H
e a r t S o n s & H e a r t D a u g h t e r s of A l l e n G i n s
b e r g
N
a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 4 : A r c h i
v e s E d i t i o n
CLIFF FYMAN
Monday Continued
Mardi Gras was wild.
I was a little too paranoid this time to get into the Mardi Gras itself although I did enjoy being in New Orleans and
especially traveling there and back on the Green Tortoise bus.
It wasn't so much the being scrunched and
belched on block after block in the French Quarter that made me a bit paranoid;
nor was it the over-imbibed beer drinkers puking at my ankles; nor was it the
obese women stripping on balconies to the roar of the crowd. It was the
cops that made me paranoid. Crash helmets and black shades, billy clubs and squared jaws—they were vicious. Say
the wrong thing to them and the mistake would be dripping from your skull.
Vagrants—anyone with less than ten bucks in his
pocket—were locked up in scores. The cops drove into the Quarter in
U-Haul vans and were unloaded by Jackson Square, one of the more pleasant local
hang-outs. I usually appreciate simply buying a
good sandwich and sitting on a stoop, possibly in sunlight, watching the
passersby, merchants, truck drivers, children, buildings, clocks, feeling the
city's pulse. This I was afraid to do being that I was vulnerable
enough to a pig inspection with long hair and
patched jeans.
I therefore stayed in the French Quarter just
part of the day and retreated to the town's perimeter where I was living.
Richie, my host and brother of Vicki a KPFA volunteer whom I know and
lived with for one week in Berkeley was hospitable and when we were both at
home pleasant to be with. He worked in a dentist's lab. He provided
me with with my own room, a water
bed, pot, a smooth downer, laughing gas (a sort of dentist's Spanish
fly), an excellent stereo, The Dead, Joni Mitchell, and others.
I must admit though, all wasn't that mellow for
me in New Orleans, and at my choice. The first night there, horny and in
a hurry, I visited a bar quite plain at the street level, but which became much
more imaginative as I ascended the narrow creaky stairway to the orgy room.
I was curious to check it out. Passing the third tier, it
turned into a leather bar, leather boots and hats, chains, cigarettes and
stares. Some cat put his fist, middle knuckle protruding, to my shoulder
as I was trying to squeeze through the crowd. Football-like, I shrugged
it off, never even seeing the person's face.
In the final climb, in the upstairs room, I
never saw any of the faces. It was too dark. I felt brushing
against my Wrangle jeans a few lips, however, and many hands, and a number of
pricks. Groans came from sections of the room whose boundaries I couldn't
determine. A one-inch crack of light focused on a guy's ass getting
fucked. It wasn't like two men were having sex—it was simply an ass
getting fucked, that's all one saw if one were so unoccupied himself as to
look.
I kind of appreciated the animal level of the
experience. Pure groans. Do what you want. I felt penned in
and in need of air.
I went outside and down the street to Audoban Park and I wrote a letter to David Karen at Harvard
and I called Mimi at Penn. I painted on a clown's face, dropped a downer,
stumbled around with everyone else, ate Mexican food at Pancho's
two bucks for all you can eat and boy did I ever eat.
I noticed after a while that somehow I was
hanging around with a pretty black woman around twenty years old. We stood
on Bourbon and watched the crowds and were pushed through doorways together and
kept each other company. Toward the end of the night she said she needed a
place to stay and could she crash where I was staying, and I said ok, and we
walked shoulder to shoulder a few miles to the outskirts as the blue light of
morning lit the railroad tracks.
We reached Richie's place around daybreak.
There was one small mattress in the room. She got into bed with me
and I slipped her clothes off and then mine. She asked me not to
penetrate her because if she got pregnant her jealous boyfriend in Florida
would kill her. I was a little bombed and I didn't stop, and then
she pleaded, and I rolled off, but then I went into her from behind. I
couldn't tell if she was consenting or relenting. I assumed because she
got into bed and let me take her clothes off, she wanted me to keep trying, but
maybe not. Later my conscience bothered me. She stayed next to me asleep
a long time, if that meant consent, at least I hoped
it did.
8 March 76
[Originally
published in NHS 2011, http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs11/.]