SUMMERTIME

For PP--each in our neighborhood's jungle

To be smoking reefer
& sipping a beer
on a hot stoop
cooling our heels
is one of the more sublime favors
bestowed in this concrete womb
of a city amidst the squalls
of summertime heat.
Poems are squeezed
from the sewers;
love is laced
in this Petri dish
of hard won escapes.
Each other's dreams
drips down the sticky legs
of denim & popsicle sticks.

You live within
windowsills of fame
and home has become
a bed of thorns.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

WHAT WAS BETTER

than stealing
an afternoon
from school,
playing hooky
in anybody's crib
whose parents
were gone or
couldn't give a fuck?
Somebody
always had some reefer;
Somebody
had a fistful of Black Beauties;
Somebody
had a down or two;
Somebody
brought a pint;
And everybody
had a pack of Bambu.
You had vinyl
or an FM radio.
Everybody posed.
Everybody was cute.
Everybody was handsome.
Everybody was experienced.
Everything revolved
around us.
We yak yak yaked
up an afternoon,
scrawled our own
hieroglyphics on rolled parchment,
tongues outpacing words,
plans fevered by amnesia,
outstripping notions of resources.

And what was worse
than our fears
catching up
to our coming down
and going home
to arguments
around dinner tables,
slaps & accusations;
unable to eat
from the speed;
thick with coats
residue & saliva
& dreams shaped
like a coffin
of the mouth.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

DRAGGING OUR FUTURES

through our pasts;
all the silt the dirt the mud
staining a whiteness lost
to memory
is not lost
for long:
the images the music the maybes
are on a loop
and what happens next
is filtered through
your own special
sieve--
much like the days
when you had to strain
marijuana: a clump of shit
into a strainer
and rub
leaving the stems & seeds
while the sticky leaf
fluttered to a newspaper page
on your lap.
You began to gauge the high
by how it smelled
how it looked
but didn't really know
nothing
until you lit the shit
and smoked it:
got a lung full,
held it,
nursed it,
let it out,
and waited.

2017 scares me,
but I gotta
roll it up
and wait.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

FUCK AN APPLE

I'd tell my students,
bring me some pot instead;
they were almost adults
& so better able
to handle
the truth.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

BREAKING YOUR CHERRY, 1963

DUKE’S
For Joey Diliberto, my brother in arms


The year John F. Kennedy was assassinated was the same year I first got high. There is probably no connection between those two incidents, though each, in its own particular way, left the country and the people close to the center of each event, altered forever.
I’d been cutting school pretty regularly by then, intuiting that the education I was getting outside the traditional classroom was much more exciting, not to mention pragmatic, than the rigors and requirements of subjects like math or foreign languages had and demanded inside the jail. I liked daydreaming. I was good at it. I’d watch the specks of dust float in the light in front of the grimed window of Duke’s, while occasionally savoring that most delicious of truths: friends, at this very minute, were in school listening to some boring shit coming out the mouths of teachers with dandruff, bad breath, and few alternatives. Also, more importantly, lurking in those dancing specks, lived the smooth soft shoe of danger and violence that Duke’s encouraged, yet protected.
My father was rich-- at least that’s what everyone believed, including me--and I was smart, male, first born and Jewish...therefore exempt from any requirement that I felt superior to, which was most any requirement there was.
In Dukes there were Jew bastards or kikes. Also, wops, micks, one spic, and a few niggers, though they, while not “officially barred,” kept to themselves.
Me? I was tough only in regard to friends my own age, but not to the greaseballs and mick cocksuckers who punched the shit out of my arms. But they liked me well enough; I could just tell. I stood up for myself a few times on the basketball court by standing up to this insane motherfucker, Joey One-Eye. He thought I’d fouled him but that was bullshit--he just missed an easy shot and didn’t want to look bad--and I told him so. He stepped back and looked at me with that one ice-cold blue eye of his, crossed one arm over the other and began rubbing it with this up and down motion. It sort of lulled me until, fast as lightening, he cracked me good across the face with the back of his hand. “C’mon bitch,” he said, “Do somethin.” “Fuck-you,” I replied, and began to walk away. Big mistake. He ran up behind me, grabbed me by the throat, and threw me down on the cement court where, I’m sure, he would have stomped the shit out of me had Johnny, who lived a few blocks from me, not taken hold of him and told him to, “Cool it. I like him and his ol’ man.” “Who gives a shit,” came the response. Then Barry came over. Barry, though a few years older than us, was rumored to be in line to control Coney Island and that section of Brooklyn when the time came. He said he was on Johnnie’s side, and that was that. Yet that was not that for me; my insides belied a foundation that was all but mixed, let alone settled. I still tried not to back down from anybody, and I always kept my mouth shut. This was not something I planned out exactly, but it was something I thought about from time to time.
For at least two years I’d stir in my bed at night not able to sleep, uneasy with the thoughts that spun in my head. I’d been real sick and knew that that sickness would never go away but would stay with me forever--however long that was. And so I began to construct scenarios to right the ship. I began to mythologize my own fears.

“You’re a little cocksucker, you know that? You know that don’t you, you little cocksucker,” Duke said to me one day. Duke was sitting behind his desk, a slab of thick wood sitting on top of four piano legged poles the same color that his dark mahogany Brunswick pool tables, some with drop pockets, were. Sprawled across his desk were ashtrays filled with jaundiced butts of filtered Marlboros and Winstons and the pinched stubs of non-filtered smokes. The Racing Form and The Daily News laid on top of each other, packs of Pall Malls, Camels, and Kools in various states were scattered as well; some contained a few cigarettes and others were crumpled and empty. Coffee mugs and containers, etched with the markings of dried caffeine were like a literature of symbols if one were inclined to probe further, laid in no particular order on top of his desk as well. Duke himself was fastidious: clean shaven, groomed, spruced, and dressed all in black--black shirt with black snaps, black trousers, socks and boots-- except for the silver belt buckle with crossed pool cues. He held a Pall Mall between his fore and middle fingers as if he had just made a shot into the corner pocket and was considering his next. He took a pint bottle of Martel and poured a pinch into his coffee; it was nearly eleven in the morning and both of us were trying to ease our way into the day.
“Duke, I ain’t got no money, lemme run a couple racks.”
“’I don’t have any money’; and the answer is go fuck yerself.”
“C’mon, willya, there ain’t no one here; whatthefuck, c’mon.”
“You know how to speak correctly; who the hell are you pretending to be?”
“’Who am I pretending to be?’ I don’t know, who am I pretending to be, I give up.”
“You wanna get funny, you can play with your own balls, now.”
“Ah, c’mon, Duke. I ain’t getting funny, that’s a complicated fuckin’ question.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
The door opened and we swung our eyes around. Bones, with his mountainous mass of flesh stood outside while his face “wedged” it’s way into the doorway. He was about six foot five and weighed nearly three hundred. I heard some of the others marveling that Bones was the fattest junky anyone had ever seen. One time he was boosting a crib and stopped to see what was in the ice-box. Discovering some thick rib-eyes, he couldn’t resist, so stayed to fry up two of them before departing with his score. Before he was able to enter, Duke called out, “The answers are: No, and not yet.” I looked quizzically at Duke who looked at me and shook his head to tell me it was none of my business and I was better off that way--though I didn’t think so. I was dying to get in.
Duke got up from his chair but before he did he flicked a switch that lit the lamp above table three, grabbed a tray of balls and handed them to me. “Go ahead you hooky playin’ sonofabitch, run a few.”
“Thanks, man, I’m gonna grab a smoke, too, if you don’t mind?” and reached for his pack of Pall Malls on the desk, tapped one out and quickly, before he could see, grabbed a second one which I quickly tucked behind my ear. I lit the first from the old Zippo Duke had nearby. It was the first smoke I had had since I copped one of my father’s Chesterfield regulars before I took up my aborted attempt at reaching Lincoln, my high school. Chesterfields always tasted a little stale to me, but Pall Malls were delicious. Not as good as Luckys, but good none the less; they were almost a longer Lucky, same Indian, too.
I watched Duke walk over to where Bones waited and tried to discern what was going on as I made my way over to the pool table. I was looking for an exchange of money...or merchandise...or whispers. But I didn’t see or hear anything, much to my disappointment. The only thing I saw was Bones turning and walking back to the curb where he lowered his bulk into a beat-up Chevy Corvair which sagged from his girth, it’s door frame digging into the curb. He tried to force it closed, but all it did was scrape more metal from the door’s lip forcing him to lift his bulk from the car. He was surprisingly fluid as he, in one motion, grabbed the window’s edge and hoisted himself up and out. The Chevy’s right side rose a few inches, lifting the door off the cement. Bones closed it and motioned to the driver, a slight, beak-faced accomplice, to move from the space. Once sufficiently away from the curb, he stopped. Bones opened the door and, in the same clean, almost ballet like motion, positioned his hands on the roof and the door and slid into the seat. Duke watched it go lopsidedly down the block, turned and walked back to his desk where he poured a little more Martel into his coffee cup and took a sip. “That’s fuckin’ cold! Jesus. Watch the store, I’m goin’ out for a second. If the phone rings, take a message.” I watched him go out and across the street where a pay-phone stood. I looked at the phone on his desk and the phone booth in the corner of the store, next to the bathroom. I watched as he returned. “Any calls?” I shook my head. I went back to my table and tried to turn my attention to what was in front of me.
I flipped over the tray containing the balls and watched as they emptied onto the table. I dug the way they rolled, the sound they made when they kissed one another, how they caromed off the rails and how I, or especially a good shooter, could make the ivory cue ball do what we wanted. How, when the heavens were aligned, the stick was an extension of your arm, and the cue ball had all the colored balls obey the shooter’s touch, dropping them into the mouths of the six pockets. In this world, where most recently little of what I experienced was ever ordered, ordained, or sanctioned by me, this was a god send.
I went to the racks of sticks, selected one that felt good and was as straight as possible, and then looked at the beautiful emptiness of Dukes. Fourteen other tables were silent in the darkness, the covers on them like sheets over the dead. Duke was back at his desk deep in concentration scoping out the ponies for the card at Belmont and I was getting ready to try and figure out what to shoot and try to run the table.
I positioned the cue ball, chalked the head of the cue and leaned over the table. I was about to bring the cue forward to make my first shot when I heard Duke’s voice, a voice tinged with sarcasm, authority and foreboding. It fell in the space between the tip of the cue and the skin of the ball. “I told you to practice first. Practice. I keep tellin’ you that. Practice.”
“I’m practicin’ while I’m playin’,” I replied without looking up, my back still perfectly parallel to the floor, my eyes staring down the shaft of the cue.
“Bullshit. You’re takin’ a fuckin’ shortcut. And there ain’t no shortcuts, not if you want to play good.”
I straightened up and turned to face him. His eyes were still buried in the form. I couldn’t understand how he could know I was ready to shoot. “Man, that shit is boring.”
“So’ fuckin’ life. Unfortunately, you can’t practice that. But I’m tellin’ ya now: if you wanna be good, you gotta get your ass to practice. No gettin’ around it. You line up the balls and you practice shootin’ them in the corner and side pockets; you practice your English, you practice your draw, you practice your stroke; you just practice.”
“I practice while I’m playin’, same thing,” I said, with a little too much plead in my voice for my own liking.
“Who do you think you’re talking to, asshole? I’m not your father. I’m not trying to punish you.”
“Nah, of course not,” I said a little too quickly, “it’s just it’s so fuckin’ boring doing that shit.”
“Boring!? What ain’t? Even fucking can get boring if it ain’t done right. But if you practice...become a student in a way, then it can, maybe, just maybe, become like an art or somethin.”
“Art? What the fuck...”
“Hey, man, I see your nose in those books; the kind of books that nobody else reads. I know you know--or think you know-- what good shit is---you just don’t know that all shit, all shit, can be good, maybe even great. Ya haveta practice and haveta be blessed. Not many have both but everyone can practice...but few do. Your choice, baby.”
I turned back to the table and didn’t know what to do: shoot or practice. The shots were there just waiting for me to make them; a blessed forgetful rhythm was begging to be established; life was in the “doing” wasn’t it, providing the heady sensation of accomplishment? That feeling lay beckoning me from all six pockets. “Duke, I’m gonna practice by “doin” I’m tellin ya.”
“Yeah, yeah, you and everybody’s mother gonna rewrite the books. Go ahead, get back to me in twenty years and tell me which way was quicker...or better.”
“Pool ain’t my real game anyway, it’s bowlin.”
“Why don’t you go over there and bust their balls?”
“They ain’t opened yet, that’s why.”
“My luck.”
“Lemme have another smoke,” I said, walking over to where he continued to dope out the races, but first I took the one I had in the behind my ear and laid it on the table, out of sight.
“Jesus Christ, some of you guys in here cost me more money than the ponies...not to mention my x-wives.”
“How many of em you got?”
“Three and one soon to be; it’s just a matter of time.” He paused. “But God knows I love her...hell I loved them all.”
“None of them worked, huh?”
“My man, I have many talents, but living with a woman is evidently not one of them. You know somethin? You always get people to talk when they don’t wanna, don’tcha? I see you around here in that quiet way of yours. Don’t think I don’t see you. You think you’re invisible, but you’re not; at least not to me you’re not...and stop takin’ my cigarettes. Here’s some money, buy yourself a pack and one for me and bring me a cup of coffee, black...”
“No sugar.”
“Yeah, black no sugar and one for yourself...and whatever else you want, case you’re hungry...just what I need another prodigal son.”
Duke reached into his slacks and produced a roll of bills that had a rubber band to hold them in place. He snapped off the band, peeled off a fifty and handed it to me. “They gonna have change, this early?” I said.
“Hey, if not not. Just tell em it’s for me and I’ll catch-up to them later,” he replied without looking up.
I grabbed the fifty and, without bothering to get my jacket, went out the door to get what for me was a little bit of contraband. My pop knew I was smoking, but didn’t like it. He didn’t make too much of a stink about it, but would never give me money to buy my own pack and wouldn’t like me to be showing them around the house either. But now I had a half a buck to get a pack of Luckys and sip a cup of coffee with besides. What a score! I was thinking about that when I nearly ran over Jimmy coming in.
Jimmy was a mopey looking kid, a few years older than me who, as far as I knew, just hung out either at Duke’s, Surf Lanes or the basketball courts adjacent to the boardwalk around back. He’d never, to my recollection, played any of the games offered there, just watched others play. His brother, Mel, was another story. “Mad Mel” was what he was called, but you had to know him real good to call him that...to his face, or be tougher than him... or have earned his respect. On more than one occasion, when Mel didn’t like an umpire’s call during a softball or basketball game, or when he just didn’t like a person, or when there was retribution to be claimed for this or that infraction of family or turf, he’d take the knife he’d always carried with him, sequestered in his pocket or sock, bury it up to the hilt in the offender’s thigh and then, looking at the person’s expression, break the handle off, leaving the blade in the person’s leg. He’d then place the handle in that person’s hand before moving off. Because of Mad Mel you kind of danced around Jimmy.
“Hey Jimmy,” I said to him.
“Hey,” he replied.
He reminded me of something young, but nevertheless decaying--all the more peculiar because he was so obviously still in the process of maturing--as I passed him and headed for Norm’s Candy Store, on the corner.
It seemed like Norm was either chained behind the cash register or afraid to leave it, his ass growing out of the cushion that sat on a stool on the other side of the counter. His wife, Flo, ran the place it seemed, though she made these ridiculous sounding deferments to her husband: “I’d like to eat now, but if you’re hungry you eat first.” “Eat, go ahead, eat; you want to eat, eat.” “No, I don’t have to; you eat--if you’re hungry; I could eat but you eat first.” “Eat for Christsakes, eat!”
“Norm, what’s up?” I asked.
“What could be up? I wish my dick was up,” he said, and looked at Flo who, I could have sworn, blushed and looked twenty years younger.”
“I’ll go out and getcha some splints.”
“Whatdayathink, Flo? One for ol’ times sake? I still remember where to put...”
“Stop with that funny talk.”
“I’ll leave and let you lovebirds work it out, but first lemme have two coffees: one black, no sugar and one regular with--do you have Sweet n’ Low?”
“Sweeten what? What’s Sweeten?...”
“Like saccharine, but it’s a powder; it’s new--we don’t have any sweetie, we have saccharine.”
“Yeah, that’s all right,” I said quickly, “put two of em in there for me, would you; and a pack of Pall Malls and Luckys.”
They both looked at me, Norm one way and Flo another. She went to make the coffees and Norm reached to the side of the register where the cigarettes were and produced the two packs, placed them on the counter in front of him with books of matches. I reached for the Luckys and without looking at Norm quickly and deftly peeled the red ribbon off the circumference of the pack and removed the clear cellophane. I opened up one corner of the tin foil, leaving the Indian’s face intact, and, tapping the pack against my left forefinger, removed the first of twenty fresh smokes. I placed the opposite end in my mouth leaving the insignia to burn--just like I seen a tough guy friend of my father’s do to his Camel’s--smelled the raw tobacco, felt the softness of the cigarette against my lips, and lit it. The sweet smoke swirled around my head as I drew in the delicious first drag and, as I exhaled through my nose, I drew in the second wave--as I’d seen my ol’ man do thousands of times. Then I let go what remained of both and looked around. The coffees were there in a bag on the counter and I handed Norm Duke’s fifty.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“He said if you couldn’t break it he’d catch up with you later.”
“He’ll never catch up with me, I’m way ahead of him. Tell that shicker--is he drunk already?-- gonif bastard to make sure he sees me later; I don’t want to have to look for him.”
“I’ll tell him,” I said, eager to get out of there and back to the pool room where a table, coffee, cigarettes and solitude were offered to me; where I could observe without being seen or questioned.
Jimmy was with Duke by his desk when I entered. Duke, who towered over Jimmy, was telling him something and Jimmy, his head lowered, eyes averted, was listening. It was something about their postures that made me unsure whether or not to approach, but I was curious--I also had his coffee and smokes--and so I cautiously walked closer.
“I wisht you wouldn’t have done that,” Duke said, “should keep that kinda stuff outa the store. Shit.”
“Sorry, Duke.”
“What time do you think?”
“Around one, somethin like that.”
I looked at the black bordered clock whose facial dirt danced around it’s face, eleven forty-seven it read. I went over, as unobtrusively as I could, and placed his coffee and Pall Malls on his desk with his fifty, and walked back to my table. Whatever was going to happen I was determined to nurse the time, table, cigarettes and the day until it did. I pulled another smoke from the pack and lit it while I eyed Jimmy lazily walking with Duke’s Daily News to a high-backed chair near the window. He boosted himself up in the seat, took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it as he opened up the back of The News to the sports section. His eyes caught mine and I quickly took the Lucky from my mouth and put it on the edge of one of the wooden rails. “Wanna shoot?” He shook his head and went back to reading the paper and I was relieved. The burning tip of the cigarette had left a nicotined wet scar which would later settle into the grain of the table. I picked up the cigarette, reached for the tray holding the balls, placed them back in and, wanting to start fresh, casually flipped it over again, releasing the colored numbers onto the green felt of the table. I took the ivory cue ball and placed it in a position where I thought I’d do the most damage. I chalked the tip of the cue, the blue dust of the chalk settling on the fingers of my left hand and began to shoot. Five balls found pockets before I had to make a decision on what to do next.

From time to time I checked on Jimmy. He had positioned himself to where he could look out the window and down the corners of both sides of Surf Avenue. On the floor, directly beneath his feet which rested on a rung of the stool he was sitting on, were the butts from the cigarettes he’d smoked down to the filter.
When the phone inside the booth rang we all braced ourselves. Our heads swiveled, Jimmy’s hands gripped the arms of the stool and Duke seemed to stiffen, his posture straightening. I began to go over to pick it up. Duke stopped me short, “That’s all right, I’ll get it,” he said. He moved quickly into the booth and I followed him with my eyes and ears. “Duke’s...no, he ain’t here...yeah, if I see him I’ll tell him. Yeah, I’ll tell him.” He cradled the phone and got out of the booth. He turned to Jimmy. “That was your brother; he’s lookin’ for you.”
“Fuckim; he can look all he wants,” he said in a flat, affectless tone. He turned his attention back to the window.
“Do me a favor, willya? Don’t play it off like it’s nothin and why don’t ya get out of that seat and take one in the back? There’s nobody in the joint, he’ll find ya, don’t worry.”
“You’re worried about my brother?” he said, as he moved his feet to the floor and lifted himself off the stool.
“Shit yeah, I’m worried about your brother...and you should be, too.”
“Maybe I should, but I’m not,” he said, as he made his way into the dark and dingy recess of the room. The yellow light from the street mixed with the specks of dust in the air of the room and danced around his head and back as he walked slowly to another stool and mounted it. “Better? Happy now?”
“Fuckin’ thrilled. Listen Jimmy, I didn’t have to let ya stay here, but I did; I didn’t have to say to your brother I didn’t see ya, but I did. I never did, and don’t now, give a good goddamn who’s dick anybody’s suckin. I’m not a fag, but I never thought anything less about anybody who was. But what I don’t want is anyone’s blood, especially mine, on my floor--and conscience--because of some stupid fuckin shit that has nothin to do with me. You know what I mean?”
Jimmy didn’t say anything but my heart was racing. It was lodged at the intersection of confusion and fear where ambivalence and doubt reigned, rendering it vulnerable to all sorts of whimsy, violence included. The word sat uncomfortably in my mouth waiting to explode. I couldn’t imagine what it was to actually be one--what was that all about!?--but I wondered.
My eyes, having nowhere to hide, ping-ponged from one to the other but quickly, embarrassedly, returned to the ivory cue ball, with the red centered dot. I tried concentrating on that dot but the more I tried the harder my ears strained, trying to compensate for my visual disadvantage. I looked up at the time and saw that whatever it was, was a half-hour closer.

There was no real telling what time of the day Duke would open the place and definitely no telling what time he’d close--that would depend upon the business and the business would depend on the “action.” A few times I’d stop by early, either by myself or with some friends and if the door was locked, I’d peer in the window. I’d see, on the last table in the back by the corner, a shape that resembled something human asleep atop a pool table. His back would be to the door and his head would rest on top a jacket or sweater or coat that would be bunched up on the wooden triangle that you’d rack the balls with. “Yeah, I know, I know, I’ve been sleepin on a pool table too long: I’m all balled up,” he’d say to anyone who’d listen. He’d also say that after he bet the wrong horse, or backed the wrong player, or loaned the wrong person money.
People, some of whom I knew enough to say hello to, started to drift in. Alone or in pairs they began shooting on tables that Duke made sure was a good distance from one another. Imperceptibly, the room began filling with sound and cigarette smoke as the overhead lights above each table were switched on in turn. I noted each as I shot, and watched Duke and Jimmy. Jimmy hadn’t moved and Duke, except for a few conversations that took no longer than a minute or two, remained the same; he stuck with his racing form, Pall Malls, coffee and some surreptitious pouring of Martel into his container. “I guess you didn’t make it either,” the voice said behind me as I was getting ready to shoot the five in the side. “You’re better off with the deuce, but this ain’t really your game,” another voice chimed in.
The Heart’s real name was Ira but he had a bad ticker; it had something to do with a valve or murmur or something. All I know is that he had to go to a hospital in Baltimore twice a year to get himself checked. Tommy was just Tommy. But Tommy was really rich, lived in a big house in Seagate right on the beach looking out over the Atlantic. He had the first color T.V. of any of us. I watched Bonanza over there one night; the first time I saw a show in color. Best of all was Tommy’s mom. Theresa was beautiful...and sexy...and she knew I not only knew it, but felt it. She’d walk around in these flimsy nightgowns and I tried to catch the right angle with the sun back lighting her and once in awhile saw her triangle of fur, black and silky looking under a sheer gauze of lace. She’d see me and look back at me in a way no one had ever done. It froze and heated me at the same time.
“C’mon, let’s get outa here.” The Heart said. “The alley’s open, let’s throw a few lines.”
I leaned my pool cue on the side of the table and leaned over to where the two of them stood, lowering myself just enough to be in the middle of their chest’. “Something’s gonna go down here in a little while and I want to be here.” Tommy’s eyes popped open like bread coming out of a toaster. The yellow filter of his cigarette got clenched between his upper and lower front teeth. “Don’t ask me what. All I know is that somethin’s gonna go down with Jimmy and his brother, that’s all I know; that’s all I have to know.”
“Mad Mel? Man, I’m stayin.”
“I’m gonna grab a cue, the three of us can play rotation,” The Heart said, and made his way to the racks.
“Not me, I can’t shoot for shit. I’ll watch.”
“Hey Tommy, you got a couple of bucks you can front me? I ain’t got a dime.”
“Yeah, sure, no problem.”
“Hey Duke, Off and On,” I yelled over to him.
“About fuckin time,” he said, and turned off the light and then back on. It acted as a timer so he could calculate how much to charge once you finished playing.
The Heart, only a few inches above five feet, returned with a cue that was nearly up to his eyes. He was an above average pool shooter and bowler but a below average gambler. He was indiscriminate in who he’d gamble against; it would depend upon what he had in his pocket and how bored he or we were. He was a little better than good which meant that things had to break just right for him to win. Most of the time they didn’t. But even when they did, the money burned a hole in his pocket and he’d find some way to give it back quickly, or lose it later. “We’ll play for a quarter a way...just gimme the break and the eight ball.”
“I ain’t given ya nothin. We should really play straight pool; rotation is just a game of luck anyway.”
“Bullshit, man. Rotation ain’t luck--ya gotta really know how to shoot; know how to play position; know how to play safe...Besides, I can’t beat ya in a game of straight. I got a chance playin rotation: hit it hard and pray to God.”
“Heart, you have two chances: slim and none.”
“Make it fifty cents.”
I felt guilty. “I’ll give ya the break. Break.”
Usually any kind of action was enough to occupy my mind. But not today. If I didn’t naturally drift to where Jimmy was still sitting, I’d peek at him from a variety of angles as I was shooting, or while waiting for The Heart to miss. I’d imagine Jimmy in the throes of passion. But instead of holding a girl in his arms there’d be a man who’d be doing these sexually bizarre things to him or even worse, Jimmy doing those things to him. My ideas of love, or romance, and hot stirrings of desire and lust were images all born from the Hollywood dream factory, which, unbeknownst to me, conspired with The League of Decency, and other watchdogs of Christian morals and Western ethics, to forever subvert and crucify those whose lives were different, which, of course, was us all.

Carlos, a spic’s answer to Sammy Davis, Jr.’ Rat Pack Step ‘n Fechit’s two-step, breezed through the door and went directly over to where Duke was sitting, put his two skinny arms down on the desk, while his hands gripped the edge, and leaned in close. Unlike Sammy, Carlos did his dance not on a Vegas stage, nor his act on a movie studio lot in Burbank, or sang amid the Copacabana showgirls, but in the ass-end of Brooklyn. Nor did he perform while lining up a piece of ass for Frank, but instead he cleaned up the mess left in his mother’s apartment by the somewhat demented and testosterone driven toughs who Carlos desperately wanted to be part of. Carlos, in other words, “ran errands.”
Duke motioned with his head left and Carlos looked right, to where Jimmy was sitting. He pushed himself upright and went over to him and placed his two hands on the arms of the stool and leaned into him. Jimmy, at first listened, then moved his head slowly to the right, until Carlos stared directly into the wall behind him. Carlos, without loosening his grip on the arms of the stool, swung his head to where Jimmy’s eyes now faced. Jimmy swung back the other way. Carlos countered and when Jimmy tried to climb off the chair I saw Carlos’ arms stiffen. The veins on his forearms rose to where you could see the blue highways from elbow to wrist. Jimmy raised himself up on the stool and Carlos eyeballed him back down.
“And what are you supposed to do? Jimmy said.
“Keep you here.”
“Yeah?...and how the fuck are you gonna do that?”
“Don’t test me, Jimmy.”
By this time I had put my cue down and looked on. Jimmy, unlike his brother Mel, was not one to fight, but you never knew what might happen when a person’s pressed. I was concentrating so hard on the space between their faces that when a black hand gripped Carlos’ shoulder I hardly noticed. It looked cut off and placed there with no special association. Except this hand looked solid and confident about the contact it made. My eyes ran up the wrist to the arm then shoulder and finally the face, in profile, hid by the hood of a sweatshirt. But even in profile and even though he was black, I knew who he was.
The first time I saw him was in the old Madison Square Garden on Eighth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street a few years ago. When he took off his robe that night it was hard to take your eyes off him; he was all muscle and sinew and sweat and shaped like a V. He fought Dick Tiger, another powerful welterweight, in a ten round bout; war was more like it. My father knew one of the boxing commissioners and we sat ringside, two or three rows from the apron. By the seventh round Tiger’s face was cut pretty bad and each time he got hit blood flew from those cuts to where we were sitting and a few rows beyond. It repulsed, but excited me. Tiger was a good boxer, too, and could also hit and so dished out some good punishment as well. By the end of the fight they both knew they’d earned their money. Tiger lost a unanimous decision and the other fighter a few months later fought for and won the Welterweight Championship.
The last time I saw him was a few weeks ago, on television. He was defending his title fighting a guy called, Benny Kid Peret. I was alone in my downstairs basement mesmerized, watching on a big black and white TV set The Friday Night Fights, watching Emile Griffith beat Benny Kid Peret to death in front of a cheering crowd, a referee, and me. After dominating him for the first ten or eleven rounds and softening him up, he rocked Peret with a straight right hand flush against his jaw. Peret reeled backwards into the corner ring post, ready to fall. Instead, Griffith did not let him fall, but bored into his chest with his shoulder straightening him up. Griffith used his left forearm to keep Peret’s head up by placing it under chin, firmly embedded into the throat, almost lifting Peret’s feet off the canvas. He proceeded to hit Peret with ferocious right hands on top of his head, to the face, the body, the kidneys and the arms; but mostly shots to the head, vicious shots, shots meant to punish and destroy. I looked around in my empty basement hoping that somebody was there, somebody to tell me what I was witnessing wasn’t really real, someone to stop the fight.
But there wasn’t. Finally, after he hit him with a punch that made Peret’s eyes roll to the back of his head, did the referee step between them. Even that would not stop Griffith. He tried to lunge over the ref who finally hugged him around his stomach in order to drag him away from the slumping Paret. It took less than five seconds for Paret’s body to hit the canvas though it seemed I was watching slow-moving chocolate lava endlessly flowing from the ring stanchion. A doctor, always present at ringside, went into the ring to attend to Paret; a few minutes later men entered the ring and put Paret, who remained unconscious, on a stretcher. They awkwardly maneuvered his body through the ropes and brought him to an awaiting ambulance.
The next day the back page of The New York Post had a big picture of his slumped body with one word, DEAD, in bold black letters.
Inside the paper an article said Paret had called Griffith a “maricon,” a faggot. He called him this before the fight, at the weigh-in. Griffith proved to him and the world that night that he might be many other things, but “maricon” wasn’t one of them. Yet here he was in Coney Island, in Duke’s, moving Carlos out of the way to get closer to Jimmy.
The sight of black fingers on his shoulder made Carlos jump back. The sight of who those fingers were attached to unnerved him even more.
“Hiya, Champ,” Carlos said, looking and turning the color of lint.
Griffith looked from Carlos to Jimmy and back again. “Why don’t you just get on with yourself?” he asked Carlos, except it didn’t sound like a question. His tone, while being measured and low, had weight and danger.
He wedged himself between Carlos and Jimmy and looked Jimmy in the eye. Except his look had more warmth than inquisition. “You all right?” he said. Jimmy nodded. “C’mon, let’s go.” Jimmy pushed himself off the chair and the two of them began to move towards the door. Jimmy seemed to lean into him as they went. I looked over at Carlos as they made their way out of the door. He’d been told to do a cheap and thankless errand by a madman. They didn’t hang around for what would have been trouble with a capital T. He looked relieved. In fact, everyone looked relieved except for the two old guys shooting pool two tables over. If they noticed what was happening, they didn’t care. They were concentrating on beating each other. They had probably been doing that for the last fifty years, maybe more.
Carlos looked over at me and smiled. I smiled back. He shook his head indicating what a crazy scene that was and could have gotten crazier. He took out a cigarette and I turned back to the table and my game when I saw a blur of a figure cross the room. It was Mad Mel. I turned back in time to see him slap Carlos’ face making the cigarette fly from his lips. “I told you, you cocksucker.”
“No, wait, wait a minute,” Carlos sputtered. But Mad Mel had hit him again, this time on the side of his head, also with an open fist. “You don’t understand, Mel, wait a fuckin minute.”
One of the older men came over to the table. “What are you doing to him?”
“Mind your fuckin business, old man.”
“What are you crazy, leave him alone.”
He hardly got that last sentence out when Mad Mel reached into his jacket pocket, took out a knife and, with one hand, opened the blade while keeping it against his right leg. Without any warning he stuck it into the old man’s thigh and snapped off the handle. The old man let out a cry and looked down at the source of his pain. Mad Mel took a step backward. “Crazy? Yeah, I’m crazy.” He took the handle and placed it in the old man’s hand and then to Carlos, “I’ll see you later,” and jabbed him in the chest with his finger.
Mad Mel, without looking back, walked unhurriedly out the door while the old man’s friend, his face drained of color, helped his friend onto the floor where he lay flat. Duke called for an ambulance. Carlos walked over to me and asked for a cigarette. I took one out and lit one for him, and one for myself. His hand and lips trembled and I felt, for a moment, bad for him. “I’m gettin out of here. You wanna go ridin around for a little while?” he asked me.
For a second I was a little confused and didn’t know what to say, not ever being too friendly with him. But I nodded my head and went to put the cue stick back in the rack. Tommy and The Hearts’ eyes were just watching me as all of this was transpiring. “Take it easy,” I said to them, as we were leaving. We walked around the figure on the floor. I passed Duke as we made our way to the door. Duke looked up and into my eyes and just shook his head. I tried to see the broken blade in the leg of the man on the floor, but I couldn’t. All I saw was a dark stain on his pants and a look of unintelligible fear on his face.
Carlos had a cream colored nineteen-sixty Pontiac Catalina, it’s body dented around the right rear door and left tail; it’s neglect slightly rusting the areas around the damage. I wondered if he purchased it like this or let this disrepair accumulate. My father, who, since I remembered, always owned Cadillacs, would never allow something like that to happen. But I would. I liked the casual recklessness it projected.
He reached over and pulled the knob up and I slid into the cushioned seat; inside, the leather was brown, but creases of dark dirt from years of neglect ran through them making me feel slightly uncomfortable. The ashtray was overflowing and the interior had this peculiar yellow film to it, especially on the beige-colored vinyl that covered the top. Carlos put the key into the ignition. When the motor caught he asked for another smoke. He put it into drive and pulled out, made a quick U-turn and headed south, toward Seagate.
The day had become overcast but I was happy to be in a car going anywhere. There was something about motion and smoking a Lucky that made sense. “You mind if I put on the radio?”
“Nah, go ahead.”
I turned the knob and heard the opening notes to The Drifter’s, Up On the Roof. “Yeah, that’s nice,” Carlos said. I leaned back and inwardly sang along.
“That was sure something back there, wasn’t it?” I kept quiet. I didn’t think he was looking for a response. “He’s sure a crazy motherfucker, ain’t he?” Again, I remained silent. “I did what the sonofabitch asked me to. ‘Keep him there,’ he said. ‘Keep him there ‘til I get there.’ Well you know what, that creep fuck was there but he was too fuckin scared himself to come in there. No fuckin way he missed those two on his way in; no fuckin way.”
He made a left and pulled down one of the beach blocks that Mary’s, a sandwich shop during the summer, sat guard over. All the way down the block we went, and stopped to the right of the ramp leading to the boardwalk; a boardwalk that ran all the way from Seagate to the end of Brighton Beach, past the housing projects, and Coney Island proper: The Parachute Jump, Nathan’s, SteepleChase, The Mid-Way, The Wonder Wheel, arcades, The Thunderbolt, The Cyclone and The Aquarium. He shut off the engine and we just sat there looking at the sand, and ocean beyond that.
“I’m gonna get high,” he announced suddenly. I didn’t know what he meant. But I felt something rearrange itself in my stomach. “You ever get high before?”
It was difficult to answer him; I didn’t feel I could talk. “No,” I said. He reached across me, unlocked the glove compartment and put his hand inside, coming out with a small yellow envelope. Again, he reached inside and came out with a small square looking package that was twice the size of a book of matches with the name, “Bambu,” written on the front. From this he extracted two sheets of paper, licked one of the edges and placed one on top of the licked edge and folded, ever so gently, the end of one of the papers.
“You wanna get high?”
I couldn’t take my eyes off Carlos’ hands. He was tapping the yellowed manila envelope until a thin stream of a grass-like looking substance was thinly placed in the fold of the crease. My heart was beating rapidly. The words, not quite catching in my throat said, “Yeah, sure.”
Deftly, he placed both his hands near the ends of the papers and rolled them up in one motion. He licked the top edge, the tip of his pink tongue darting out like a snake, and sealed it. It looked like a thick toothpick. “Watch me,” he said, “watch how I do it; I take in small tokes--drags, you know--hold it in for awhile then let it out. Watch.” He lit it and I heard the pop of something then a sweet and pungent smell filled the air that I didn’t know what to make of. He held this cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and took these quick drags off it, keeping it in like he said, then letting it out and quickly doing it again. He passed me this cigarette and I did the same. By the time I passed it back to Carlos and he passed it to me again I was high.
I felt weird, disoriented. Things at first slowed then speeded up with no discernible reason. My mouth felt thick and coated. When I looked down at my hands they didn’t seem to be mine and what they touched had no memory that I knew of. I looked over at Carlos who was looking at me. He began to laugh. “You high, man. You high, no shit, man, you fuckin high.” I looked at him with what seemed like these monstrous looking eyeballs that must have held all the confusion, fear and awkwardness I felt. “Well, man, I don’t know what you want to do, but I gotta go.”
“Go?” I said.
“Yeah, go. I gotta go, man, can’t stay here with that motherfucker loose man, gotta go try to take care of this shit. I’ll drop you someplace. Where?”
“Where? Shit, I can’t go home man, fuck that. Take me to The Heart’s house in Seagate. I’ll tell you where.”
“Cool.” He started the car, made a broken U, went to the corner, hung a left and went into Seagate. How the hell was he able to talk, much less drive? Heart’s parents were deaf and dumb and never looked too close at anything. I got out of the car where I wanted and closed the door. Carlos sped off without saying a word.
I went and rang the bell praying that he’d answer. He opened the door and looked at me. “What the fuck happened to you? Your eyes are all red.”
“Just let me in, man; I’ll explain later. Could I eat over your place?”
“Yeah, sure. How come?”
“You see the shape I’m in, man. I can’t go fuckin’ home now. I’m on the lam for a few hours, shit maybe days.”
The Heart ushered me into his home, past his parents who were at the dinner table. They smiled to me and I tried to smile back, but I don’t really know what the hell I did. I walked into his living room and to the phone. Fear began to insinuate itself back into my chest. I knew I had to make the phone call, but I’d be goddamned if I knew what I’d say.

***

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2000-2015

"HABIT, THE GREAT DEADENER"--FROM CHAPTER VIII: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

Slowly, Jean had begun to tell me bits and pieces of her life with Jeff. She had met him when she was a young, twenty-one year old, a stewardess for T.W.A. Airlines and, after a brief courtship, began living with him. Shortly thereafter, he was having this young, but ballsy, lady fly to Italy, where she smuggled in baby laxative, used by him to cut cocaine. He was from a well to do family on Long Island, had already been married and divorced, and was supporting two kids he had fathered. At six feet, six inches in height and weighing two hundred and thirty pounds with a mane of red hair, he was an imposing figure. Kenny, who worked behind the bar with me, had a girlfriend, Merrin, who had worked in a bar across the street from Elaine’s that Jeff frequented. He was not a man to trifle with, Merrin told me after Jean had already moved in. She related several incidents in which Jeff had pursued those with whom he’d argued and even shot at. Jeff, Merrin had told me, was said to “eat trees.” Jean concurred. She told me however, that I had nothing to fear, since he was taking it “on the lam” after DEA agents had begun pressing him to provide names that had bankrolled his last drug deal. Jean, not knowing the name or names of his drug contacts, did know that it was some crony of our late president, Richard Nixon, that the DEA wanted to nail through him and was pressing him for. Rather than give up the name, Jeff had cut a deal with them that made them believe he was going to inform on this person and, once the meeting was set, never showed. Instead, he left with pounds of cocaine, while the DEA was left with egg on its’ face and anger in its’ heart.
I was impressed by the story, but not too concerned about my safety. At that time, I was more concerned that a potential supply of free drugs was out of reach. After walking her back to my apartment, helping her unpack, and giving her space in my drawers and closet, I made a hundred different compromises in my mind to allow her to stay with me. But it was Jean who was quickly compromised. I needed all things an infant does: food, clothing and shelter. It began as a lie and ended in this truth: Jean probably saved my life.

As this life with Jean began, other things ended. My attempts at getting my last screenplay bought went nowhere. I left Jay Allen’s cable TV show for which I’d been writing.
I started to resent everything that I “had” to do. I hated the fact that I was “serving” people; I disliked paying rent; I felt that therapy was a poor excuse for living; I believed I should be out in Hollywood pushing my work. Hearing what Jason and Sig would say about “them”, meaning the studio executives, having to see you in order to believe you and your work existed, made me that much more obsessed about getting out there. I reasoned that success hinged on three things: you had to have been born into it, fuck into it, or luck into it; a boxed trifecta, but, in all instances, you had to be there to lay down a bet.

I broached all the subjects with Handelsman. He knew about my slide back into drug taking to some degree and felt me slipping away. He cut down my sessions. I felt he was lining up new meat. However, there was one session when I casually related the conversation I had with my mom, the one about my father not being able to visit me in the hospital when I first got diabetes. For Handelsman, this had epic ramifications. He’d known, of course, how crucial diabetes was to me, how it had altered my life, reached me at the time of puberty and effectively separated me from my father. I had no real memory of what my life with my father was like before diabetes. Try as I would, I’d only be able to recall certain vague incidents before the onset of the disease: when I tried to put my fingers through the slats of a metal electric fan at the age of four or five, he, sitting next to me, slapped me hard in the back of the head; I remember rubbing my groin up against his leg (and it felt good) when we’d play wrestle on Sunday mornings in his bed; and I remember the time we faked boxing with each other when I was about ten in the living room where we had a floor length mirror. I backed up into the mirror which broke in a million pieces and he chased me around the kitchen/living room with his hands outstretched trying to grab me by the throat. Other than that he was a very “gentle” man. I probably brought this up at the very time when therapy was unraveling. I knew, subconsciously or not, my drug taking would make it impossible to delve any further into this now. In effect, I protected my very destruction.
Handelsman asked, a few sessions later, if I wanted to take a break from therapy for the rest of the Spring and Summer and resume in September. I took this as rejection saying to myself, “That motherfucker!” and then out loud, “Yeah, sure, I think it’s best,” and left. Had I developed a sense of entitlement, a self-esteem, an anger properly directed, I would have said something like, “You ain’t throwing me out now! Not after the pain and the money and the effort that I put in here! Yeah, I’m using drugs again, but that’s what a drug addict is supposed to do. Let’s find a way out of this mess!” Instead, I felt like I let him down, like I let my old man down. That weepy self-pitying bullshit that I so much loathe hit with a vengeance. I was embarrassed by the fact that here I was again doing it in the same old self-destructive, morally indefensible way. I had a very difficult time deciding who were my doctor, my friends, and my family. It all fused, I thought, into some sort of bizarre conspiracy, one that was out to get me. Probably, more to the truth, was that Handelsman thought that maybe the intensity of therapy could be better addressed after a brief respite and that we’d pick it up again come September. That idea never made it into my head.
Jean, my “need” incarnate, was the exception but I didn’t know her all that well yet, so I was also none too sure about her. I quickly tested her and put her through, what can only be described as accompanying me on a trip through Hell.
When Jean’s cocaine ran out, I found myself asking Paul, my upstairs illegal tenant, to sell me quarter grams to grams of coke (when I couldn’t obtain the drug for free from the patrons at the bar or other characters I knew), and deduct it from the monthly rent. Also, I was about to change business addresses.
Ray Garcia, the maitre d’ from Tavern On the Green, whom I’d written about previously, and the new manager of Oren & Aretsky’s were going into the restaurant business together. Bankrolled by this wealthy tax shelter operator, Herman, who had successfully backed this French restauranteur, Robert, in a number of well-known places, such as La Cage Au Foile and Chez Pascal, was now going to put the three of them together in another venture, Bistro Pascal. The location was in prime territory, Sixty-third Street between Second and Third Avenue. It had three separate floors, each with private banquet rooms, a small, but cozy marble bar, floor length sculpted mirrors, seductive lighting, plush carpeting, fresh flowers, the best in wines, champagnes and liquors, three different chefs preparing foods, and waiters, skilled in the art of presentation and service. I opted for what I thought would be a better job, but it wasn’t.
When Bistro Pascal first opened, we enjoyed the blush of first love. Celebrities, whom the owners knew, paid their respects and brought their friends and others who fed off, or on, them. The booze flowed. The food was wonderfully prepared and consumed eagerly by mouths that were really more concerned with talking, while coke spoons glittered in recessed corners. Most everyone who patronized us for the first few weeks did so gratis. And, at first, the tips were generous. Later, after the bloom was off the rose, The Bistro generated little heat. Decadent though it was, it was not enough to interest those who either created scenes or took part in them. Those of us who had been around restaurants for awhile could smell the odors that emanated from the corpse, only hours old, once the process of decay took over.
First to be let go was the chef who was hired just to make pasta, next to get the ax was the sommelier. Then, as business worsened, waiters left, either on their own volition or they were asked to leave.
However, at the time, it didn’t bother me at all. I was experiencing a rebirth of the senses, of creativity, in part fueled by the alcohol I was consuming but especially from the reefer I was smoking. Again, it coincided with Brasz arriving from New Orleans.

I must say, at this juncture, I was, in the parlance of literature professors, an “unreliable narrator” for chunks of time between 1980 and April 1987. Not that I would purposely lie or fabricate events in order to make this memoir more engaging, or readable. Simply put, I was under the influence of many different drugs (sometimes singularly and other times in consort with one another), that consequently, the events which I’m going to describe, flow into and out of one another with no clear remembrance of time. The clarity of each experience is also colored by various substances. There was the tedious suction of the cycle of addiction, the repetitious stutter of days without content or light, there also were days, weeks and months, whole chunks that, while hardly ever being devoid, or free, from the influences of certain chemicals, were however, given to flights of fancy and, in no small measure, hope. It was in those times that I had some marvelous bursts of creative energy, and certain adventures, that would not have happened if I were stolid and tame, instead of being, what I was, which was, unquestionably, “unreliable.”

I wore an off-white suit with a party colored, striped tie and blue shirt that I’d bought at Paul Stuart to my parents’ anniversary party I’d made for them at Bistro Pascal. They were celebrating forty-two years of wedded bliss. My father, almost sixty-two, was nearing retirement. In expectation of reaching that milestone, he’d bought a large two-bedroom condominium in, what once was, one of the more exclusive buildings in Miami Beach. A man whom he’d helped get his start in business, who became a multimillionaire thanks, in part, to my father’s introductions at his initial business undertaking, had lived there before him and introduced him to this luxurious way of living. My father, not nearly as wealthy, nevertheless wanted to emulate him. Also, he had little patience to hunt for a place that would be more suited to his and my mother’s lifestyle. He was a Jew, who liked Jews, defended Jews (he was busted in the Army after he punched a Captain who’d passed an anti-semitic remark), yet he didn’t want to be around Jews who were...too Jewish. His plan, though not well thought out, owed more to expediency than anything else.
Bobby, according to my father, had cost him close to three quarters of a million dollars by persuading him to purchase another store in Brooklyn that would be his to nurture and run, but instead ran it into the ground. Bobby, along with a young butcher (who liked his whiskey, his women and his cocaine), tried to make the store successful but could not. Once seeing that this new sibling of a store was deformed they, like the elders in Sparta, left it on a mountaintop to die. My father could not make it any better and, six months after they bought and renovated it, sold it for a substantial loss. Still, my father could not let go. My brother, not thinking very clearly and caught in the addictive process as well, abandoned the business and went out to make his way in the world, but he was floundering, like I was. I had, of course, introduced him to Paul, who was subletting his pad and so Paul also became one of his cocaine connections. And so my father, wanting to facilitate a lifestyle of “the rich and famous,” reluctantly turned to figures he knew could not be trusted, but instead thought could be manipulated. It would prove, in the years to come, to be his undoing.
My mother, closing in on sixty-one, was experiencing the Jewish version of living death: having a first-born Jewish son co-habitating with a woman of not only another religion but another race as well, in this case, Chinese. She’d long ago given up the wish for me to be with, let alone marry, a Jewish woman. She was fond of the expression she’d often repeat to me: “Lord, throw me amongst my own.” I, however, had never really had wonderful dealings with “my own.” In fact, in so many ways, I was running away from “my own,” my own mother in fact. However, my mother imagined what others would say about her and her parentage, after seeing her son involved with an Oriental woman, and it embarrassed her. Mom, whose sensitivity knew no bounds and whose pain was visible and endless, demanded a respect from her immediate family that, due to all of our self-serving and narcissistic natures, was impossible. Never realizing the price she tried to exact from this particular family, she grew more bitter and angry as time went on in response to our collective inability to honor her wishes, in matters both deep and superficial. She, unlike the three males that circled around her and flew into her arms only when necessary, was essentially honest, hardworking and guileless. Her one flaw that caused her immeasurable suffering and pain, among the many flaws that each of us has, was her inability to allow people, especially herself, to have flaws.
Ray and Ron treated us to a wonderful anniversary dinner that night. Oysters, shrimp cocktails, melon and prosciutto, rack of lamb, Halibut, scalloped potatoes, asparagus, salads, champagne, whiskey and brandy were brought by waiters who lit our cigarettes, emptied our ashtrays, and fawned over my parents in ways each of them thought they deserved, but rarely experienced At the end of the evening, when my father asked for the check, even though I’d already told him that I had taken care of everything beforehand, was simply told, “It’s been taken care of.”
I was comfortably uncomfortable. My father could have stayed longer and stared at the “action,” especially the women, but my mother was relieved when he decided to leave. I would suspect it was when I ordered my third cognac, which John poured, with a heavy hand.

Brasz was now contemplating moving back to New York City and teaching in one of the public schools here, something Louis, his father, had done all his life. Becoming his father freaked him in similar ways it freaked me when I noticed my own replications with my father.
As early as 1965, my first go ‘round at Kingsborough Community College, a professor had us reading Max Lerner’s text on American history. The title escapes me now. It was there that I read about the symbolism involved in American’s defeat of England, its’ father figure, necessary to becoming a man, or independent, in its own right. Later, of course, once I became enamored of psychology in general, and Freud in particular, the book which profoundly effected me, among his many works was, Totem and Taboo. Many times Brasz and I would discuss this work in relationship to others, such as Levi-Straus’ Trieste Tropics, but mostly in ways that impacted on our upbringing and current lives. The love and disgust we had for our fathers manifested itself in the many ways we were drawn to their lives, emulated their lives, but were also repulsed by their lives and, sometimes in the case of my father, his flesh as well. The thought of having to assist him in getting up or, if a time came when I’d have to assist him in managing his hygiene or other daily needs, was enough to make me want to either be so far away as to make my intervention impossible or die first. Brasz, unlike myself, confronted his demons, walked over and through them, never around them, ate them, laughed at them, and accepted them, sometimes without the benefit of understanding or liking them.
Jean, who was always a diligent and hard worker, had begun a career in selling co-ops and condominiums in the hot New York real estate market in the early 1980’s. She’d made a few quick sales, which totaled well over fifty thousand, and made my life a hell of a lot easier. By this time, we had settled into a domesticity that seemed quite natural. We were together and, as such, shared in expenses and confidences. Her time, scheduled around showing apartments, was her own and we, Brasz included, made the most of it.
Brasz and I were like two old washer women. We could talk and gossip forever, sometimes calling each other two or three times a day, whether we saw each other or not. We could trade barbs, create syncopated riffs, ideas, indulge ourselves in music, literature, and painting, comment on writing and writers, loves--past and present--and compliment each other’s strengths and weaknesses. In short, we, while never fucking each other, were the closest thing to lovers, falling over and sorting out each other’s adolescence in an attempt to sway and subvert the advance of age.

A little reefer, clams and black bean sauce, Chinatown, Sonny’s East Broadway Run-Down, Cecil Taylor’s loft, Chambers Street, Fat Tuesdays, Museum of Modern Art, the rumblings of hip-hop Bronx, graffiti, Crash, Daze, A-1, East Village run-down, comeback art scene, midnight ramblings, day-glo, Haagen-Daz, a smattering of coke, The Bistro, painting and a different way of writing: short poems, titled, “One For...” which took jabs at our cultural heroes of the day, such as: One For Nancy
Nancy Reagan is on top
of the drug problem.

It’s made five Colombians
With stiff dicks,
Very happy.
Or,
One For John

John Wayne, doctors said,
Is in stable condition
After having everything
From the neck down
Removed today.
He’ll be given,
As protective measure,
A football helmet,
Upon his release;
Baring any further
Complications.

It was in that vein that one hot summer afternoon that I, high as a kite on some powerful sinsemilla, ( a potent strain of marijuana), strolled in the summer garden of The Museum of Modern Art, and came up with an idea for a play, Starsky and Butch. I was with Brasz and Jean and we, besides digging the paintings, were enjoying a glorious June day in New York City, talking about whatever nonsense came into our heads. A few weeks before, a building exploded in Queens, (certainly, nothing to make light of--except when your twisted on some good pot), and a Puerto Rican terrorist, Willie Morales of the FALN, was taken into custody, but not before he’d blown off all the fingers of one of his hands in this, their hideout and bomb factory. Yet, miraculously, incredulously, Morales had escaped from a locked ward in Bellevue Hospital, under the twenty-four hour a day guard that our finest, The New York City Police Department, was able to provide. John Santucci, the Queens District Attorney at that time, had sat red-faced in front of a blistering assault by the city’s media, and sworn that they were in hot pursuit and it was just a matter of time before he’d be apprehended and the city could, once again, sleep peacefully. The question of “how” he’d managed to escape, despite having no fingers and little left of his hand, (not to mention the rest of his cuts and bruises over his whole body), remained unanswered...until now. I surmised, to Brasz and Jean, that a gigantic ace bandage, with a metal clip, was hurled into Morales’ room by none other than the District Attorney, John Santucci, (named “Douchie” in my play), himself. Morales was having an affair with Santucci’s punk-rock daughter, compromising pictures were taken by a renegade terrorist, and Santucci had promised the FALN that no efforts would be made to stop their next and last act, (they’d promised to leave the country if they’d successfully complete their final and most appalling act of terrorism) until Morales had thrown a wrench into the agreement by blowing himself up. This came at the worst time: Santucci was about to be supported for a higher political office and his wife, a long suffering, whining, Jewish woman would, at long last, get out of Queens and into a position she’d long aspired to: First Lady of Brooklyn, where her parents still lived. Santucci, forced to put his best detectives on the case, called into the investigation: Lt. Tootsie, modeled after Telly Savalas’ TV character, Kojack, a New York City police detective and Starsky and his irrepressible partner, Butch, a send-up of another TV cop drama.
Brasz and I took the idea and created these mad riffs until the bones appeared, followed by the flesh and viscera. We lampooned our TV heroes, politicians, marriage, alternative lifestyles and love; we even managed to broach the subject of AIDS, (just beginning to gain notoriety in the media), by creating a character who was a doctor who lived in a bubble, rode around in a wheelchair, and treated all police personnel.
After this burst of energy subsided, after the laughs, and the insights and the language and the inspiration retreated into the reality of work--work at The Bistro and work on the play--I could not sustain both. The play was shelved.
Artaud, in his book of essays, The Theatre and Its Double, equates writing with any biological process. You can no more “give up” writing than you could pissing. It’s really not a big deal, almost like being born with a sixth digit on you foot or hand. Hopefully, you never learn how to live with it, but how to use it.
Because I had difficulty staying with one thing when that one thing presented obstacles (I was either unwilling or unable to work through), I flitted from one thing to the next, much like the women and jobs I’ve had in my life. Poetry, was usually what I returned to unless the spirit had been temporarily extinguished from my world. Besides, poetry, as Bukowski has said, is the fastest horse in the literary race. Why say something in a hundred pages when you can say it in ten lines? For me though, it was not philosophy or literary principle; the reality was (and is), that that is how I thought; that is how I trained my mind to think. I have done it so often and for so long that it’s as natural as, well, pissing.
And so, with a niggling feeling inside me, a feeling that was not new to me, a feeling that told me I was copping-out, lying, that I was too easy on myself, that I was afraid, afraid of failure, looking stupid, unlearned, not assured, clumsy, awkward, and most importantly, vulnerable, I went back to concentrating on poems.

The summer passed in a kind of blue haze interspersed with jolts of lightening. I worked and I wrote poems And when I wasn’t working I was with Brasz in Cecil’s loft on Chambers Street, listening to him, Jimmy Lyons, alto sax, Allan Silva, bass, Andrew Cyrille, drums and Ramsey Ameen, a gone violin player from New Jersey, rehearse for their gig at Fat Tuesdays. It was magical and I felt privileged to be in their presence digging the way Cecil’s compositions came together.
It was at Fat Tuesdays that the music, played in front of an eager and receptive audience, adhered to the structure of practice yet allowed for the thrill of improvisation: Jazz. Brasz and I would meet at my place and go to the club where we’d be let in and into the band’s dressing room. We’d break out a little reefer, while others opened a secret stash of hashish, and we’d pass the joint or the pipe. It was in these moments I felt that I’d realized a dream: to be among jazz men and writers and friends, sharing a moment like it’s no big deal, like I belonged there, because I was there. At the end of the sets, when evening turned into night and then morning, we’d sit with the musicians sometimes commenting on how they (and we) thought the sets went, any interesting occurrences that were detected by the few and many, and where should we go now, either to eat or hear more music.
Luckily for me, I mostly kept myself in check that summer. But, ever so slowly, I was becoming pray to the web that I myself was weaving, shutting off avenues of escape as this cocktail of chemicals and creativity sweetly spiked and distorted what I thought were opportunities or interpreted as reality.

That October, I turned thirty-three years old, and still in my own dark wood. Having no guides, either Sherpa or of a metaphysical nature, to navigate this secular Hell I was in, I tried to write my way out. I’d come up with another idea for a play shortly after my folks made the move to Miami Beach. Whether it was an attempt to keep them close or because they were gone I felt secure enough to begin it, I can’t say. The play, Eat It, It’s Good For You, is a surreal exploration of growing up Jewish in Coney Island in the Sixties. The entire play would take place in the kitchen where a gigantic refrigerator would spill some of its contents every time a character would open it while they exclaimed that there’s nothing inside to eat. The characters would sing and dance in response to the mother’s telling them what she was preparing for meals; one son would come to the table swathed in syringes; another son would have his brain removed after consenting to drop out of college and begin working for the father; each character would demonstrate their madness but never have it acknowledged, much less discussed. The kitchen is the battlefield, words are bullets, and food is love.
Try as I might, I could not make it work. As much as I loved the idea of writing this play, I was beginning to get more consumed with the life of decadence that was engaging me at The Bistro. Even when Brasz’s father died, I was not able to make it to his funeral. It wasn’t as if I was too fucked-up; it was too inconvenient to go on a Saturday. Brasz played it off at the time, but later told me how hurt he was that no one, especially me, thought enough about him to be at his father’s burial... “I was by myself, man, just alone back there in the chapel.” He didn’t have to tell me how he never really spoke to his mom and sister much. I knew that, and I also knew that even his father’s death held little sentimentality for him. That wasn’t the point. I felt like, and was, a first-class prick. Some things I did want to look at too deeply, and this was one of them. Had I looked, I would have seen a person as emotionally stingy as my parents were, maybe worse. I gave when it suited my purposes, seemingly afraid that emotions were a finite ingredient and would, if one were not careful, exhaust themselves.
What seemed to be inexhaustible was the cocaine that was permeating every nook and cranny in every social scene that New York had to offer. I had now taken to stealing and bartering with Paul, my upstairs tenant. I’d call him up, all hours of the day and night, and tell him either to leave a package of coke for me under his mat or, if I had some expensive wine or champagne to exchange for his product, I’d see him in person when I got home. There was still the chance encounters in The Bistro that provided the drug to me for free. For instance, one evening as we were all sitting around talking, sipping our drinks, getting ready to close, Robert, the part owner of the The Bistro came to visit. He motioned to me, the largest, (and he thought strongest), of the group to accompany him downstairs to where the dress lockers of the staff was located. He asked which of these was Charlie’s locker and I pointed it out to him. He informed me that Charlie was keeping amyl nitrates, or “poppers” (a capsule that, when broken, emits fumes so powerful that they give the user a rush of euphoria for a short period of time) as they were colloquially called, in there for him and that, before going home, to where his girlfriend or wife waited he would need their company. “I cannot fuck without my poppers,” he informed me in an accent so French I saw Paris on his breath.
“What’s the combination?” I asked.
“I do not know, the fuck Charlie cut out man without telling me,” he growled. “I need poppers to fuck,” he repeated.
“Don’t panic,” I said, “we’ll think of something.”
“I need a fucking crowbar,” he said, “wait here.”
I sat down and lit a cigarette and wondered how my life had come to this. Robert returned carrying a crowbar and a bottle of cognac. He took a swig from the bottle, passed it to me and, while I was drinking, reached into his sport jacket inside pocket and produced a baggy full of cocaine. As I was drinking, my eyes were drawn to the bag where I saw that good yellowish hue of rocks and powder that promised a high uninhibited by coarse mixtures of cut coke of inferior quality.
“Here, have a toot. The coke will make you strong,” Robert said as he passed the crowbar, baggy, and straw to me.
“Hey Robert I appreciate it, but I want to take some of that home, put it in my pocket. I get stronger when some of that shit is in my pocket.”
Robert laughed. “Yes, I know what you mean. Get started I will make you stronger as you go. Take a toot.”
I did. Robert took a twenty dollar bill from his pocket, took the baggy back and poured a very generous amount into the bill and began to fold it just as I snapped the lock. Inside Charlie’s locker was a box of amyl nitrates which Robert took and put the whole box into a pocket of his jacket.
“Those beautiful faggots, know how to fuck,” Robert exclaimed, as he drank off the rest of the cognac and walked back upstairs.
Tommy Sig had introduced to me to a friend of his, Donny ..., who had been the accountant of a famous and legendary entertainment impresario, Bill Sargent. When I had met Donny, he produced two two-gram vials of cocaine, a bottle of Martel, and a pack of Camels. During the course of getting shit-faced that evening, we shared a few secrets, and a few laughs. He’d told me a few things about Sargent that he knew and some rumors that had circulated among the Hollywood gossip mill. I realized Donny, like a lot of the people I had met, was very good at his chosen profession, but also out of his mind.
Sargent had produced the play, “Knockout” on Broadway, which ran for quite awhile, among other theatrical and film projects. He had negotiated, unsuccessfully, with the National Football League to have the Superbowl become a close-circuited event to which he’d have exclusive rights. He was a short, stocky man who, rumor had it, had tastes that were gargantuan. One evening as I was tending bar at The Bistro a limo pulled up outside and out he stepped with two young blond beauties on his arm.
He made his way into The Bistro speaking loudly about how an ugly fuck like him could have the good fortune of being serviced by these two foxy young “things” on his way over here in the limo. He appeared to be somewhat high but, the educated eye could see, he had just begun to fight. Sargent made his way over to the bar and ordered drinks all around. I looked at him and said, “Donny ...says hello.”
He backed away, pushed the two young girls from his arm, and glowered at me. “What did you say?” he bellowed.
I read it like this was anger feigned and did not feel the least bit threatened. “Donny ... says hello,” I repeated.
He rocked on his heels and moved closer. It seemed that all the noise in The Bistro ceased. Ray, who knew he was coming and had greeted him at the door, just looked from him to me, seemingly to prepare for whatever was going to go down.
“Do you know what that cocksucker did to me?” he shouted. He spoke fast, out of Brooklyn, like a Damon Runyon character.
“No, I don’t,” I replied, trying to keep the smile on my face from showing.
“He stole my fuckin’ car in California, the prick. Fuckin’ Rolls, fuckin’ Rolls good choice, huh? Stole the fucker and down in some fuckin’ Southern state, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas some fuckin’ state down there they caught the bastard for drivin’ drunk, drivin’ high drivin’ some goddamn way and he was broke, the sonofabitch always broke, a head for figures but always broke, and they threw him in the clink and who do you think he calls to bail him out, who?...Me, he calls me Goddamnit. And what do I do? I fly the fuck down there, wherever the hell it was and I go and I’m sweatin’ my balls off down there it was so goddamn hot and I bail him out and I’m at the fuckin’ desk signin’ the papers and what do you think the cocksucker did?...He stole my fuckin’ car again! Can you believe that!? As I’m bailin’ him out, he goes behind the cow shit police station, opens up the car with the keys that these dumb ass cops just gave him back and before you know it he was off again. Never did find the sonofabitch, either.” He laughed so hard then that he coughed and turned beet red.
“What did you do?” I finally asked.
“What did I do? I’ll tell you what I did. I found a goddamn bar, had a few quick fuckin’ drinks, and got my fat ass out of there and went home. Do you know where he is now? Cause if you do man call him, tell him I love him, all is forgiven. He’s so good with numbers.”
“Nah, I don’t, but if I do, I’ll tell him...what are ya drinkin’?” I asked.
“ Cognac, of course. If you’re a friend of Donny’s I better watch my ass. I’m takin’ everyone to The Palladium after this. Come with us. I want to keep you close.” And then he laughed that massive laugh again. He came over and stretched his frame across the bar and pulled me close and whispered, “You do any blow?” I nodded my head. He reached into his pocket, produced a suede sack lined with thin plastic, and gave it to me. “Just put it in your pocket, hang onto it.”
Later, when I went to the bathroom and opened the sack, it was filled with a white substance I had little trouble placing.

It started to get bad toward the end of November. I’d come home, slightly “lit” or drunk or both, at one or two in the morning from The Bistro. Usually I’d have coke in my pocket or, more likely, I’d made arrangements with Paul to get some in exchange for wines or rent. I’d open the door and the light and hear the T.V. from the bedroom. I knew that Jean was up, but I wouldn’t go in there right away. First, without taking off my coat, I’d get a glass of water, tissue, a piece of cotton and a spoon. Then, I’d go into the bedroom where I’d place them on the table where my diabetic supplies would be, hardly able to make eye contact with Jean. She’d be sitting up and after I took off my coat, got out of my outerwear and sat on the corner of the bed, adjacent to the table, Jean would slide over towards me and we’d kiss, briefly. My mind, my being, all my energies were directed at getting that drug into my vein. Sometimes, because my veins were so beat-up and difficult to find, she’d help me to find a new one. Other times, after the first shot, I’d throw-up the food I’d eaten that evening and wait for it to be over, then continue. After, if I was lucky, and finished with the first run, I’d go to the refrigerator and consume a tall six-pack of beer, or a bottle of booze or wine, until I could relax enough to lay down and try to find sleep.
If I was not lucky, it would be the beginning of a run that would take me into places that only desperate people inhabit, and it wouldn’t end until other forces, from within or without, muted then dissipated the uprising.
“Old money” always danced to its’ own tune. The period of the early 1980’s saw the swift and, sometimes brutal rise, of the new barometers of society’s privileged class: Wall streeters and drug dealers. The climate in New York City, especially in those areas neglected because of social class and voter registration roles, and dominated by an insatiable urge for “more,” made the neighborhoods pulsate with “more” desperation.
In those early years of the 1980’s, the East Village was littered with chicken bones, rib bones, paper and plastic bags from newspapers and bodegas, half-gutted buildings with yawning black doorways or other carved entrances, the sound of mice and rats ticking through the garbage and the wails of fire alarms and police sirens. There were lots more to be seen and heard, but usually I had my head buried too far down in my collar for them to make much of an impression. I’d begun to notice the first wave of crack cocaine from those who flew madly around the streets, their eyes wild with pleading, saliva congealed in the corners of their mouths, young people brazened by necessity displaying different acts of desperation. Neither desperation or neighborhoods like the East Village were unfamiliar to me. What was different was my age. When in my late teens or early twenties, the element of danger was on the periphery of my actions. I was not stupid about the risks I took, and I tried not to be too reckless or visible. The truth is that I was reckless and did stand out though I didn’t think so. I believe most, if not all drug addicts believe, for quite awhile, that their actions go undetected by all who matter, their loved ones, authority figures and, most importantly, the law. Now, I looked at the scene and recognized that I, now in my thirties, was more vulnerable to both those who sold and procured drugs there and the cops who chased them. For now, the drug scene, even during the seven years I’d been clean, had gotten more unstable because the age of those involved got younger and the drugs harder.
There were new indignities and humiliations suffered, beside the traditional dangers that attenuated my cravings, sparked by my appetites and mania. When I first made my journeys into the drug world I’d met up with those who sold “dummy bags,” bags that were supposed to hold dope, but instead had turned out to be nothing more than milk sugar, baking soda or aspirin. Also, I had had my share of run-ins with violence: I’d been cut and held-up at gunpoint. Now, twelve and thirteen year old kids were having us stand in line (which sometimes snaked down entire buildings and into the street), only, at their discretion, accept bills larger than ones, and arbitrarily decide who was and who wasn’t going to get served that day. Sometimes they’d serve you themselves, while at other times you’d have to go to a door, which had a hole cut out, and ask for what you wanted: “I’ll have four D’s and two C’s,” which meant: I’ll have four bags of dope (heroin) and two bags of coke; the dope being ten dollars a piece and the coke five. You would then put the money through the hole and wait for the bags to be placed into the same hand, then you counted it, quickly, and split. Of course, everyone waiting on line and those downstairs knew you just scored, so getting off the block could present problems. Luckily, it never did.
One of the reasons it never did was because there were times when I was able to persuade, cajole, or beg Jean to go down there instead of, or with, me. There were nights where I’d have just enough coke to wet my appetite but be unable to procure the amount necessary to satiate my thirsts. On those evenings, I’d walk or cab down to the alphabet blocks to get what I thought to be the amount needed to satisfy the craving, usually thirty dollars worth. I’d get back, shoot the drugs into my system, get so wired that I’d go right back for more. And more. And more. I had taken the Freudian act of stuttering to new and more frightening levels.
I’m sure Jean thought if she left me, I’d die. And that is probably true. She had also turned into my nurse, as well.
There was a study made of nurses who, during and at the end of World War II, married some of the quadriplegics that they cared for. They loved these men, of course. Yet, on other levels that the study addressed, they discovered that the power and control that they had over these men were enormous. These men needed them completely, forever. In a sense, that gives one a pretty secure feeling. Well, a drug addict or drunk also gives the other person (if they aren’t an addict), a similar feeling of security. Where is a three month old infant going? He might crawl around the crib a little, get lost for a period of time, but that’s about it as far as his excursions are concerned. He’s really not going far and will always come back. And that can, and often times does, infuriate the addict. Because along with all those other fucked-up feelings is that we, I, hate to feel controlled. Of course, we put ourselves in that position being as goddamn needy and helpless as we are and project, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it! In fact, we begin to suspect that there are “ulterior motives” behind the person’s kindness. It’s fucking madness. “If she does that, then she’s really making me do this and I don’t wanna do that, but I want her to do this,” and “what kind of idiot can she (they) be if I get them to do this for me and even though I asked them to how could they do this knowing what “this” really means to me and...” How can anyone win with a stacked deck like that?
This is not to say that Jean was passive or silent during my periods of addiction. She’d prompt me to seek help, keep doctor’s appointments, eat as appropriately as I was able and make it known that she had confidence in me that I’d eventually tunnel out of the hole I was in. She did not demand I do anything, nor did she remove herself from my equation of self-destruction, though she did make a few suggestions. She wanted me to see Bernstein for a physical exam, and, to escape from New York City by visiting her folks in San Francisco shortly after Christmas.
Once again, I sat facing the fish of North America waiting for Bernstein to appear and calm the voices raging in my head. I sat, stripped to my waist, looking at myself in that examination room light. My arms appeared thinner with fresh needle tracks in the crooks of them. I’d lost muscle tone. My eyes felt glassy and dulled, while my nerves, the ones on the surface, were raw and bleeding. I’d decided to just lay it out to Bernstein and see how he saw it. I was hanging on by a thread, even Ray Charles could see that.
Bernstein came in, looked at me, began to smile then thought better of it and remained silent. I told him what I’d been going through. He didn’t look upset or displeased. Those are feelings I am so sensitive to that the slightest hint of them is enough to heat the emotional beaker even before I’m conscious of the match being struck.
In his office, after the examination, I sat opposite him and waited to hear what I’d waited to hear each and every time I sat facing a person I was attracted to and depended upon, magic words to make it all go away, to make it all better, to make me well again. The first words he said to me were words I never imagined him saying and, almost twenty years later, in the writing of this work, are the real “magic” that has allowed me to, so far, avoid the consequences of the spiral of addiction. He said, “Why didn’t you call me?”
A friend? A friend and doctor? Could this be? I didn’t know. That possibility left me in uncharted waters. What did he really want from me? What toll would he exact? And if there wasn’t a toll, if this was not a question designed to manipulate me at best, enslave me at worst, then what? That kind of honesty was beyond my ability to understand, let alone trust. Yet, it insinuated itself so profoundly that twenty years later I not only remembered the question, but the inflection and tone as well. But at that time, sitting opposite him in his office, I couldn’t sort anything out. Instead, tears began welling up in my eyes that I struggled for control. “I’m so goddamn depressed,” I began. “I aborted two things I started to write that I liked. I want to sleep when I’m not using and burn myself up when I’m not sleeping. I don’t know what the fuck to do at this point. Maybe tranquilizers, maybe...”
“No, no tranquilizers, not now. I think that the reality of using drugs again depresses the hell out of you.”
I looked at him and nodded, yes.
“I’d like you to try this antidepressant, Mellaril, twice a day, once in the morning and one right before you go to bed.”
“What should I look for?”
“Don’t look for anything, let it find you. And if that doesn’t, we’ll try something else. Stop the drugs, if you can. Give this a chance to work. And call me. Anytime. Even if it’s just to talk. If you find that you can’t stop this slide by yourself, we’ll figure something else out, but let’s not wait too long. I want to see you in a month, O.K.?”
“Yeah, O.K. And thanks.”
He wrote out the prescription and I left. I didn’t take the pills, stay in touch, call, or see him in a month. In a month I’d be in San Francisco, trying to improvise on a torpid script. I was trying to get some jazz back into my life.

pgs 154-164, From Chapter VIII: JUNK SICK: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015