April 29,1978

Ann, her mother, and I went dinner at Serendipidity 3. Tim Dunleavey and William Lively joined us. The four of them went to a play on Broadway. I headed down to CBGBs. The Tuff Darts were on stage. I drank a beer, wearing a suit. I didn't have any money, but as my Nana said to me, "It's one thing to be broke, it's another look it."

A couple from New Jersey were picking on a gay boy. I never liked bullies and told them to stop. They swore at me, saying, "Mind your own business, fuckhead."

I laughed at them and the boy got ready to spit at me.

"You spit on me and I break your face."

I swallow my gum, since it's never good to get whack with a slack jaw.

His drunk girlfriend crowed, "Go ahead, you faggot."

The gay boy fled the bar area. Merv the bouncer was nowhere in sight. Her friend cleared his throat and said, ""You're six million times a Jew. I should shot you."

"Why don't you do everyone a favor and try and be human."

"Fuck you." He brandished the gun in his waistband.

I sucker-punched him in the jaw and grabbed his shirt so he couldn't get away. He struggled to get at his gun. I punched him in the nose. Blood poured from both nostrils. I struck him again. KO. I released him and he slumped to the floor. No one at the bar had even noticed the brief fight and I bent over to get his gun. His girlfriend kicked at me, screaming in pure Brooklynese, "Wait till my father hears about this. He'll kill you."

I restrained her as best as I could, as her boyfriend rose up and blindsided me with a sharp right. His best punch and I heard a tooth crack. I turned to him, but before I could get revenge, people restrained us. Merv thew them out and I followed. They were gone and I went inside rubbing my jaw.

Several minutes later Ann came up, swearing under her breath at Hilly's daughter, "I hate her. She made me pay."

I never paid.

I don't know why.

"You missed my fight."

"I was wondering what was the commotion. I figured it was some idiots having a fight."

"That's me." I didn't tell her about saving the gay boy and we left the bar. Ann walked me to 11th Street. I invited her upstairs.

"I can't. My mother's afraid of the city."

"With good reason." New York was dangerous. "I'll walk you home."

"You don't have too."

"It's a dangerous city."

At her door she kissed me and said, "Come by at 3. My mother will be at a play."

"I'll be there."

LATER

Ann wasn't home at 3 and I figured she had gone to the matinee with her mother. I thought about calling an old girlfriend, but decided to wait for Ann. Her mother can't stay in New York forever.

LATER

People are full of shit. None of them mean what they say. I would rather be a hermit than have to listen to their drivel and my room at the SRO is like a Trappist monk's cell. No phone. No TV. The more possession you have the less you are yourself. Only a few visitors come here; William Lively, Mark, Eleanor, Ann, Anthony, Jaci, Kim, and Andy Reese.

Ann is the only regular.

No one else has returned to this squalid room. My life becomes completely obscure here. Often I'm lonely. The four walls never change. except for the pattern of the cockroaches' wanderings. These vermin are more alive than me and if the hotel burned to the ground, there would be no trace of me. My remains will be sent to a pauper's grave, since I couldn't afford a cremation and that's the end I want.

Bones ground to dust. A warm urn filled with white ashes.

LATER

Thank the stars for CBGBs. It's my only source of entertainment. Cold beer and punk rock. I need money.

LATER

Where is Ann? Where is Andy? Where is my Mother and Father? Where are my brothers and sisters. Where are my teachers? The wall to my left matches the other three walls And the ceiling, but not the floor. I am the only one in this room Everyone else in the world is outside. Where am I? Here? Where are you? Not here. Where are you and I?

LATER

Ann and I went to Max's. It was too smoky for my lungs. The doorman was charging $10 to see the Heartbreakers. I shook my head. I had no money and walked Ann back to her apartment. Outside on the street I whispered, "Let's fuck."

"My mother's there."

"I know, but we can pretend to be in high school."

"I'm not a high school cheerleader."

"I never said you were." My hand slipped under her dress and strayed between her legs.

Ann pushed me away and said, "Go now."

She wasn't angry, but didn't kiss me good-night.

I jumped the train and sat smelling her on my fingers.

Wishing it was more.

LATER

A junkie gave me a Black Beauty on 6th Avenue. "I seen you play B-Ball at West 4th. You play defense. If you have money one day, give me $2."

I dropped the pill and continued to my room. The ruthless rush of Speed drove my blood through the night. Speed is not a good bed companion. I felt strong. I felt not alone. It was all a delusion.

april 28, 1978

Ann's mother is in town from Charleston, West Virginia. I've never been to Appalachia. Ann keeps telling me that she's not from a 'hollah'. I believe her, but I do like her accent.

Ann's mother's visit means no sex for a couple of days.

This morning we showered in the SRO hotel's bathroom. Back in my room Ann slipped on her panties Wait a moment." I had an erection.

"What do you think you're going to do with that?"

"Give me a naked hug."

"I know where this is going," she answered, but leaned over to my body.

I rubbed her smooth back, massaging her muscles.

"Let's fuck."

We'll be late for work."

Me to a Wall Street executive dining room and her to the theater.

I wanted flesh and said, "Okay, but just suck me a little."

"Damn, don't you ever stop."

"Her mouth surrounded my cock. I came within a minute.

"Happy now?" She dressed quickly.

"Happier." I put on my clothes slowly, hoping she would want more, but she left and I did the same five minutes later.

LATER

I haven't smoked reefer for three days. The longest stoppage, since the DEA was spraying the marijuana crops with toxic pesticides. Paraquat poisoning 15 million pot smokers. The DEA is a semi-criminal government organization set up by Nixon to persecute anyone not in the silent majority. They should be hung by the balls. The first batch of paraquat weed had me coughing like I was going to lose a lung and I stopped for several months, until my friend Andy in Boston found a dealer with clean Mexican marijuana.

Ann doesn't smoke at all.

Me I like it all.

Hash, tar resin, kif, and opium the ket to dreams and an addiction to escape from this world. Reality is a problem for me. I can't stop the fascist corporate rape of the world. Not by myself.

Only in dreams do I win the battles.

April 27, 1978

I went all the way up to EST in Times Square. Ann had called to say that her pregnancy test had come out negative. For the last two weeks Ive been finishing in her, because I thought she was pregnant, but I must be sterile from eating too many Twinkies watching Tv high on LSD during the early part of this decade. Sterility was the price I paid for that binge, but at least I can get an erection.

Arriving at the theater I asked the other college students where Ann was.The assholes had no idea.

They said ti as if they were hiding her.

Paranoia is a another lasting effect of Acid.

LATER

I waited for Ann. She was happy to see me. I thought her very beautiful in a jean jacket and her brownish hair flicked with blonde from the Spring sun.

Afterwards I visited Tim Dunleavy. He said nothing about me stealing money and I wondered if Anthony had been telling me a lie, since he still suspects of stealing his money. He has taken lengths to distort who I am to my friends.

Fuck him.

But I don't have many friends here.

Willem asked, "Who are your friends in New York?"

I took my time answering and Willem said, "If you have to take that long, you don't have any friends."

"Someone once said if you have one friend, you're lucky. If you have two friends, you're blessed, and if you have three friends, you're a liar."

"And what about no friends?"

"You're lonely, but I have plenty of women friends here. My father's only friend is my mother. Funny, they had six kids and I've never heard them making love. They must have been doing it quietly. I didn't know anything about sex as a kid. When someone informed me about the physical act, I said to them, "My parents wouldn't do that."

"I guess you were wrong at least six times."

"I guess I was."

Ann makes only a little noise and I suspect I grunt like a caveman.

Not nice.

I'll try and work on sounding more human.

April 26, 1978

Last night I went to a jungle-themed ball at Le Clique ball. The gay disco was packed with Tarzan fire-eaters, mime artists, Me Jane dykes, queers dressed as zebras and giraffes, transvestite strippers with silicon tits dressed in animal skins, straights in suits and leather freaks led by a naked Marc Stevens and a lady friend covered with gold paint to their very assholes.

"So glad you came." Marc hugged me with wild eyes and flittered into the crowd. He left a metallic stain on my jacket like he had the Midas touch. Kim Davis, his neighbor, was my dance partner and we danced the swim swigging tequila. A drag queen grabbed the bottle and gulped down the better part of the last half. I almost punched her arm, but Shannon had great legs and we danced face to face. She could easily pass for a woman.

"Come with me."

I refused.

This was not a night to be with drags of fag hags. A gay boy in a loin cloth stuck a 'lude in my mouth. I chased it down with the last of the tequila. It had no effect and I said to Kim, "Let's go to CBGBs."

We took a taxi there and as soon as I entered the bar, the 'lude hit. I was barely able to stand and Kim planted me in a chair.

Damn, my generation does drugs and does them all the time; coke, heroin,MDA, downers, speed, anything we can get our hands on.

Kim handed me a beer.

Xcessive, Clay, Karen, and Greg were the only people I knew at CBs. I staggered from the bar. I stopped at a phone booth in Washington Square and phoned Ann.

"Can I come over?"

"I'm asleep."

"Say something to me." I was blown away by the emptiness of the evening. No one was on the street. It was 1 AM. I was glad not to be on a bridge. I have a problem with them in this condition.

"I love you."

"I love you too." I hung up soothed by her words and swore to get a real job. Ann might be pregnant. She would make a good wife, but my fears rose up; divorce, getting fired from work, get old.

Not a pretty story."

I made it to the SRO hotel and crashed and in my shabby room's worn bed without taking off my clothes.

TKO.

Transvestites are hard to recognize, especially one as beautiful as Shannon. She looks like a Vogue model. The first ones I met were at the Other Side in Boston. One named Gerry was gorgeous, but I'm not into them sexually and I once asked Gerry, if she had a penis.

"I'm proud to be a man."

LATER

This morning I called Ann at EST and a young girl told me, "She didn't come in today."

"Shit," I say to myself. "Where is she?"

I phoned her apartment and no one answered thought she might have gone to get an abortion.

I went outside and saw a handsome young man with two children on 5th Avenue. He wore his out-dated hat and his thread bare blazer with elegance and I imagined him to be a mirror of my future.

Ann is the only woman I want in a city of millions.

I'll call her at and ask if she wants to see COPS, a theater piece starring Willem. The blonde actor is a good man. I'm not. I don't fight fair. Just a bastard without a real room or phone or job.

My mother would hate to see me this morning.

Shattered.

No she wouldn't.

She loves me always.

LATER

Death house on a barren isle no one come here to turn around tricks a life's path ends As a last gasp the surrender of will to the final goal life's negative eternity the square root of all zeros death house, no one goes forever I come there senseless I leave the same way.

It's 7 PM.

I want to see Ann.

I've waited all day.

Sickened by love.

I'll call her now.