done french fries, cole slaw and a Jack and Coke.

After eating he says goodbye, pays his bill and leaves. 

It was a spring night in New York City, pure magic. You could smell a mixture of barbecue, burning incense and spilled beer in the air.      

Henry on his way to Manhattan, thinking to himself—

Everybody in the city is going to get laid tonight except me.

It takes him an hour to walk to Lower Manhattan, he goes to Chinatown. He sees a three-story brown brick building with a bar on the first level. The joint has no name, no sign, he can see dim red light inside. 

He walks in thinking it might be a whore house and sits at the bar next to a few resident barflies. They are drunks full of regret, down on their luck, boozing for whatever reason. He sees a printed sign taped to the mirror that reads—

A BEER AND A SHOT TWO BUCKS, PAY WHEN SERVED, NO SPITTING, NO DRUGS. 

He orders a beer and a shot, thinking—

I feel like one of the three lost souls in Sartre’s No Exit, it is eerie here. 

The bartender a middle-aged Chinese woman with a day-glow purple wig on her head, wearing a pair of black polyester pants, slippers and a white t-shirt serves him and says nothing.

After a few drinks, feeling lonely in the creepy dim red light ambiance of the place, he lays six large lines of cocaine on the bar and asked the bartender, 

mamasan I’m Henry! How bout some blow?   

She lights up like a slot machine that hits jackpot, and says,

May love coke Henry, you handsome boy, May suck your cock Henry, make you hot baby! 

They snort the coke and Henry has another drink, then leaving the joint without saying much, no sucky-sucky, it was midnight. 

The bar with no name or sign was queer, grey and existential. 

Henry was attracted to people and places on the edge which occupied an unmapped and hidden world lost in the cracks and crevices of the city.

Henry walks to Midtown Manhattan and goes to a local bar near the Chelsea Hotel called Billymark’s West. It’s a friendly neighborhood bar, he walks in and sits at the bar, the room is filled with locals. 

Billymark’s had a great jukebox— whole albums, the Stone’s Exile on Mainstream, the Beatles Revolver and Merle Haggard. One of the owners, Mark would occasionally say through a bullhorn,

THIS AINT NO DISCO!

People dancing on the barroom floor, alone and together, men with women, women with women and men with men, it was anything goes New York City. 

A woman that looked to be Henry’s age 43, with a mountainous head of curly hair comes up to him at the bar and wraps an arm around him, saying,

I know you, you’re Henry Lucowski, I have read your short stories in the irrelevant underground rag, Headbanger. I’m Marie Howe, perhaps you’ve heard of me, I’m the poet laureate of New York and I teach at Brooklyn College. Henry says,

the poet laureate of New York huh? Some call me the poet laureate of Chaim’s Deli, regardless, your one hot piece of tail babe— before you start in on me, I’m not sexist, but I do speak with a forked tongue at times, I yearn for the old days when a man could still be a man. Marie says,

OK, Henry, I’m reading this month at the New York City Zen Center, stop by, ok gotta go, bye now!

That was it, Marie gone in a flash! Henry often tested women by making overtly sexist remarks to see if they were cool, well, Marie didn’t pass the test.

It was 1 AM, Henry pays his tab at Billymark’s and decides to go back to Chinatown. As he walked the dark streets and alleyways he has an epiphany—all the booze, drugs and sex in the world can't fill the black hole in your soul. BUT, smoking opium would fill your soul for a few hours anyway.

He reaches Sam’s Laundry and walks to the side door in the alleyway, he knocks hard on the door and an elderly Chinese woman who was always there opens it, saying,

Henry, not see you long time, careful dark in basement!

She leads him to a mat on the cold basement floor, he lays on the mat and she hands him a pipe with a padded mound of tar opium in the bowl. It didn’t take much, he lights it and takes a deep draw.

He dreams he is walking in a field teeming with red flowers as far as the eye can see. He sits down to rest and hears the sound of something thrashing through the flowers, wanting to hide he sits motionless.  

A bug-size man, like a cockroach standing on its hind legs, pushes his way through two flower stems, coming up to Henry. In awe, he sees it is his long-dead father Benny Lucowksi
in miniature. Benny doesn’t waste any time and starts shrieking at Henry, going into a tirade, saying, 

you’re a drunk like your mother Helen, you’re no good, you’re lazy, you sit on your ass all day, get a job!

Benny continues yelling at Henry, his voice stomach-tuning and munchkin-like. Henry stands and looks down on his father, then following an urge he steps on Benny, squishing him into pus. 

Henry wakes up feeling relieved as though a thousand pound gorilla had been lifted off his back. He walks back to Queens, smiling all the way. 

The following week he had an appointment with his shrink at the welfare office, Dr. Hiccup. He recounted his dream in the session, Hiccup electrified, asking Henry question after question about his feelings relating to his parents. 

Henry nodding his head as he looks at his watch, happy that his 45-minute session with Hiccup was ending, thinking,

It was his dream, and neither Freud or Hiccup could piss on it!   

     When I waked, I cried to dream again.  

                                         William Shakespeare