d me gonna go flyin down that Bay Shore highway and as usual you're gonna ask your usual dumb almost Okie wino questions, Hey Cody" (whining like a old drunk) 7 b'lieve we're coming into Burlingame aint it? and you're always wrong, hee hee, old crazy dumb fuckin old Jack, then we go rubbin shoulders into that City and go poppin right up to my sweet little old baby Willamine that I want you to meet inasmuch and also I want you go dig because she's gonna dig YOU my dear old sonumbitch Jack, and I'm gonna leave you two little lovebirds together for days on end alone, you can live there and just enjoy that gone little woman because also" (his tone now businesslike) "I want her to dig as much as possible everything you got to tell her about what YOU know, hear me? She's my soulmate and confidante and mistress and I want her to be happy and learn" -- "What's she look like? " I ask grossly -- And I see the grimace on his face, he really knows me, "Eh well she looks alright, she has a gone little body that's all I can say and in bed she is by far the first and only and last possible greatest everything you dig" -- This being just another of a long line of occasions when Cody gets me to be a sub-beau for his beauties so that everything can tie in together, he really loves me like a brother and more than that, he gets annoyed at me sometimes especially when I fumble and blumble like with a bottle or the time I almost stripped the gears of the car because I forgot I was driving, in which case actually I remind him of his old wino father but the fantastic thing is that HE reminds ME of MY father so that we have this strange eternal father-image relationship that goes on and on sometimes with tears, it's easy for me to think of Cody and almost cry, sometimes I can see the same tearful expression in his eyes when he sometimes looks at me -- He reminds me of my father because he too blusters and hurries and fills all his pockets with Racing Forms and papers and pencils and we're all ready to go on some mission in the night he takes with ultimate seriousness as tho we were going on the last trip of them all but it always ends up being a hilarious meaningless Marx Brothers adventure which gives me even more reason to love him (and my father too) -- That way -- And finally in the book I wrote about us ('On The Road') I forgot to mention two important things, that we were both devout little Catholics in our childhood, which gives us something in common tho we never talk about it, it's just there in our natures, and secondly and most important that strange business when we shared another girl (Marylou, or that is, let's call her Joanna) and Cody at the time announced "That's what we'll be old buddy, you and me, double husbands, later on we'll have whole Harreeeem and reams of Hareems boy, and we'll call ourselves or that is" (flutter) "ourself Duluomeray, see Duluoz and Pomeray, Duluo-meray, see, hee hee hee" tho he was younger then and really silly but that gives an indication of the way he felt about me: some kind of new thing in the world actually where men can really be angelic friends and not be homosexual and not fight over girls -- But alas the only thing we'd ever fought about was money, or the ridiculous time we fought about a little line of marijuana dust running down the middle of a page where we were separating our shares with a knife, when I objected I wanted some of the dust he yelled "Our original agreement had nothing to do with the dust! " and he slumps it all into his pocket and stalks off redfaced so I jump up and pack and announce I'm leaving and Evelyn drives me to the City but the car won't start (this is years ago) so Cody redfaced and crazy and ashamed now has to push us with the clunker, there we go down San Jose boulevard with Cody behind us pushing us and with Cody behind us pushing us and bumping us not just to give us a start but to chastise me for being so greedy and I shouldnt leave at all -- In fact he'd back up and come up on our rear and really wham us -- That night ending me dead drunk on Mal Damlette's floor on North Beach -- And in any case the whole question of us, the two most advanced men friends in the world still fighting over money after all being, as Julien says in New York, indication of the fact that "Money is the only thing Canucks ever fight about, and Okies too I guess" but Julien I suppose imagining and fantasizing himself as a noble Scotsman who fights about honor (tho I tell him "Ah you Scotchmen save your spit in your watchpocket'). Lacrimae rerum, the tears of things, all the years behind me and Cody, the way I always say "me and Cody" instead of "Cody and I" or some such, and Irwin watching us across the world night now with a bite of marvel on his lower lip saying "Ah, angels of the West, Companions in Heaven" and writing letters asking "What now, what's the latest, what visions, what arguments, what sweet agreements? " and such. That night the kids end up sleeping in the jeep anyway because they're afraid of the big black woods and I sleep by the creek in my bag and in the morning we're all set to go back to Los Gatos and see the villain play -- Frustrated Ron is casting sad eyes at Evelyn, apparently she's put him off because she says to me (and I dont blame her) "Really the way Cody presses people on me it's awful, at least I should have my own choice" (but she laughing because it's funny and it is funny the way Cody does it anxious and harried wondering if that's what she really wants and wants no such thing) -- 'At least not with utter strangers, " says I to be funny -- She: "Besides I'm so sick of all this sex business, that's all he talks about, his friends, here they are all open channels to do good as co creators with God and all they think about is behinds -- that's why you're so refreshing" she adds -- "But I aint so refreshing as all that? hey! " -- But that's my relationship with Evelyn, we're real pals and we can kid about anything even the first night I met her in Denver in 1947 when we danced and Cody watched anxiously, a kind of romantic pair in fact and I shudder sometimes to think of all that stellar mystery of how she IS going to get me in a future lifetime, wow -- And I seriously do believe that will be my salvation, too. A long way to go. 25 The silly stupid hiss-the-villain play is alright in itself but just as we arrive at the scene of the chuck wagons and tents all done up real old western style there's a big fat sheriff type with two sixshooters standing at the admission gate, Cody says "That's to give it color see" but I'm drunk and as we all pile out of the car I go up to the fat sheriff and start telling him a Southern joke (in fact just the plot of an Erskine Caldwell short story) which he receives with a witless smiling expression or really like the expression of an executioner or a Southern constable listening to a Yankee talk -- So naturally I'm surprised later when we go into the cute old west saloon and the kids start banging on the old piano and I join them with big loud Stravinsky chords, here comes two gun sheriff fatty coming in and saying in a menacing voice like TV western movies "You cant play that piano" -- I'm surprised, turning to Evelyn, to learn that he's the blasted proprietor of the whole place and if he says I cant play the piano there's nothing I can do about it legally -- But besides that he's got actual bullets in those six guns -- He's going all out to play the part -- But to be yanked from joyful pianothumping with kids to see that awful dead face of negative horror I just jump up and say "Alright, the hell with it I'm leaving anyway" so Cody follows me to the car where I take another swig of white port -- "Let's get the hell out of here" I say... "Just what I was thinkin about, " says Cody, "in fact I've already arranged with the director of the play to drive Evelyn and the kids home so we'll just go to the City now" -- "Great! " -- "And I've told Evelyn we're cuttin out so let's go. " ` 'I'm sorry Cody I screwed up your little family party'- "No No" he protests "Man I have to come to these things you know and be a big hubby and father type and you know I'm on parole and I gotta put up appearances but it's a drag" -- To show what a drag it is we go scootin down that road passing six cars easy as pie -- "And I'm GLAD this happened because it gave us an excuse, hee hee titter you know to get outa there, I was thinking for an excuse when it happened, that old fart is crazy you know! he's a millionaire you know! I've talked to him, that little beady brain, and you be glad you missed hangin around till that performance, man, and that AUDIENCE, ow, ugh, I almost wish I was back in San Quentin but here we go, son! " So of old we're alone in a car at night bashing down the line to a specific somewhere, nothing nowhere about it whatever, especially this time in a way -- That white line is feeding into our fender like an anxious impatient electronic quiver shuddering in the night and how beautifully sometimes it curves one side or the other as he smoothly swerves for passing or for something else, avoiding a bump or something... And on the big highway Bay Shore how beautifully he just swings in and out of lanes almost effortlessly and completely unnoticeable passing to the right and to the left without a flaw all kinds of cars with anxious eyes turning to us, altho he's the only one on the road who knows how to drive completely well -- it's blue dusk all up and down the California world -- Frisco glitters up ahead -- Our radio plays rhythm and blues as we pass the joint back and forth in jutjawed silence both looking ahead with big private thoughts now so vast we cant communicate them any more and if we tried it would take a million years and a billion books -- Too late, too late, the history of everything we've seen together and separately has become a library in itselt -- me shelves pile higher -- They're full of misty documents or documents of the Mist -- The mind has convoluted in every tuckaway every-whichaway tuckered hole till there's no more the expressing of our latest thoughts let alone old -- Mighty genius of the mind Cody whom I announce as the greatest writer the world will ever know if he ever gets down to writing again like he did earlier -- It's so enormous we both sit here sighing in fact -- "No the only writing I done, " he says, "a few letters to Willamine, in fact quite a few, she's got em all wrapped in ribbons there, I figgered if I tried to write a book or sumptin or prose or sumptin they'd just take it away from me when I left so I wrote her "bout three letters a week for two years -- and the trouble of course and as I say and you've heard a million times is the mind flows the mind rises and nobody can by any possible c- oh hell, I dont wanta talk about it" -- Besides I can see from glancing at him that becoming a writer holds no interest for him because life is so holy for him there's no need to do anything but live it, writing's just an afterthought or a scratch anyway at the surface -- But if he could! if he would! there I am riding in California miles away from home where my poor cat's buried and my mother grieves and that's what I'm thinking. It always makes me proud to love the world somehow -- Hate's so easy compared -- But here I go flattering myself helling headbent to the silliest hate I ever had. 26 Altho Cody's said these things I'm very well aware that the real arrangement of the evening is that we're just going to see Billie together so she can get her kicks meeting me (after hearing about me from him and after reading my books etc. ) and in fact Cody has already conferred with Evelyn about how I'm going to be staying at their house in Los Gatos for a month, as of old sleeping in my bag in the backyard not because they dont want me to sleep in the house but it's my idea, but it's beautiful anyway to sleep under the stars and anyway I therefore keep out of the way of the family when they get up to go to work and school... At noon they see me shambling in from the big back field yard yawning for coffee -- And I'm in line for that, i. e., that's what I want to do and that's my plan -- but when we run upstairs to Willamine's apartment and come bursting in to this neat little well arranged pad with goldfish bowl, books, strange doodads, neat kitchen, the whole clean as a pin, and there's Billie herself a blonde with arched eyebrows exactly like the male Julien blond with arched eyebrows and I yell out "It's Julien by God it's Julien! " (and by now I'm drunk anyway because we've as of old picked up an old hitch hiker on Bay Shore who says his name is Joe Ihnat and we bought him a bottle and I bought me one too, never will forget old Joe Ihnat in fact somehow because he said he was a Russian and his was an ancient Russian name and when I wrote out our names he said my name was an ancient Russian name also) (tho it's Breton) (and also told us he'd just been beaten up by a young Negro for no reason in a public toilet and Cody gasps and says to me "I've met those Negroes that beat up old men, they're called the Strongarms in San Quentin, they're all put away among themselves away from the other prisoners, they're all Negroes and it seems all they wanta do is beat up old defenseless men, he's tellin the absolute truth'... "But why do they do that? "... "Oh man I dont know they just wanta hit up on some old man that cant hit back and just beat him and beat him till he's dead" and Oh the horror of Cody's knowledge of the world when all is said and done) -- So now we're sitting with Billie in her pad, outside the window you see the glittering lights of the city again, ah Urbi y Roma, the world again, and she's got these mad blue eyes, arched eyebrows, intelligent face, just like Julien, I keep sayig "Julien goddamit! " and I see even in my drunkenness a little worried flutter in Cody's eyes -- The fact of the matter being, Billie and I go for each other like two tons of bricks right there in front of Cody so that when he rises and announces he's going back to Los Gatos to get some sleep to go to work it's already well agreed I'm staying right where I am and not only for tonight but for weeks months years. Poor Cody -- Yet you see I've already explained why actually subconsciously this is what he really wants to happen but he wont admit it ever and always invents reasons around this to get mad at me and call me a bastard -- But aside from Cody I find Billie to be a very companionable strange kid in this lonesome night and I actually NEED to stay with her awhile -- In fact both Billie and I explain to Cody why -- But there's nothing evil, man-against-man or sinister about any of it, it's just a strange innocence, a spontaneous burst of love in fact and Cody understands that bettern anybody else anyway so he leaves at midnight saying he'll be back tomorrow night and all of a sudden I'm alone with a charming woman and we're talking a blue streak sitting cross-legged facing each other on the floor in a litter of books and bottles. It gives me a pang of pain and remorse really now to recall that on this first night her apartment was so neat and clean and charming -- The chair by the goldfish bowl which I quickly appropriated as my old man chair, where I sat constantly sipping port for a whole week, the kitchen with its intelligent arrangements of spices and eggs in the icebox, and for that matter too the poor little son of Billie sleeping in a well arranged back room (her son from her deceased husband who was also a railroad man) Elliott the child's name and I didn't get to see him till later that night -- And with the huge packet of Cody's San Quentin letters in her hand she launches forth on her theories about Cody and eternity but all I can keep saying as I swig from my bottle is "Julien, you're talking too much! Julien, Julien, my God who'd ever dream I'd run into a woman who looks like Julien... you look like Julien but you're not Julien and on top of that you're a woman, how goddam strange" -- In fact she had to pack me off to bed drunk -- But not before our first lovely undertaking of love and everything Cody said about her being absolutely true -- But the main thing being that tho she looked like Julien etc. and had Cody's big sad abstract letters about Karma in a ribbon and actually went out in the morning and earned a hundred a week in fashion modeling she had the most musical beautiful and sad voice I've ever heard in my life The things she's saying are really rather inane because after all her education is based on really Californian hysterias like the earlier mistress of Cody Rosemarie who also was thin and pale haired and crazy and kept talking abstract (Like she's saying "I thought I could do something to ease the contradiction between immanent and universal ethics which I thought was my problem and was what I hoped to gain thru therapy, like, any evolution presupposes an involution and all that kind of thinking" as I sigh, but she does say something interesting once in a while like "While Cody was in prison my main occupation was praying for him, I had an all day going, there was also a bit we did together every evening from 9: 00 to 9: 09 but he's out now and something else is happening I'm not sure what... but I'm sure we aid the storm when we transcend time in one respect and can't even keep up with it in others... ")-But also all kinds of to-me-unimportant and uninteresting crap about channels about people being either closed or open channels and Cody is a big open channel pouring out all his holy gysm on Heaven, I really can't remember, or the destinies, the sighs, the rooftops of all that, the stars are shining down on their poor heads as they draw breath to explain inanities really -- Like the letters to her (I glance at them) are all about how they've met and their souls have collided in this dimension because of some unfulfilled Karma on another planet and in another plane that is, and now they have to gird themselves to assume this big responsibility to meet some measure of this and that, I dont even wanta go into it -- Because also the fact of the matter being, when Willamine talks to me I'm utterly bored, I'm only interested in the sad music of her voice and in the strange circumstance (I guess Karmalike too) that she looks like poor Julien. Her voice is the main point -- She talks with a broken heart... Her voice lutes brokenly like a heart lost, musically too, like in a lost grove, it's almost too much to bear sometimes like some fantastic futuristic Jerry Southern singer in a night club who steps up to the mike in the spotlight in Las Vegas but doesn't even have to sing, just talk, to make men sigh and women wonder I guess (if women ever wonder)... So that as she's trying to explain all that nonsense to me (all that philosophy of hers and Cody's and Cody's new buddy Perry, coming up the next day) I just sit and marvel and stare at her mouth wondering where all the beauty is coming from and why -- And we end up making love sweetly too -- A little blonde well experienced in all the facets of lovemaking and sweet with compassion and just too much so that b'dawn we're already going to get married and fly away to Mexico in a week -- In fact I can see it now, a great big four way marriage with Cody and Evelyn. For she is the great enemy of Evelyn -- She's not satisfied just to be Cody's lover and soul heart she wants to go right over there and lay Evelyn down on the line and take Cody away with her forever and to do this she'll even have a deadend heaven deep love affair with old Jack (same pattern of old) -- There's not much difference between her and Evelyn when you listen to their talk about Cody except in Evelyn's case I'm always fascinatedly interested -- Billie actually bores me tho of course I cant tell her that -- Evelyn is still the champ and I wonder about Cody. O the ups and downs and juggling of women, blondes at that, all in that great magical City of the Gandharvas of San Francisco and here I am alone on a magic carpet with one of em, whee, at first of course it's a great ball, a great new eye-shattering explosion of experience -- Not dreaming, I, what's to come -- For with sad musical Billie in my arms and my name Billie too now, Billie and Billie arm in arm, oh beautiful, and Cody has given his consent in a way, we go roaming the Genghiz Khan clouds of soft love and hope and anybody who's never done this is crazy -- Because a new love affair always gives hope, the irrational mortal loneliness is always crowned, that thing I saw (that horror of snake emptiness) when I took the deep iodine deathbreath on the Big Sur beach is now justified and hosannah'd and raised up like a sacred urn to Heaven in the mere fact of the taking off of clothes and clashing wits and bodies in the inexpressibly nervously sad delight of love... Dont let no old fogies tell you otherwise, and on top of that nobody in the world even ever dares to write the true story of love, it's awful, we're stuck with a 50% incomplete literature and drama -- Lying mouth to mouth, kiss to kiss in the pillow dark, loin to loin in unbelievable surrendering sweetness so distant from all our mental fearful abstractions it makes you wonder why men have termed God antisexual somehow -- The secret underground truth of mad desire hiding under fenders under buried junkyards throughout the world, never mentioned in newspapers, written about haltingly and like corn by authors and painted tongue in cheek by artists, agh, just listen to Tris-tan und Isolde by Wagner and think of him in a Bavarian field with his beloved naked beauty under the fall leaves. How strange in all, and making everything that's happened in the past weeks, the backs and forths and pains of me in City and Sur, all piled up now rationally like a big construction whereon could be built a divingboard which would enable me clumsily to dive into Billie's soul and therefore why complain? In the middle of the night she fetches the little 4 year old boy to show me the spiritual beauty of her son -- He is one of the weirdest persons I've ever met -- He has large liquid brown eyes very beautiful and he hates anybody who comes near his mother and keeps asking her questions constantly like "Why do you stay with him? why is he here, who is he? " or "Why is it dark outside? " or "Why does the sun shine yesterday? " or anything, he'll just ask questions about everything and she answers every one of them with extreme delight and patience till I say "Doesnt he bother you with all these questions? why dont you let him croon and goof like a little child, he's tugging at your knee asking EVERYTHING man why don't you just let him singsong? "... She answers "1 answer him because I may be missing his next question, everything he asks me and says to me represents something important about the abso-lute I may be missing" -- "What do you mean the absolute? " -- "You yourself said everything is the absolute" but of course she's right and I realize that in my dirty old soul I'm already jealous of Elliott. 27 The mat of night admits the groaning glory godlike love I guess but at the same time it's also boring in a way and we both laugh to discuss that -- We stay awake that first night till dawn discussing everything in the books from Cody in every detail down to me in every detail to her in every detail to Evelyn to books and philosophies and religions and the absolute and I end up whispering her poems... Poor kid has to get up in the morning and go to work and I'm left there snoring drunk... But she makes her neat breakfast and takes Elliott off to the daily babysitter lady and I wake up at one in the afternoon alone and take a swig of wine and get in the hot bath to read a book -- The phone keeps ringing, everybody from Monsanto to Fagan to McLear to the Moon Man has somehow found out where I am and what the number is, tho none of them have previously even met Billie let alone seen her -- I shudder to realize Cody will get mad for making his secret life so public. But here comes Perry -- Like me Perry has that strange brotherly relationship with Cody whereby he gets to be confidant and sometimes lover of all Cody's gals... And I can see why -- He looks just like me only he's young and looks like I did when first Cody met me but the point is not that so much, he is a tempestuous lost tossed soul just out of Soledad State Prison for attempted robbery with a boyish face and black hair falling over it but powerful chick muscular arms that I realize he could break a man in half with -- His name is strange too, Perry Yturbide, I immediately say: "I know what you are, Basque" -- "Basque? is that it? I never found out! let's call my mother longdistance in Utah and tell her that! " -- And he rings up his mother way over there, on Billie's phone bill, and here I am bottle of port wine in one hand and butt in mouth talking to a Basque ex con's mother in Utah telling her in fact reassuring her "Yes I believe it's a Basque name" -- She's saying "Hey, what you say? who are you? " And there's Perry smiling all glad -- A very strange kid -- It's been a long time in fact in my literary sort of life that I've met a real tough hombre like that out of jails and with those arms of steel and that fevered concern that scares governments and makes officials pale, that's why he's always put away in prison this type of man -- Yes yet the type of man the country always needs when there's a little old war started by an aging governor -- A real dangerous character, in fact, Perry, because tho I appreciate his poetic soul and everything I realize looking at him he's capable of exploding and killing somebody for an idea maybe or for love. Some of his own friends ring Billie's doorbell, everybody seems to know I'm there, they come up, they are strange anarchistic Negroes and ex cons, it seems to be some sort of gang, I begin to wonder -- Like a ring of fevered sages, the Negroes are intense and crazy and intellectual but they've all got those strong muscular arms again and all have jail records yet they all talk as tho the end of the world depended on their words -- Hard to explain (but will do). Billie and her gang in fact, with all that fancy rigamarole about spiritual matters I wonder if it isnt just a big secret hustler outfit tho I also realize that I've noticed it before in San Francisco a kind of ephemeral hysteria that hides in the air over the rooftops among certain circles there leading always to suicide and maim... Me just an innocent lost hearted meditator and Goop among strange intense criminal agitators of the heart -- It reminds me in fact of a nightmare I had just before coming out to the Coast, in the dream I'm back in San Francisco but there's something funny going on: there's dead silence throughout the entire city: men like printers and office executives and house-painters are all standing silently in second floor windows looking down on the empty streets of San Francisco: once in a while some beatniks walk by below, also silent: they're being watched but not only by the authorities but by everybody: the beatniks seem to have the whole street system to themselves: but nobody's saying anything: and in this intense silence I take a ride on a self propelled platform right downtown and out to the farms where a woman running a chicken farm invites me to join her and live with her... The little platform rolling quietly as the people are watching from windows in groups of profile like the profiles in old Van Dyck paintings, intense, suspicious, momentous -- This Billie business reminding me of that but because to me the only thing that matters is the conceptions in my own mind, there has to be no reality anyway to what I suppose is going on -- But this also an indication of the coming madness in Big Sur. 28 Strange -- and Perry Yturbide that first day while Billie's at work and we've just called his mother now wants me to come with him to visit a general of the US Army -- 'Why? and what's all these generals looking out of silent windows? " I say -- but nothing surprises Perry -- "We'll go there because I want you to dig the most beautiful girls we ever saw, " in fact we take a cab -- But the "beautiful girls" turn out to be eight and nine and ten years old, daughters of the general or maybe even cousins or daughters of a next door strange general, but the mother is there, there are also boys playing in a backroom, we have Elliott with us whom Perry has carried on his shoulders all the way -- I look at Perry and he says "I wanted you to see the most beautiful little cans in town" and I realize he's dangerously insane -- In fact he then says "See this perfect beauty? " a pony tailed ten year old daughter of the general (who ain't home yet) "I'm going to kidnap her right now" and he takes her by the hand and they go out on the street for an hour while I sit there over drinks talking to the mother -- There's some vast conspiracy to make me go mad anyway -- The mother is polite as ordinarily -- The general comes home and he's a rugged big baldheaded general and with him is his best friend a photographer called Shea, a thin well combed welldressed ordinary downtown commercial photographer of the city -- I dont understand anything -- But suddenly little Elliott is crying in the other room and I rush in there and see that the two boys have whacked him or something because he did something wrong so I chastise them and carry Eliiott back into the livingroom on my shoulders like Perry does, only Eliiott wants to get down off my shoulders at once, in fact he won't even sit on my lap, in fact he hates my guts -- I call Billie desperately at her agency and she says she'll be over to pick us all up and adds 'How's Perry today? "... "He's kidnapping little girls he says are beautiful, he wants to marry ten year old girls with pony tails" -- "That's the way he is, be sure to dig him" -- In her musical sad voice over the phone. I turn my poor tortured attention to the general who says he was an anti-Fascist fighter with the Maquis during World War II and also a guerilla in the South Pacific and knows one of the finest restaurants in San Francisco where we can all go feast, a Fillipino restaurant near Chinatown, I say okay, great -- He gives me more booze -- Seeing the amusing Irish face of Shea the photographer I yell "You can take my picture anytime you want" and he says sinister: "Not for propaganda reasons, anything but propaganda reasons" -- "What the hell do you mean propaganda reasons, I aint got nothin to do with propaganda" (and here comes Perry back through the door with Poopoo holding his hand, they've gone to dig the street and have a coke) and I realize everybody is just living their lives quietly but it's only me that's insane. In fact I yearn to have old Cody around to explain all this to me tho it soon becomes apparent to me not even Cody could explain, I'm beginning to go seriously crazy, just like Subterranean Irene went crazy tho I don't realize it yet... I'm beginning to read plots into every simple line -- Besides the "general" scares me even further by turning out to be a strange affluent welldressed civilian who doesn't even help me to pay the tab for the Fillipino dinner which we have, meeting Billie at the restaurant, and the restaurant itself is weird especially because of a big raunchy mad thicklipped sloppy young Fillipino woman sitting alone at the end of the restaurant gobbling up her food obscenely and looking at us insolently as tho to say "Fuck you, I eat the way I like" splashing gravy everywhere I cant understand what's going on -- Because also the general has suggested this dinner but I have to pay for everybody, him, Shea, Perry, Billie, Eliiott, me, others, strange apocalyptic madness is now shuddering in my eyeballs and I'm even running out of money in their Apocalypse which they themselves have created in this San Francisco silence anyway. I yearn to go hide and cry in Evelyn's arms but I end up hiding in Billie's arms and here she goes again, the second evening, explaining all her spiritual ideas -- "But what about Perry? what's he up to? and who's that strange general? what are you, a bunch of communists? " 29 The little child refuses to sleep in his crib but has to come trotting out and watch us make love on the bed but Billie says "That's good, he'll learn, what other way will he ever learn? " -- I feel ashamed but because Billie is there and she's the mother I must go along and not worry... Another sinister fact -- At one point the poor child is drooling long slavers of spit from his lips watching, I cry "Billie, look at him, it's not good for him" but she says again "Anything he wants he can have, even us. " "But kid it's not fair, why doesn't he just sleep? " -- "He doesn't wanta sleep, he wants to be with us" -- "Ooh, " and I realize Billie is insane and I'm not as insane as I thought and there's something wrong -- I feel myself skidding: also because during the following week I keep sitting in that same chair by the goldfish bowl drinking bottle after bottle of port like an automaton, worrying about something, Monsanto comes to visit, McLear, Fagan, everybody, they call to me dashing up the stairs and we have long drunken days talking but I never seem to get out of that chair and never even take another delightful warm bath reading books -- And at night Billie comes home and we pitch into love again like monsters who dont know what else to do and by now I'm too blurry to know what's going on anyway tho she reassures me everything is alright, and meanwhile Cody has completely disappeared -- In fact I call him up and say "Are you gonna come back and get me here? " -- "Yes yes yes in a few days, stay there" as tho maybe he wants me to learn what's happening like putting me through an ordeal to see what I have to say about it because he's been through the ordeal himself. In fact everything is going crazy. Perry's visits scare me: I begin to think he must be one of those "strong armers" who beat up old men: I watch him warily -- All this time he's pacing back and forth saying "Man dont you appreciate those sweet little cans? what does it matter how old a woman is, nine or nineteen, those little pony tails jiggling as they walk with those little jigglin cans" -- 'Did you ever kidnap one? " -- "You out of wine, I'll make a run for you get some more, or would you rather have pot or sumptin? what's wrong with you? " -- "I dont know what's goin on! " -- "You're drinking too much maybe. Cody told me you're falling apart man, dont do it" -- "But what's goin on? " -- "Who cares, pops, we're all swinging in love and trying to go from day to day with self respect while all the squares are putting us down" -- "Who? " -- "The Squares, putting down Us ... we wanta swing and live and carry across the night like when we get to L. A. I'm goin to show you the maddest scene some friends of mine down there" (in my drunkenness I've already projected a big trip with Billie and Elliott and Perry to Mexico but we're going to stop in L. A. to see a rich woman Perry knows who's going to give him money and if she doesn't he's going to get it anyway, and as I say Billie and I are going to be married too) -- The insanest week of my life -- Billie at night saying "You're worried that I cant handle marrying you but of course we can, Cody wants it too, I'll talk to your mother and make her love me and need me: Jack! " she suddenly cries with anguished musical voice (because I've just said "Ah Billie go get yourself a he-man and get married'), "You're my last chance to marry a He Man! " -- 'Whattayou mean He Man, dont you realize I'm crazy? " -- "You're crazy but you're my last chance to have an understanding with a He Man" -- "What about Cody? " "Cody will never leave Evelyn" -- Very strange -- But more, tho I don't understand it. 30 I do understand the strange day Ben Fagan finally came to visit me alone, bringing wine, smoking his pipe, and saying "Jack you need some sleep, that chair you say you've been sitting in for days have you noticed the bottom is falling out of it? " -- I get on the floor and by God look and it's true, the springs are coming out -- "How long have you been sitting in that chair? " -- "Every day waiting for Billie to come home and talking to Perry and the others all day... My God let's go out and sit in the park, " I add -- In the blur of days McLear has also been over on a forgotten day when, on nothing but his chance mention that maybe I could get his book published in Paris I jump up and dial longdistance for Paris and call Claude Gallimard and only get his butler apparently in some Parisian suburb and I hear the insane giggle on the other end of the line -- "Is this the home, c'est le chez eux de Monsieur Gallimard? " -- Giggle -- "Ou est Monsieur Gallimard? " -- Giggle -- A very strange phone call -- McLear waiting there expectantly to get his "Dark Brown" published -- So in a fury of madness I then call London to talk to my old buddy Lionel just for no reason at all and I finally reach him at home he's saying on the wire "You're calling me from San Francisco? but why? "... Which I can't answer any more than the giggling butler (and to add to my madness, of course, why should a longdistance call to Paris to a publisher end up with a giggle and a longdistance call to an old friend in London end up with the friend getting mad? ) -- So Fagan now sees I'm going overboard crazy and I need sleep -- "We'll get abottle! " I yell -- But end up, he's sitting in the grass of the park smoking his pipe, from noon to 6 P. M., and I'm passed out exhausted sleeping in the grass, bottle unopened, only to wake up once in a while wondering where I am and by God I'm in Heaven with Ben Fagan watching over men and me. And I say to Ben when I wake up in the gathering 6 P. M. dusk "Ah Ben I'm sorry I ruined our day by sleeping like this" but he says: "You needed the sleep, I told ya" -- "And you mean to tell me you been sitting all afternoon like that? " -- 'Watching unexpected events, " says he, "like there seems to be sound of a Bacchanal in those bushes over there" and I look and hear children yelling and screaming in hidden bushes in the park -- "What they doing? " -- "I dont know: also a lot of strange people went by" -- "How long have I been sleeping? " -- "Ages" -- "I'm sorry" -- "Why should be sorry, I love you anyway" -- "Was I snoring? " -- 'You've been snoring all day and I've been sitting here all day" -- "What a beautiful day! " -- 'Yes it's been a beautiful day" -- "How strange! " -- "Yes, strange... but not so strange either, you're just tired" -- "What do you think of Billie? " -- He chuckles over his pipe: "What do you expect me to say? that the frog bit your leg? " -- "Why do you have a diamond in your forehead? " -- "I dont have a diamond in my forehead damn you and stop making arbitrary conceptions! " he roars -- "But what am I doing? " -- "Stop thinking about yourself, will ya, just float with the world" -- "Did the world float by the park? " -- "All day, you should have seen it, I've smoked a whole package of Edgewood, it's been a very strange day" -- "Are you sad I didn't talk to you? " -- "Not at all, in fact I'm glad: we better