New York City, 1950s New Jack City for the jack-worthy, not big enough for million- worded jacks (or jills), not in the end. In the end he, they, needed the road, the wide open roads west, the transcontinental riff calling, the Route 6, 66, 666 (the latter a pact with the devil, or the devils’ master, some deal to write that second million words of the legend-in-the- making), the great thruways aborning. Passing (if they could ever get that first hitchhike ride out of the city) dusty dutch red barn farms, steel cities achingly filled with lonesome story bus stops and stinking urinals, dirty , and always too big passengers in the next seat who snored, who spread their mass on fallow shoulders, passing auto cities filled with hungry, great depression hungry workers looking to make their first down payments on a dream, a dream car to quell their restless search, and maybe some little white picket fenced house to anoint their red scare cold war night, to be on the right side of the angels for once. Shoving into hog butcher to the world Chi town, all brawny and beef, all a place to move west, and move fast to avoid Joliet blues like a million Muddys coming from old Parchman’s Farm Mississippi Delta south up highway 61 , down along the silty big muddy and then to the great expanse, the Dakotas with their forlorn look, and their young desperate to head west and become drugstore movie stars, following their okie-arkie brethren further south who made the trek a generation before and were now stranded in some Pomona shopping plaza wondering what the hell it was all about, or roaming those Pacific coast highways in their jalopies, their hot money hot rods looking for the heart of Saturday night, or lucky boys, searching for that perfect wave down in the LaJollas of the world .
Pushing, ever pushing west, on into junction Denver searching for the ghost of the cowboy past in Larimer Street pool halls, barrooms, and chip joints (and maybe an untoward whorehouse), looking for golden all-American Old West cowboy dreams. Onward out of the flame-thrown Rockies and down into dinosaur death Utah and then Nevadas, Winnemucca dry holes a specialty just don’t get caught out there on that hitchhike road. And then land’s end golden gate rust pacific rim of the world Frisco town and flowers and blossoms in the foggy North Beach night. But all this later. For now though life is, life is New Jack City, and the strange neon night rhythms.
Yah, for a while you could hear that old caged bird sing, hear sing some Billie Holliday body and soul lover’s lament, some blues from deep down in the Mother Africa night, some café cabaret ghost of the Cotton Club (filled with hard boys so watch out) swing low, swing misty, swing along nod sway song, maybe a little boy-juiced, but swaying. Something in that phrasing she had, Billie that is, that half pause before she set up the snarling upper lip to speak of endless sorrows, endless sorrows endured in America, unrelieved, unrelieved except through blood-scarred arms. Some Dizzy dizzy salt peanuts tune, maybe a little tea-time dizzy, some high white note stuff every once in a while just to keep things interesting, blowing man blow about two, maybe three, in the morning playing chords, playing progressions most of night to keep the fidgety fickle customers glued to their tables, drinking high- shelf liquor and maybe riffing a little for the regulars at the bar, the hip cats who didn’t even dare show up until one, maybe later, and got ready to blow from his toes you could tell, tell by the hour, tell by how he held the notes on that last song blast. Yah, he was going blow that pure note if it took until dawn and then that note and that sun rising could fight it out. And that note was going to win, if not that night then sometime but in the meantime here he was in his entire be-bop high blown splendor. Or some, well just name your cool as a cucumber jazzman, Lester blowing that big sexy sultry sax at the end, the Prez working that blast for all it was worth, letting the air out and filling up again just like some oxygen mask, blowing pass the audience into his own eden, beautiful, and the hipsters too hip to clap, rude crowd clap, just point their solo index fingers at the max daddy and he just tips his solo index finger back to the brotherhood. On and on in the New York jazz night, on Gerry, on Dave Brubeck, on Charlie angel Gabriel trumpet blowing early in the morning down his own private Birdland , some more experimental guys, Monk, mad monk riff piano riffing monk , on top of the heap. All saints, all angels early morning (when else?) sweaty in a hundred cool as a cucumber midnight cafes, The Swan, The Gaslight, Benny’s, The Hi Hat, and the beloved Red Fez (red to make you sunset dream, red to take away the red scare night straight up in the free-wheeling refuge town, sunset red tea dream to see and long for ancient dreams, fez to make you think Africa calling, Africa finally calling home her children), all drawing, drawing can you believe this, the Mayfair swells like in old Duke Cotton Club high Harlem night Scott Fitzgerald bathtub gin jazz age time.
Time Square, eternal home to every Hoboken hipster forced to flee for non-payment of rent, every Ithaca spinster angel looking for some Boston marriage far from prying eyes, every broken dream okie farm boy useless on the dust bowl farm and itching to get at those women, those easy city women he heard about on the radio or in some forbidden magazine, after a steady diet of dried- out high hell fundamentalist girls aching for the lord and a fistful of kids to take away the empty soul of the black, true black starless prairie nights after a proper marriage, every arkie beauty queen who could not survive the rarified airs of “take it all off sister”or being ass-pinched by hot rod valley boys waiting impatiently for hamburgers and fries in the blossoming Hollywood car hop nights and who couldn’t go home to Helena, every drifter, grafter, grafter and midnight sifter working the flamed never-ending lights of hell. Lit up, neon- lit, gas-lit, 24/7/365-lit, lit to the gills, lit against the jack-rolling crime night (see above for candidates, jack-rollers in waiting, if the occasion arises) back alley big city simplicity itself just some chain, or an off-hand pipe, behind the knees, crumple easy to the ground, grab the dough, up and out to some whore blow, dope blow, whisky blow.
Out in the flamed, never ending lights of hell-lit up, lit against the gang night, Central Park mainly, and some off streets down in Little Italy and up in high Harlem, 125th Street anyway, lit against the rough trade Genet night sailor boys fresh from the wharves, Hudson wharves, East River wharves, flush with just off the boat pay-off cash, looking for chain-whip kicks, some diva delight, some fresh leather boy too. Lit against the sad sin sexless sex night, some anonymous Lansing, Muncie, Omaha corn-fed young thing, maybe like her older arkie sister a beauty queen who headed east instead of west to get into the theater or some concert hall, shapely, good legs, working hips, tired of light-less farms and farm fields headed to the big city, headed up 42nd street instead of Broadway or the Village and wound up with big faded dreams calling out “hey mister, want a good time,” or maybe stoned to the gills just nods, stoop nods, symbolically showing a good time just by her uniform, that split pea dress showing plenty of thigh, those long black nylon stockings, and that kewpie doll smile, all yours for the price of a needle, a room, and some pimp’s damn cut or, hell, when the spiral goes down some quickie back alley head and a quick napkin spit wipe, jesus. Watch out for the jack-rollers honey though, especially watch out for those damn jack-rollers you earned your money, earned it hard, and she maybe thinking to herself if old farm boy love Roy could see me now, later to be turned over to some Jersey whorehouse and work by the bell. Go home sister, go home, now. New Jack was just too big for you.
Wall Street, pass, this is not about coupon-clipping, okay. Madison Avenue, pass, this is not about subliminal desires and tricks. Park Avenue, pass, well, maybe half-pass, for those looking for jack night thrills to fill up, fill up like some gas tank, their beat souls, or maybe some Genet boys rough stuff. Columbia, the university, of course, ivy-covered, respectable for a minute (before the 1960s heist of all property when it was merely an Ivy outpost in a brazen, bare knuckles city), a minute when some buzz came in breezing in through the portals. And Jack and Allen and kindred teased the city dry, and created some flash beat to be listened to elsewhere.
The Village of course (those who need to know what village just move on), the clubs and nooks already mentioned, jazz, folk rearing its head, more jazz, some poetry on an off night, the beat poets reading their beat poems to a famished world (or slender slice of it), the streets of dreams not mentioned, Bleecker, McDougall on up to Canal, the safe harbor, hell, sanctuary for those blown away by the cold war red scare night, not just reds, and pinks, and maybe white pinks, but all mother nature’s odd and damaged, the beat poem listen hangers for sure, the morphine kickers looking for sure connections and some walking daddy to be-bop with when the crash came, the rough trade boys, reading Genet in some back room in translation, tired of hell angels beating up on them without style, plainsong fags tired of dating someone’s sister as a favor and ready to face the cops’ bull if only to have a few nights of boy love without being run out of a Podunk town on a rail, same, same for those weary of those boston marriages and tired of wearing men’s clothing in private Beacon Street Boston rooms, art guys by the biz-illion, Jackson this, Larry that, Motherwell this and that, enough art to paint the world, all abstract and symbolic, all death to sweet Madonna slash dabbed in the night.
Movie houses, movie theaters, all sweet black and white stark, all New Jack city eight million stories stark, and, and, uh, art films for the discreet, of men in raincoats stinking of urine or Thunderbird wines, of endless overflow from Times Square (or run out) drifters, grifters, grafters, midnight sifters, hustling, always hustling like some rats on speed, of mad men and monks, and semi-monks disguised as poets, of street poet gangsters all shiny words and a gun at your head to say yes you liked the last verse, of Gregory Corso, of muggers and minstrels, of six dollar whores for a quickie, of twelve dollar whores who will take you around the world, of neon signs, night and day, of neon cars and car -beams night and day, of trash spread every which way, of the flotsam and jetsam of human existence cloistered against 42nd Street hurts.
And Howard Johnson’s frankfurts, mustard, relish, onions, go ahead the works, eaten by the half dozen to curb hungers, not food hungers but hungers that dare not speak their name, not sex but fame, fresh off the Port Authority bus, of Joe and Nemo’s two o’clock fatty griddle hamburgers, the works again, please, of fags (bothering guys in public toilets, jesus), and fairies, all dressed up and rouged ready for some gentleman caller, and, shade distant dreams, of quasi-Trotskyite girl lovers taking a rest from their bourgeois travels who loved truth, truth and dark-haired revolutionary French guys from textile mill lowells, all proletarian Lowell, and can write too, write one million words on order, and perform, on cue, stalinite-worthy betrayals with some new found friend’s wife, or husband, of Siberia exile of the mind, and of second million word writes all while riding the clattering subway to and fro crosstown, not to speak of Soho or the Bronx . And of junkies of every description, morphine, speed, cocaine, and of hustlers pushing their soft wares, call your poison, step right up, of William Burroughs, of deadly terror at the prospects for the next fix, of human mules face down in some dusty Sonora town failing to make that connection to get them well, and of off-hand forgotten murders. Jesus suffering humanity. New Jack City.
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