The Cool School

by Glenn O'Brien

  He opened the chicken house door and we went in. The place was littered with half-rotten comic books. They were like fruit under a tree. In the corner was an old mattress and beside the mattress were four quart jars. He took the gallon jar over to them, and filled them carefully not spilling a drop. He screwed their caps on tightly and was now ready for a day’s drinking.

  You’re supposed to make only two quarts of Kool-Aid from a package, but he always made a gallon, so his Kool-Aid was a mere shadow of its desired potency. And you’re supposed to add a cup of sugar to every package of Kool-Aid, but he never put any sugar in his Kool-Aid because there wasn’t any sugar to put in it.

  He created his own Kool-Aid reality and was able to illuminate himself by it.

  Trout Fishing in America, 1967

  Andy Warhol

  (1928–1987)

  The prime mover of Pop Art, Andy Warhol had ambitions that extended in every direction. He was a filmmaker, a magazine publisher, a creator of advertising, an actor, a model, theater producer, manager of the Velvet Underground, and TV host. When Barney Rosset of Grove Press suggested he write a novel he accepted the challenge and undertook to use a tape recorder to follow one of his superstars, Ondine, for twenty-four hours. (In the end the book added on three further sessions, so that the text covers a period from August 1965 to May 1967.) Four stenographers transcribed the tapes with varying degrees of accuracy and these transcripts, complete with multiple errors, were published unedited except for some random rearrangements introduced by Warhol and the changing of almost all names. Among the characters in this episode from a: a novel are D (Drella or Andy Warhol), and O (Ondine or Robert Olivo), RR (Rotten Rita or Kenneth Rapp), and SPF (Sugar Plum Fairy or Joe Campbell), a triumvirate of amphetamine-fueled opera freaks who frequented the Silver Factory. The essence of hipsterism is argot and in these conversations we hear an unusually exotic blend of hip talk, speedfreak lingo and the slang of the gay underground.

  from a: a novel

  DOUGIE—What are you gonna do with this? O—We’re gonna write a novel. It’s a novel. It’s being transcribed by three girls. DOUGIE—What is it all about? O—Me! (Rita laughing like a face in the fun house) O—Look at The Duchess; the next one you won’t believe. (music is drowning the voices) RR—Oh me, oh me, oh mye, corpuscles (?) both of you come over here. Good. I just wanted to know one, oh I shouldn’t ask you anyway. Ondine, may I just ask one question. Is it cool to uh, to take out, to take our drugs and shoot and everything in front ofthetaxi-driver? O—Certainly. RR—Oh how wonderful. O—Certainly. RR—Does he mind? O—He better not. I’m gonna go in and do the test now. Come with me, come come with me; this is an official arrest. Oh, Rotten, Rotter uh. The Mayor and myself both are, we we think your spirit is marvelous. This is a rather unusual group to stumble into. Can we see something that will prove to us that you’re not RR—The police. O—the police? Or J.F.K. is disguise or something. Do you have, I’ll take your word if you say that that’s all we have to take, but we’re going to take drugs here and rather vilently. (laughing) DOUGIE or SPF—Are you gonna tie up? O—No, I’m not gonna tie up, but I don’t like zane business, but we’re going to give ourselves pokes. So-called. I’m sorry, don’t let this cut. Keep it under your hats, darling. RR— Innoculations please. Stretch that out. Innoculations. O—And if you witness these things your promise not to, it doesn’t offend you does it? SPF—He’s getting terse. O—You don’t have a two, may I see your radio, I mean your wristwatch? May I see it? RR—Now he not only has us, but he’s got us on tape which we don’t stand a chance. You and your big mouth; you just put us up for six years. You cocksucker. O—He’s calling Officer Joe Bolton. RR—I fired him. He’s okay. O—I think you’re all right. All right Rotten? I’ll take you on face value, but don’t get upset if one of us, DOUGIE—Face? O—I, no, no no, not just face alone. Faith. They have trouble understanding. But they’re new. Oh well, all right. You’re not going to arrest these two innocent children are you? B—What’s wrong with those two? O—Dorso is, this is a murderous Negress. Now watch out for her. SPF—She’s an Indian. O—She’s not an Indian. Sugar! Sugar! Go in there and fuck them up. Don’t let them get upset. SPF—I’m not letting them. O—You two are, by the time we come in there with pokes you have to be ready for them. (Finale—applause) D— Oh Ondine, where are you? Ondine? (music) (Ondine talking) Oh Ondine, pleeese. O—Let me try it. D—Oh I no no, but you hold it. Huh? O—Listen Rotten, I know it’s awful to ask you to hold the, would you? Cause Drella’s been holding it for so long and he’s just, he shouldn’t have to. That’s not the needle. That’s the vitamin B 12.

  DOUGIE—My attitudes towards narcotics SPF—Narcotics!? O—

  These are not narcotics.

  SPF—These are not narcotics.

  O—Do you call vitamin B 12 a narcotic? But keep this next to your mouth when you speak. Rita, are you all right in there?

  Dougie—Avenue D.

  SPF—Isn’t that funny. I was on 6th street and Avenue C.

  O—Suddenly a tear came to my eye thinking of my first experience on the lower east side.

  D—Really?

  O—Oh he does so; he looks like Brooklyn too.

  SPF—No no.

  O—Oh he looks like a New York boy.

  SPF—Do you know the last couple of nights what we were up to?

  O—Dear, you were in the midst of a festival night. We were down, they were beating drums and singing about Pan American Day. That’s how the lower east side, but the lower east side was, Brooklyn was different too. I mean. What do you think of us? Is’nt it wonderful to find such freedom in the midst of New York City? Did you think that Wagner would permit such nonsense. It’s really that Rita is our Mayor. Do you see that silence? Isn’t she a gorgeous creature. Isn’t she divine. You’d never know that she was so foul.

  D—Isn’t Billy 24?

  O—Billy’s twenty-f-, no he’s 27.

  D—Oh he is?

  O—I don’t know. Billy, aren’t you 27? How old are you? Oh. He’s 25.

  DD—Tea bag?

  O—She thinks you said tea bag.

  B or RR—Yeah!

  O—May I say one thing From what you said you have a tolerant attitude.

  RR—. . . get some chicken and turkey sandwiches; that’s a wonderful idea.

  O—No, you said; yes, that’s a delightful idea. Dodo, would you hold this for me for a second? And with God’s help I will put it away. What do you feel about me? Isn’t there a twinge somewhere? I doubt—How do you feel about homosexuality Is it permissable?

  Dougie—I think if it’s one’s prerogative to be homosexual, fine, but everybody does not have to share his beliefs.

  O—Don’t you see Venus being contacted (A succulent inverted sigh.) Look at this, a hand-maiden, a gorgeous Indian maiden. I hate them; I live next dor to them.

  Dougie—Is a drug that’s supposed to give you a charge.

  SPF—Yeah.

  Dougie—Um, I think it’s something that one becomes addicted to. I think it’s something that one has very little control over after a certain period of time.

  SPF—Yeah, well that’s not altogether true though, because I mean lots of people are addicted to a lot of things they have no control over. In fact, they don’t even try y’know?

  Dougie—Like smoking?

  SPF—Oh well like eating chocolate pudding every night.

  Dougie—Yes but

  SPF—Do you know my stepfather ate chocolate pudding and ground chuck steak every night for years and years and years.

  Dougie—You mean he lived to be a ripe old age?

  SPF—No, he’s, I don’t know. Well I mean he was addicted to that y’know, he really was. And he decided to stop, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t. Say an addict decided to stop.

  Dougie—Well let’s take chocolate pudding and narcotics. And you take both of those men; strap them down.

  SPF—Did you say pot head?

  Dougie—No, narcotics.


  SPF—What do you call narcotics?

  D—Ondine.

  Dougie—Narcotics.

  SPF—What? What’s a narcotic?

  Dougie—To me a narcotic is a man who takes drugs.

  SPF—Any kind of drugs? I mean aspirins are drugs.

  Dougie—Takes drugs to feel high, takes drugs to feel no pain, takes drugs to make him do what he really wants

  SPF—Narcotics are opiates. Aren’t narcotics opiates?

  D—Oh, I really don’t know. I don’t think about it.

  SPF—And opiates are addicting.

  Dougie—I’m not really deeply familiar. I have never read on it y’know.

  SPF—Narcotics are opiates and opium nerivatives, and they are addicting like opium, uh, methadrine, heroine y’know.

  Dougie—Yeah.

  SPF—And then you have a few other things that are addicting like cocaine, that’s addicting after awhile. But the rest of the things are not narcotics, like pot or amphetamine are stimulates like benzedrine; they are not addicting and yet people do take these things.

  Dougie—Yes.

  SPF—And pot’s not addicting you know.

  Dougie—No, not pot.

  SPF—And I’m scared shit of needles. Do you like needles?

  D—Uhh, no I

  SPF—The whole thing about needles upsets me. I think very graphically of muscle tissue and the cold steel forcing it’s way through and the blood, skin, and. It’s frightening.

  DD—It’s a good thing that you couldn’t see yourself.

  SPF—Why?

  D—When?

  DD—When you were filled with

  SPF—Filled with what?

  D—Needles.

  DD—Needles.

  SPF—(walking away) I was never filled with needles. I never have had a needle in my life.

  DD—I didn’t say filmed, I said filled.

  D—Was he really very serious?

  SPF—I was never

  DD—I was too! But it was a good thing you couldn’t see yourself.

  SPF—I was unconscious and I did’nt know about the needles.

  DD—It was a god thing you couldn’t see them.

  SPF—In a hospital you see I don’t mind needles. I mean they’re slightly unpleasant in a hospital, but you know when you tie up

  DD—I never had any experiences.

  SPF—and the eye dropper and the fountain of blood rushes towards y’know it’s all just a little bit afraid. Have you ever seen anyone want to gouge their vein? I mean searching for a vein?

  DD—No, I have not. I have not.

  SPF—Gouging with a safety pin?

  DD—No no, but you have your junkie friends that are here.

  SPF—Have you ever seen that? Gouging themselves with a safety pin and stuffing the shit in their arm?

  D—Oh I

  SPF—You know that’s frightening! I mean it’s not frightening to them because they realize what’s happening. They associate needles with pleasure. I don’t associate them at all. (Conversation and music.)

  SPF—I mean sleeping pills are the greatest test because with sleeping pills you just fade out. I mean you’ve gone to sleep and then. I mean if you are gonna do away with yourself I think an overdose is the way to do it—the way to die.

  D—Oh I uh, I actually think just uh staying up and getting a heart attack is the best way.

  SPF—Heart attack.

  DD—Staying up? But how long do you have to stay up?

  SPF—Don’t you realize how painful that is?

  D—What? A heart attack?

  SPF—First of all, you have a stroke which means that you can’t talk or walk.

  D—Not all the time.

  SPF—For twenty-five years.

  D—Not all the time.

  SPF—Twenty-five you won’t be able to walk.

  D—Oh Ondine! what are you doing?

  (Delightful music.)

  D—Oh, tomorrow’s Friday, oh.

  SPF—I worry about you.

  D—What?

  SPF—I worry about you.

  D—Oh.

  O—Are you going out for sandwiches you think? I, ooh, OW! Oh, I’m sorry.

  RR—Listen, I would like to order. I think we should get Reubens on the telephone.

  O—Yes, let’s.

  a: a novel, 1968

  Gerard Malanga

  (b. 1943)

  A poet and photographer, Gerard Malanga was Andy Warhol’s painting assistant and general handyman during the Silver Factory period, as well as the handsome, leading-man superstar of the early Factory’s films, and the whip dancer of Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a Happening starring the Velvet Underground. Malanga was also the only character in Warhol’s a: a novel to appear under his own name. But before all that he was a poet, mentored by Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Eberhart. Malanga has written more than a dozen poetry books, and his portrait photos—many of which have become iconic—have been widely published. This is a poem from a 1971 book with one of the most timely titles of all time: Chic Death.

  Photos of an Artist as a Young Man

  for Andy Warhol

  He lies on bed— white walls

  behind him:

  furniture scarce.

  Illustration of shoe

  horn hangs on wall behind

  and above him. He has

  dark hair. He holds Siamese

  cat in arms. It’s 1959.

  “I grew up in Pittsburgh

  after the war: ate soft

  boiled eggs every day for two years:

  attended Carnegie Tech;

  went to New York: lived

  with ten dancers on the upper West Side;

  free lanced in shoe illustration

  with I. Miller Shoe.”

  Beyond the slow introduction

  to refinement, the development of character,

  it’s not easy to breathe. He is

  the invisible and unimaginable journey

  through colors silk-screened on canvas

  what he or the boy may have seen

  years before, standing there

  in the field, young, innocent, speechless.

  Chic Death, 1971

  Nick Tosches

  (b. 1949)

  Like many of the interesting writers of his generation, Nick Tosches started out writing for rock and roll magazines like Fusion and Creem where writers were allowed to let it all hang out with writing as experimental as the music it covered. Tosches has made a specialty out of profiles of dangerous characters, from Jerry Lee Lewis to Arnold Rothstein to Sonny Liston, and dangerous institutions, from the Vatican to the record business. Along the way he acquired a bit of a dangerous aura himself Here is a selection from Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, which transforms Dean Martin from a cliché into an unintentional hero.

  from Dino

  SINATRA AND MARTIN: There was something about them that brought out the biggest gamblers. What the Sands paid them, they brought back in spades. It was common knowledge: “Dean Martin is back in the Copa Room,” said Variety in December 1959, “and the casino execs are happy—because Dino pulls in the same type heavy player as does Frank Sinatra, another of Jack Entratter’s surefires.”

  It was not just the dirty-rich giovanostri and padroni who were drawn to them, to their glamour, to the appeal of darkness made respectable. The world was full, it seemed, of would-be wops and woplings who lived vicariously through them, to whom the imitation of cool took on the religiosity of the Renaissance ideal of imitatio Christi. The very songs that Sinatra and Dean sang, the very images they projected, inspired lavish squandering among the countless men who would be them. It was the Jew-roll around the prick that rendered them ithyphallic godkins, simulacra of the great ones, in their own eyes and in the eyes of the teased-hair lobster-slurping Bimbo sapiens they sought to impress.

  Both Dean and Frank owned stock in the Sands. By the summer of 1961, Sinatra would hold a nine-percent
piece of the operation. Of the other sixteen licensed Sands stockholders, only Jack Entratter, who had succeeded Jake Freedman in 1958 as president, with twelve percent, Freedman’s widow, Sadie, with ten percent, and the Sands’ vice-president and casino manager, Carl Cohen, with nine and a half percent, owned larger shares; one, Russian-born Hy Abrams, who had been a partner of Bugsy Siegel in the original Flamingo and moved to the Sands in 1954, held an equal, nine-percent piece. Dean, who was granted a gaming license on July 20, 1961, was one of three one-percent owners. His privileged price for that percentage was $28,838, which by then was less than a week’s pay.

  Despite their immense popularity and the success of Sinatra’s albums, neither Dean nor Frank was selling many singles as the decade drew to a close. Sinatra had done well with “Witchcraft” in 1958; Dean had done better that year with “Volare.” Since then, neither had broken into the Top Twenty. Sinatra’s best-selling record of 1959, “High Hopes,” had risen only so far as number thirty. On January 2, 1960, at a news conference in the Senate Caucus Room, John F. Kennedy announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. “High Hopes,” with new lyrics tailored by Sammy Cahn, would become Kennedy’s campaign song. Along the way, it would become the anthem of a time’s dumb optimism.

  High hopes were what Sinatra had. He envisioned Kennedy, somehow, as his man. He envisioned too an empire of his own—his own casino, his own record company, God only knew what else. And Dean was along for the ride.

  JFK and the Rat Pack: These were the symbols, image and spirit, of that carefree time. Even their smiles were alike. In January, while Kennedy got his campaign formally underway, the Rat Pack made the movie that would become its most celebrated legacy.

  In 1956, Peter Lawford had been told an idea for a story about a precision-timed robbery sweep of the Las Vegas Strip. Sinatra had bought the rights to the story, with Lawford retaining a share, and hired Harry Brown and Charles Lederer to write a screenplay from it. As it developed, Ocean’s Eleven became the tale of eleven World War II army buddies reunited for one last maneuver, a multi-million-dollar five-casino heist. Sinatra, who made the picture through his own Dorchester Productions, played ringleader Danny Ocean. They were all in it: Dean, Sammy, Lawford, Joey Bishop. Angie Dickinson played Danny Ocean’s wife. Richard Conte, Henry Silva, Akim Tamiroff, and Buddy Lester had key roles. George Raft showed up as a casino owner. Shirley MacLaine had a cameo scene with Dean.