ummer).
     But there's old Ben  Fagan puffing  and chuckling over his pipe so what
the hell, why bother grownup men and poets at that with your own troubles --
So Ben and I and his chum Jonesy also a chuckly pipesmoker go out to the bar
(Mike's  Place) and sip a  few beers,  at first I  vow I'm not going to  get
drunk after all, we  even go out to the park to have a long talk in the warm
sun that always turns to delightful cool foggy dusk in that town of towns --
We're sitting in the park of the big Italian white church watching kids play
and people go by, for some reason I'm bemused by the sight of a blonde woman
hurrying somewhere "Where's she going?  does she have a secret sailor lover?
is she only going to finish her typing  afterhours in the office? what if we
knew Ben what every  one of these people  goin by is headed for, some  door,
some restaurant, some secret romance" -- "You sound like you stored up a lot
of energy  and  innerest in life in those  woods" --  And Ben knows that for
sure because he's  been months in the wilderness too, alone -- Old Ben, much
thinner than he used to be in  our madder Dharma Bum days of five years ago,
a little gaunt  in fact, but still the same  old Ben who stays  up  late  at
night  chuckling  over  the  Lankavatara Scripture and writing  poems  about
raindrops -- And  he knows me very well, he knows I'll get drunk tonight and
for weeks  on  end just on general principles  and that a day will come in a
few weeks when I'll be so exhausted  I  wont be able to talk to  anybody and
he'll come and visit me and just silently at my side be puffing his pipe, as
I sleep -- The kind of  guy he  is -- I trying to explain about  Tyke to him
but  some  people are cat lovers and some ain't, tho Ben always has a little
kitty around his pad -- His pad usually has a straw rug on the floor, with a
pillow  "pon which he  sits crosslegged by a smoking teapot, his bookshelves
full of Stein  and Pound and Wallace Stevens -- A strange quiet poet who was
only beginning to be recognized as a big rosy secret sage (one  of his lines
"When I leave town all  my friends go back  on the sauce') -- And I'm on  my
way to the sauce right now. Because anyway old Dave Wain is back and  Dave I
can see him rubbing his hands in anticipation of another big wild binge with
me like we had the  year before  when he drove me back  to New York from the
west coast, with George Baso the  little Japanese  Zen master hepcat sitting
crosslegged on  the back  mattress of Dave's jeepster  (Willie the  Jeep), a
terrific trip through Las Vegas, St Louis,  stopping off at expensive motels
and drinking  nothing but  the best Scotch out of the bottle all the way  --
And  what better way to go back to New York, I could have blown 190  dollars
on an airplane -- And Dave's never met  the  great Cody and will  be looking
forward to that -- So me and Ben leave the park and  slowly walk to the  bar
on Columbus  Street and I order my  first  double bourbon and gingerale. The
lights are twinkling on outside in that fantastic toy street, I can feel the
joy rise in my soul -- I now remember
     Big Sur with a clear piercing love and agony and even the death of Tyke
fits  in with everything but  I don't realize the enormity of what's yet  to
come -- We  call up Dave  Wain who's  back from Reno  and  he  comes blattin
downto the  bar in his jeepster driving that marvelous  way he does (once he
was a cab-driver) talking all  the time and never making  a mistake, in fact
as good  a driver as Cody altho I  cant imagine anybody  being that good and
asked Cody about it the next day -- But old jealous drivers always point out
faults and complain, "Ah well that Dave Wain of yours doesnt take his curves
right, he eases  up and sometimes  even pokes  the brake a little instead of
just ridin  that old curve  around  on  increased power, man you gotta  work
those  curves" -- Obvious at this time now,  by the way and parenthetically,
that there's so much  to  tell about  the fateful following three weeks it's
hardly possible to  find anyplace to begin. Like  life, actually  -- And how
multiple it all is! -- "And what happened to little old  George Baso, boy? "
-- "Little  old  George Baso  is probably dyin of TB in  a hospital  outside
Tulare"  --  "Gee, Dave, we  gotta  go see  him"  -- "Yessir,  let's do that
tomorrow" -- As usual  Dave has no money whatever but that doesn't bother me
at all, I've got plenty, I  go  out the following  day and cash  500 dollars
worth of travelers  checks just so's me and  old Dave can really have a good
time... Dave likes good food and  drink  and  so do I...  But he's  got this
young kid he  brought back from  Reno called Ron Blake  who is a goodlooking
teenager with blond hair who wants to be a sensational new Chet Baker singer
and comes  on with  that tiresome hipster approach  that was natural five or
ten and even twenty five years  ago but now in 1960 is a pose, in fact I dug
him as  a con man conning Dave (tho for what, I don't know) -- But Dave Wain
that lean  rangy red head Welchman with his penchant for going off in Willie
to fish in the Rogue River up in Oregon where he knows an  abandoned  mining
camp, or  for blattin around  the  desert roads, for suddenly reappearing in
town  to get drunk, and a marvelous poet himself, has that certain something
that young hip teenagers probably wanta imitate  -- For one  thing is one of
the  world's best  talkers, and funny too  -- As I'll show --  It was he and
George  Baso  who hit on the fantastically  simple  truth that  everybody in
America  was walking around with a dirty behind, but  everybody, because the
ancient  ritual of washing with water  after the toilet had  not occurred in
all the modern  antisepticism -- Says Dave "People in America have all these
racks of dry-cleaned clothes like you  say on  their trips, they spatter Eau
de Cologne  all over  themselves, they  wear Ban  and  Aid or whatever it is
under their armpits, they  get aghast  to see  a spot on a shirt or a dress,
they probably change  underwear and socks  maybe even  twice a day,  they go
around all puffed up and insolent thinking themselves the cleanest people on
earth  and  they're walkin  around with  dirty azzoles -- Isnt that amazing?
give  me a  little nip on that tit" he says reaching for my drink so I order
two  more,  I've  been  engrossed, Dave  can order all the drinks  he  wants
anytime, "The President of the  United  States, the big  ministers of state,
the great bishops and shmishops and big shots everywhere, down to the lowest
factory worker with all  his fierce pride, movie stars, executives and great
engineers and presidents of law firms and advertising firms with silk shirts
and neckties and great  expensive traveling cases in  which they place these
various expensive English imported hair brushes and shaving gear and pomades
and  perfumes are all walking around with dirty azzoles! All you gotta do is
simply  wash  yourself with soap and water! it hasnt occurred to  anybody in
America at all! it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard of! dont you
think it's  marvelous that we're being called  filthy  unwashed beatniks but
we're the only ones walkin around with clean azzoles? "  -- The whole azzole
shot  in fact  had spread swiftly and  everybody  I knew and  Dave knew from
coast to coast had embarked on this great crusade which I must say is a good
one -- In fact in  Big Sur  I'd instituted a shelf  in  Monsanto's  outhouse
where the soap must be kept and  everyone  had to bring a can of water there
on  each trip -- Monsanto  hadn't heard  about it yet, "Do you  realize that
until we  tell poor Lorenzo  Monsanto the famous  writer that  he is walking
around with  a dirty azzole he will be doing  just that? " -- "Let's go tell
him right now! " -- "Why of course if we wait another minute
     ... and besides do you know what it does to people  to walk around with
a  dirty azzole? it leaves a great yawning  guilt  that they cant understand
all day, they go to work all cleaned up in the morning and you can smell all
that freshly laundered clothes and  Eau de Cologne  in the commute train yet
there's something  gnawing at them, something's wrong, they know something's
wrong they don't know just what! " -- We rush to  tell Monsanto  at  once in
the book store around the corner. By  now  we're beginning to feel  great...
Fagan  has retired saying typically  "Okay you guys  go ahead and get drunk,
I'm goin home and spend a quiet evening in a hot bath with a book" "Home" is
also where Dave Wain and Ron Blake live -- It's an old rooming house of four
stories on the edge  of the Negro district of San Francisco where Dave, Ben,
Jonesy, a painter called Lanny Meadows, a mad French Canadian drinker called
Pascal and  a Negro called  Johnson all  live  in different rooms with their
clutter of  rucksacks  and  floor mattresses and books  and  gear, each  one
taking turns one day a week to go out and do all  the shopping and come back
and cook  up a big communal dinner in the  kitchen -- All ten or  twelve  of
them sharing the  rent, and with that rotation of dinner, they end up living
comfortable lives with  wild  parties and girls  rushing in, people bringing
bottles, all at about a minimum of seven dollars a week say
     -- It's a wonderful place but at the same  time a little maddening,  in
fact a whole lot maddening because the painter Lanny Meadows loves music and
has installed his Hi Fi speaker in the kitchen altho he applies  the records
in a back  room so the daily cook  may be concentrating on his Mulligan stew
and  all of a  sudden Stravinsky's dinosaurs start  dining  overhead And  at
night there are bottlecrashing parties usually supervised by wild Pascal who
is a sweet kid but crazy when he drinks A regular nuthouse actually and just
exactly  the  image  of what the journalists  want  to  say  about the  Beat
Generation   nevertheless  a  harmless  and  pleasant  agreement  for  young
bachelors and a good idea in the long run  -- Because you can rush into  any
room  and  find  the expert, like  say  Ben's  room and  ask "Hey  what  did
Bodhidharma say to the Second Patriarch?  " -- "He  said  go  fuck yourself,
make your mind like a wall, dont pant after outside  activities and dont bug
me  with your outside plans" -- "So the guy  goes out and stands on his head
in the snow? " "No that was Fubar" -- Or you go runnin into Dave Wain's room
and there  he is sitting  crosslegged on his mattress on  the  floor reading
Jane Austen,  you ask "What's  the  best  way to make beef  Stroganoff? "...
"Beef Stroganoff is very simple, "t'aint nothin but a  good well cooked beef
and onion stew that you  let cool afterwards then you throw in mushrooms and
lotsa sour cream, I'll come down and show  way soon's  I finish this chapter
in this marvelous novel,  I wanta find out  what happens  next" -- Or you go
into the Negro's  room and ask if you  can borrow his  tape recorder because
right  at the  moment some funny things  are being  said in the  kitchen  by
Duluoz and McLear and Monsanto and some newspaperman -- Because the  kitchen
was  also the  main talking room where everybody sat in  a cluster of dishes
and ashtrays and  all kinds of visitors came... The year before  a beautiful
16 year old Japanese girl had come there just to interview me, for instance,
but chaperoned by a Chinese painter The phone rang consistently -- Even wild
Negro hepcats from around the corner  came  in with bottles (Edward Kool and
several others) --  There was Zen, jazz, booze, pot and all the works but it
was somehow  obviated (as a  supposedly degenerate idea)  by the sight of  a
"beatnik"  carefully painting the wall of his room and clean white with nice
little  red  borders around the  door  and  windowframes --  Or  someone  is
sweeping out the livingroom. Itinerant visitors  like me or Ron Blake always
had an extra mattress to sleep on.



        12

     But Dave  is anxious  and so am  I to see  great Cody who is always the
major part of my reason  for journeying to the west coast so  we call him up
to Los  Gatos fifty miles away down  the  Santa Clara  Valley and I hear his
dear  sad voice  saying "Been waitin for ya old  buddy, come on  down  right
away, but I'll be goin to work at midnight so hurry up  and you can visit me
at work soon's the  boss leaves round  two and I'll  show you my new job  of
tire  recappin and see  if you cant bring  a little  somethin like a girl or
sumptin, just kiddin, come on down pal... "
     So there's  old Willie  waiting for us down on the street parked across
from  the little pleasant Japanese liquor store where as usual, according to
our  ritual, I  run and  get  Pernod  or Scotch or anything  good while Dave
wheels around to  pick me up at the  store door, and I get in the front seat
at  Dave's right where I belong all the time like old Honored Samuel Johnson
while everybody else that wants  to come along has to scramble back there on
the  mattress (a full mattress,  the seats are  out) and  squat there or lie
down there and also generally keep silent because when Dave's got  the wheel
of Willie  in his hand  and I've got the  bottle in mine and  we're off on a
trip  the talking all comes from  the front seat... "By  God" yells Dave all
glad  again, "it's  just like old times Jack, gee old Willie's been  sad for
ya, waiting for ya to come back -- So now I'm gonna show ya how old Willie's
even improved with age,  had him  reconditioned  in Reno last month, here he
goes, are you ready Willie?  "  and off  we go and the  beauty of it allthis
particular summer is that the front right seat is broken and just rocks back
and forth gently to  every one of Dave's  driving moves -- It's like sitting
in  a  rocking chair on a porch only this  is a moving  porch and a porch to
talk on at that -- And insteada watching old  men pitch horseshoes from this
here talking porch it's all  that fine white clean line in the middle of the
road  as  we go flying like birds over  the Harrison  ramps and whatnot Dave
always uses  to sneak out  of  Frisco real fast and avoid all the traffic...
Soon we're set straight and pointed head on down beautiful fourlane Bayshore
Highway to that lovely Santa  Clara Valley... But I'm amazed that after only
a  few years the damn thing no longer has prune  fields and vast beet fields
like at Lawrence  when  I  was a  brakeman on  the Southern Pacific and even
after) it's  one long row of houses right down the  line fifty miles  to San
Jose like a great monstrous Los Angeles beginning to grow south of Frisco.
     At  first  it's  beautiful  to  just watch that  white line reel  in to
Willie's snout but when I  start looking around  out the window there's just
endless  housing  tracts and new  blue factories everywhere -- Sez Dave "Yes
that's right, the population explosion is gonna cover every  bit of backyard
dirt in America someday in fact they'll even have to start piling up friggin
levels  of  houses and  others  over that like your city  City CITY till the
houses  reach a hundred miles  in the air in all  directions of the map  and
people  looking at the earth from another  planet with super telescopes will
see a prickly ball hanging in space -- It's like real horrible when you come
to think of it, even  us with our fancy talks, shit man it's all millions of
people and  events piling  up almost  unimaginable now, like raving  baboons
we'll all be  piled on top of each  other  or one another or whatever you're
sposed to say -- Hundreds of millions of  hungry mouths raving for more more
more -- And  the sadness  of it all is that the world hasn't  any  chance to
produce say a writer whose life could really actually touch all this life in
every detail like  you always say, some writers could bring you sobbing thru
the bed fuckin bedcribs of  the  moon to see  it all even unto the goddamned
last gory detail of some dismal robbery of the  heart at  dawn  when no  one
cares  like Sinatra sings" ('When  no  one  cares, "  he sings  in  his  low
baritone but resumes): "Some strict sweeper sweeping it  all up. I  mean the
incredible helplessness I felt Jack when Celine ended his Journey To The End
Of The Night by pissing in the Seine River at dawn there I am thinkin my God
there's  probably somebody pissing in the Trenton River at  dawn right  now,
the  Danube,  the  Ganges, the  frozen  Obi,  the  Yellow,  the  Parana, the
Willamette, the Merrimac in Missouri too, the Missouri itself, the Yuma, the
Amazon, the Thames, the Po, and so and so, it's so friggin endless it's like
poems endless everywhere and no one knows any bettern  old  Buddha  you know
where  he  says  it's  like  "There are  immeasurable  star misty  aeons  of
universes more numerous  than the sands in all the galaxies, multiplied by a
billion lightyears of  multiplication, in fact  if  I were to go on you'd be
scared and couldn't  comprehend and you'd despair so much you'd drop dead, "
that's what  he just about  said in one  of those  sutras  -- Macrocosms and
microcosms  and  chillicosms  and  microbes  and finally  you get  all these
marvelous books a man aint even got  time to read em all, what you gonna  do
in this already piled up multiple world  when you have to think of  the Book
of Songs,  Faulkner, Cesar Birotteau,  Shakespeare,  Satyricons, Dantes,  in
fact long stories guys  tell you in bars, in fact the sutras themselves, Sir
Philip Sidney,  Sterne, Ibn  El  Arabi, the copious  Lope  de  Vega and  the
uncopious  goddamn Cervantes,  shoo, then there's  all  those Catulluses and
Davids and radio  listening skid  row sages  to contend with because they've
all got a million stories too and you too Ron Blake in the backseat shut up!
down to everything  which is so much that it is  of necessity dont you think
Nothing anyway, huh? " (expressing exactly the way I feel, of course).
     And  to corroborate all that about the  too-much-ness of the  world, in
fact, there's Stanley  Popovich also  in  the back  mattress  next  to  Ron,
Stanley  Popovich of New York suddenly arrived in  San Francisco with  Jamie
his Italian beauty girl but's going  to leave her in a few  days to  go work
for the circus, a  big tough  Yugoslav kid who ran the Seven Arts Gallery in
New York with big  bearded beatnik readings  but now comes the circus and  a
whole big on-the-road of his own -- It's too much, in fact right this minute
he's started telling us about circus work -- On top of all that old  Cody is
up ahead with HIS thousand stories -- We all agree it's1 too big  to keep up
with, that we're surrounded by life, that we'll never understand it,  so  we
center  it all in by swigging  Scotch from the bottle and when it's  empty I
run out of the car and buy another one, period.

     13

     But on the way to Cody's my madness already began to manifest itself in
a  stranger  way,  another one  of those  signposts  of  something  wrong  I
mentioned a ways back: I thought I saw a flying saucer in the  sky over  Los
Gatos --  From five miles  away -- I look and I  see this thing flying along
and mention  it to Dave who takes one brief look and says 'Ah it's only  the
top  of a radio tower" -- It reminds me of the time I took a mescaline  pill
and thought an airplane was a flying saucer (a strange story this, a man has
to be crazy to write it anyway).
     But there's old Cody in the livingroom of his fine ranchito home sittin
over his chess set  pondering a  problem  and right by the fresh woodfire in
the fireplace his wife's set out because she knows I  love fireplaces -- She
a good  friend  of mine too... The kids are sleeping in the back, it's about
eleven, and good  old  Cody  shakes my hand  again  -- Havent  seen  him for
several  years because mainly he's just spent two years in San Quentin on  a
stupid charge of possession of marijuana... He was on his way to work on the
railroad  one night and was short  on time and  his driving license had been
already  revoked for  speeding  so he saw two  bearded  bluejeaned  beatniks
parked, asked them to trade a quick ride to work at the railroad station for
two  sticks  of  tea, they complied and  arrested him -- They were disguised
policemen... For this great crime he spent two  years in San Quentin  in the
same  cell with a murderous gunman  -- His job was  sweeping out the  cotton
mill room -- I expect him to  be all bitter and out  of his  head because of
this but strangely and magnificently he's become quieter, more radiant, more
patient, manly, more friendly even -- And tho  the wild frenzies of  his old
road days with me have banked down he still has the same taut eager face and
supple muscles and looks like he's ready to go anytime -- But actually loves
his  home (paid for by railroad insurance when  he broke  his leg trying  to
stop a boxcar from crashing), loves his wife in a way  tho they  fight some,
loves his kids and especially his little  son Timmy John partly named  after
me  -- Poor old, good old  Cody sitting  there  with  his  chess set,  wants
immediately to challenge somebody to a  chess game  but only  has an hour to
talk to us  before he goes to work supporting the family  by rushing out and
pushing his Nash Rambler down the quiet Los Gatos suburb street, jumping in,
starting the motor, in  fact his only complaint  is that the Nash wont start
without a  push  -- No bitter complaints about  society whatever  from  this
grand and ideal man who really loves me moreover  as  if I  deserved it, but
I'm bursting  to explain everything  to him, not even  Big  Sur but the past
several years, but there's no chance with everybody yakking -- And in fact I
can see in Cody's eyes that  he  can  see in my own eyes the regret  we both
feel that recently we haven't had  chances to talk whatever, like we used to
do driving across America and back in the old road days, too many people now
want to talk  to us and tell  us their  stories,  we've  been hemmed  in and
surrounded and outnumbered -- The circle's  closed  in on the  old heroes of
the  night  -- But he  says "However you guys, come on down  round "bout one
when the boss leaves and watch me work and keep me company awhile before you
go back to the City" -- I can see Dave  Wain  really loves him  at once, and
Stanley Popovich too who's  come along on this  trip just to meet the fabled
"Dean Moriarty" -- The name I give Cody in "On the Road" -- But O, it breaks
my  heart to see he's lost his beloved job on the railroad and after all the
seniority he'd piled up since 1948 and now is reduced to tire  recapping and
dreary parole visits -- All for  two  stick of wild loco weed  that grows by
itself in Texas because God wanted it -- And there over the bookshelf is the
old photo of me and Cody arm in arm in the early days on a sunny street -- I
rush to explain  to Cody  what  happened the year  before when his religious
advisor  at the prison had  invited me to come to San Quentin to lecture the
religious class -- Dave  Wain was supposed to drive  me and wait outside the
prison walls as  I'd go  in there  alone, probably with  a  pepup nip bottle
hidden in my coat (I hoped) and I'd be led by big guards to the lecture room
of the prison and there would be sitting a hundred or so cons including Cody
probably all proud  in the front row -- And I would begin by telling them  I
had been in jail myself once and that I had no right nevertheless to lecture
them on religion  -- But they're all  lonely prisoners and  dont care what I
talk about  -- The whole thing arranged, in any case, and on the big morning
I wake up instead dead drunk on a floor,  it's already  noon  and  too late,
Dave  Wain is  on  the floor also, Willie's  parked  outside  to take  us to
Quentin for the lecture but it's too late -- But now Cody says "It's alright
old buddy  I understand"  --  Altho our friend Irwin had  done  it, lectured
there, but Irwin can do all sorta things like that being more  social than I
am and capable of going  in there as  he  did and reading his wildest  poems
which set the prison  yard humming with  excitement tho  I think he shouldna
done it  after all  because I  say  just to show up  for any  reason  except
visiting inside a prison  is still SIGNIFYING -- And I tell this to Cody who
ponders a chess problem and says "Drinkin again, hey? " (if there's anything
he hates is to see me drink).
     We help him push his Nash down  the street, then drink awhile  and talk
with Evelyn  a  beautiful blonde  woman that young Ron  Blake wants and even
Dave Wain wants but she's got  her mind  on other things and taking care  of
the children who have to go to school and dancing classes in the morning and
hardly gets a  word in edgewise anyway as we all yak and yell like  fools to
impress her  tho  all she really wants  is to be alone with me to talk about
Cody and his latest soul.
     Which  includes  the  fact  of  Billie  Dabney  his  mistress  who  has
threatened to take Cody away completely from Evelyn, as I'll show later.
     So we  do go out  to  the San Jose highway to watch Cody recap tires --
There he is wearing goggles working like Vulcan at his forge, throwing tires
all over the place with fantastic strength, the good ones high up on a pile,
"This one's  no good" down on another, bing,  bang, talking all  the time  a
long fantastic lecture  on  tire  recapping  which has Dave Wain marvel with
amazement  -- ('My God he can do all that and  even explain while he's doing
it')  -- But I just mention in connection with the fact that  Dave  Wain now
realizes why I've always loved Cody... Expecting  to see a bitter  ex con he
sees instead a martyr of the American  Night in goggles in some  dreary tire
shop at 2 A.  M. making fellows laugh with joy  with his funny  explanations
yet at the same time to a T performing every bit of the work he's being paid
for  -- Rushing up and ripping tires  off car wheels with a  jicklo,  clang,
throwing  it  on  the machine, starting  up big roaring  steams but  yelling
explanations over that, darting,  bending, flinging, flaying, till Dave Wain
said he thought he was going to die laughing or cry right there on the spot.
     So we drive back to town and go to the mad boarding-house to drink some
more  and I pass out dead drunk on the floor as usual in that house,  waking
up  in the morning groaning far from my clean cot on the porch in Big Sur No
bluejays yakking for me to wake up any more, no  gurgling creek, I'm back in
the grooky city and I'm trapped.


        14

     Instead there's the sound of bottles crashing in the  living-room where
poor Lex Pascal is holding forth yelling, it reminds of the  time a year ago
when Jarry Wagner's future wife got sore  at Lex and threw a half gallonfull
of tokay across the room  and  hooked  him  right across the  eye, thereupon
sailing  to Japan to marry Jarry  in a  big Zen ceremony that made coast  to
coast papers  but  all  old Lex's  got is a cut  which I try to fix  in  the
bathroom upstairs saying "Hey, that  cut's already  stopped bleeding, you'll
be alright Lex" -- "I'm French Canadian too" he says proudly and  when  Dave
and I and George Baso get ready to drive back  to New York he gives  me a St
Christopher medal as a goingaway gift -- Lex the kind of guy shouldnt really
be living in this wild beat boardinghouse, should hide on a ranch somewhere,
powerful, goodlooking, full of crazy desire  for  women  and booze and never
enough of either -- So as the bottles  crash again and the Hi  Fi's  playing
Beethoven's Solemn Mass I fall asleep on the floor.
     Waking up the next morning groaning of course,  but this is the big day
when  we're going to  go visit  poor George  Baso at the TB  hospital in the
Valley --  Dave perks me up  right away  bringing coffee or wine optional...
I'm on  Ben Fagan's floor  somehow, apparently I've harangued him  till dawn
about Buddhism some Buddhist.
     Complicated  already but now suddenly  appears Joey Rosenberg a strange
young kid  from Oregon with a full beard and his hair growing  right down to
his  neck like Raul Castro, once the  California High School high jump champ
who was only about five  foot  six but  had made the  incredible leap of six
foot nine  over the bar! and shows  his highjump ability  too by the way  he
dances around on light feet  -- A strange  athlete  who's  suddenly  decided
instead to become some sort of beat Jesus and in fact you see perfect purity
and sincerity in his young  blue eyes --  In  fact his  eyes are so pure you
don't  notice  the crazy  hair and beard, and also he's  wearing ragged  but
strangely  elegant  clothing ('One of the first of  the new Beat Dandies,  "
McLear  told me a few  days later, "did you  hear about  that? there's a new
strange underground group  of  beatniks or whatever who wear  special smooth
dandy  clothes  even tho  it may just  be  a jean jacket  with  shino slacks
they'll  always have strange beautiful shoes or shirts,  or turn  around and
wear  fancy  pants unpressed acourse but with  torn  sneakers')  -- Joey  is
wearing something like brown soft garments like a tunic or something and his
shoes look  like  Las Vegas sports shoes -- The moment  he sees my  battered
blue little sneakers that I'd used at Big Sur when my feet go sore,  that is
in  case my feet got  sore on  a rocky hike, he wants them for  himself,  he
wants to swap the snazzy Las Vegas sports shoes (pale leather, untooled) for
my silly little tightfitting tho perfect sneakers that in fact I was wearing
because the Monterey hike  blisters  were still hurting  me -- So we swap --
And I  ask Dave Wain about him: Dave says: "He's one of the really strangest
sweetest guys I've ever  known, showed up about a week ago I hear tell, they
asked him what he wanted to  do and never  answers,  just smiles  -- He just
sorta wants  to dig everything  and  just watch  and  enjoy  and say nothing
particular  about it... If someone's to ask  him "Let's drive to  New  York"
he'd  jump right for it without a word  --  On a sort of a  pilgrimage, see,
with all that youth, us old fucks oughta take  a lesson from him,  in  faith
too, he has faith, I can see it  in his  eyes, he has faith in any direction
he may take with anyone just like Christ I guess. "
     It's strange that in a later revery  I imagined myself walking across a
field to  find the strange gang of pilgrims in Arkansas  and  Dave Wain  was
sitting there saying "Shhh, He's  sleeping, "  "He" being  Joey and  all the
disciples are  following him on a march to New  York after which they expect
to keep going walking on  water to the other  shore -- But  of course (in my
revery even)  I  scoff and  don't  believe it (a kind of story daydreaming I
often do) but  in the  morning  when I  look  into Joey  Rosenberg's  eyes I
instantly  realize it IS  Him, Jesus, because anyone (according to the rules
of my revery) who looks into those eyes is instantly convinced and converted
-- So the revery continues into a long farfetched story ending with thinking
IBM  machines trying to  destroy this  "Second  Coming" etc.  (but also,  in
reality,  a few months later I threw away his shoes in the ashcan  back home
because  I  felt they  had brought me bad  luck and wishing I'd kept my blue
sneakers with the little holes in the toes! )  So anyway we get Joey and Ron
Blake who's always following Dave and go  off to see  Monsanto at the store,
our usual  ritual, then across the corner to Mike's Place where we start off
the 10 A. M. with food, drink and a few games  of  pool at  the tables along
the bar -- Joey winning the game and a stranger poolshark you never saw with
his long  Biblical hair  bending to slide  the  cue stick  smoothly  through
completely  professionally competent  fingerstance  and  smashing  home long
straight drives, like seeing Jesus shoot pool of course -- And meanwhile all
the food  these poor starved kids  all three of them do  pack in and eat! --
It's not every  day they're with a drunken novelist with hundreds of dollars
to splurge on them, they order everything,  spaghetti, follow that  up  with
Jumbo  Hamburgers, follow that up with  ice cream and pie and puddings, Dave
Wain has a huge appetite anyway but adds Manhattans and Martinis to the side
of  his plate  -- I'm just wailing away on my old fatal  double bourbons and
gingerale and I'll be sorry in a few days. Any drinker knows how the process
works: the first day  you get drunk is okay, the morning  after means a  big
head but so you can kill that easy with a few more drinks and a meal, but if
you pass up the meal and go on to another night's drunk, and wake up to keep
the toot going, and  continue  on to the fourth  day, there'll come one  day
when  the drinks wont take effect  because you're  chemically overloaded and
you'll have to sleep it  off but cant sleep any more because  it was alcohol
itself that made you sleep those last five  nights,  so delirium sets in  --
Sleeplessness, sweat, trembling,  a groaning  feeling of weakness where your
arms  are  numb  and useless,  nightmares, (nightmares  of  death)...  well,
there's more of that up later.
     About noon which is  now the peak of a golden blurry new day  for me we
pick up Dave's girl Romana Swartz a big Rumanian monster beauty of some kind
(I  mean with big purple eyes and very tall and big but Mae West big),  Dave
whispers in my ear "You oughta see her walking around that Zen-East House in
those purple panties of hers, nothing else on, there's one married guy lives
there who goes crazy every time she goes down the hall tho I dont blame him,
would  you? she's  not trying to entice him or  anybody she's just a nudist,
she believe in  nudism and bygod she's going to practice it! " (the Zen-East
house being  another sort  of boardinghouse  but  this  one for all kinds of
married  people  and  single and some small bohemian type families all races
studying  Subud or something, I  never was  there) -- She's  a big beautiful
brunette  anyway  in the  line of  taste you might attribute to every  slaky
hungry  sex slave  in  the  world  but  also  intelligent, well read, writes
poetry,  is a Zen  student, knows everything, is  in  fact just simply a big
healthy Rumanian Jewess who wants to marry a good hardy man and go live on a
farm in the valley, that's it...
     The TB hospital is about two hours away  through Trac and  down the San
Joaquin Valley, Dave drives beautiful with  Romana between us and me holding
the  bottle again,  it's  bright  beautiful California  sunshine  and  prune
orchards out there zipping by... It's always fun to have a good driver and a
bottle  and  dark  glasses  on  a  fine   sunny  afternoon  going  somewhere
interesting, and all the good conversation as  I said -- Ron and Joey are on
the back mattress sitting crosslegged just like poor George Baso had sat  on
that trip last year from Frisco to New York.
     But  the main thing I'd liked at once about that  Japanese kid was what
he told me  the first  night I met him in that crazy kitchen of the Buchanan
Street house: from midnight to 6 A.  M. in his slow methodical voice he gave
me his own tremendous version of the  Life of Buddha  beginning with infancy
and right down to the end... George's theory  (he has many theories  and has
actually run meditation classes with bells, just really a  serious young lay
priest of  Japanese Buddhism when  all is  said and done) is that Buddha did
not reject amorous love life with his wife  and with his harem girls because
he was  sexually  disinterested but on  the contrary  had been taught in the
highest arts of lovemaking and eroticism possible in the India of that time,
when great tomes like the Kama Sutra were in the process of being developed,
tomes  that give  you instructions on  every act,  facet,  approach, moment,
trick, lick, lock, bing and bang and slurp of how  to make love with another
human being "male or  female" insisted George:  "He knew everything there is
to know about  all  kinds  of sex so that when  he  abandoned the  world  of
pleasure to go be  an ascetic in the forest everybody of course knew that he
wasn't  putting  it all down out of ignorance... It served to make people of
those times feel a marvelous respect for all his words -- And he was just no
simple Casanova with a few frigid affairs across the  years, man he went all
the  way,  he had ministers and special eunuchs and special women who taught
him love, special virgins were brought to him, he was acquainted  with every
aspect of perversity and non perversity and as you know  he was also a great
archer, horseman,  he was just completely trained in all the  arts of living
by his father's orders because his  father wanted  to  make  sure he'd NEVER
leave the palace -- They used every trick in  the books to entice him  to  a
life  of pleasure  and as you know they  even  had him  happily married to a
beautiful girl called Yasodhara and he had a son with her Rahula and he also
had his  harem which included dancing boys and everything in the books" then
George would go into every detail of this knowledge, like  "He knew that the
phallus  is  held with  the  hand and moved inside  the vagina with a rotary
movement,  but this was only the first of several variations  where there is
also the lowering  down of the gal's hips  so that the vulva you see recedes
and the phallus  is introduced with a fast quick movement like stinging of a
wasp, or else the vulva is protruded by means of lifting up the hips high so
that the member is buried with a sudden rush  right to the basis, or then he
can withdraw real teasing like,  or concentrate on right or left side -- And
then he knew all the gestures, words, expressions, what to do with a flower,
what not to do  with a flower, how  to drink the lip in all kinds of kissing
or how to crush kiss or soft kiss, man he was a genius  in the beginning'...
and so on, George went all the way telling me this till 6 A. M. it being one
of the  most fantastic Buddha  Charitas  I'd ever heard ending with George's
own  perfect enunciation of  the law of the  Twelve  Nirdanas whereby Buddha
just logically disconnected all creation and  laid it  bare for what it was,
under the Bo Tree, a chain of illusions --  And on the trip to New York with
Dave  and me up front talking all the way poor George  just sat there on the
mattress for the most part very quiet and told us he was taking this trip to
find out if HE was traveling to New  York or just the CAR (Willie the  Jeep)
was  traveling to  New York or  was it just the WHEELS were  colling, or the
tires, or what --  A Zen problem of some kind -- So that when we'd see grain
elevators on the  Plains of Oklahoma George would say quietly "Well it seems
to  me that grain elevator is sorta waitin for the  road to  approach it" or
he'd say suddenly "While you guys  was talkin just  then  about how to mix a
good  Pernod  Martini I  just  saw  a white horse  standing  in an abandoned
storefront"  --  In  Las Vegas we'd taken a good motel  room and gone out to
play a little roulette, in  St  Louis we'd  gone to see the great bellies of
the East St  Louis hootchy kootchy joints where three of the most  marvelous
young  girls  performed smiling directly  at us as tho  they knew  all about
George and his  theories about  erogenous Buddha  (there  sits  the  monarch
observing the donzinggerls) and as tho they knew anyway all about Dave  Wain
who whenever he see a beautiful girl says licking his lips "Yum Yum'...
     But now George has TB and they tell me he may even die... Which adds to
that darkness in my mind, all these DEATH things piling up suddenly -- But I
cant believe old Zen Master George is going  to  allow his body to  die just
now tho it looks like it when we pass through the lawn and come to a ward of
beds and see  him sitting  dejected  on the edge  of his bed with  his  hair
hanging  over his  brow where before it was  always combed back -- He's in a
bathrobe and looks up at  us  almost displeased (but everybody is displeased
by  unexpected  visits from friends or relatives  in  a hospital) --  Nobody
wants to be surprised on their hospital bed -- He sighs and comes out to the
warm  lawn with us and  the expression  on his face says  "Well ah so you've
come to  see me because I'm sick but what  do you really  want? " as tho all
the  old  humorous  courage  of  the  year before has now  given away  to  a
profoundly deep  15 Japanese skepticism like that of a  Samurai warrior in a
fit of  suicidal depression (surprising  me by  its  abject  gloomy  fearful
frown).

     15

     I mean it  was  like  my  first  frightened  realization of  what to be
Japanese really  meant -- To be Japanese and not to believe in life any more
and to be gloomy like Beethoven yet to be  Japanese in  gloom,