The Unknown Kerouac

by Jack Kerouac

  There was no light in the first room, nor the second with its little bathtub and sink, but in the third room a light, golden, and a naked girl on the foot of the bed.

  “Wow! Wow!” he said.

  The walls were cracked; somebody’s painted Baudelaire’s face with the crack—his name written underneath, an artist had lived there.

  The young girl was talking with someone in the room; it seemed she’d forgotten she was naked; her eyelashes were heavy from black cream. She waved her arms, licked her lips—she was telling a dramatic and absurd story, about her work—How pretty she was!—shoulders of gold and of white! All the time Rolfe watched her flesh. He was kneeling, nailed, at his post.

  The girl’s thighs were divided white and brown from the sun of the summer of 1935, she’d stayed with her aunt at Asbury Park, stretched herself in the sand to await the blond boys of intelligent tenderness who never came, the women of good sense who would teach her to want the road of life. She bought little pitiful rocks of paint and string; she prayed at her altar in her room at the mirror, she did pirouettes on the little place of floor between mirror and bed, sink and door. Hot summer mornings she slept naked shoulders with the flimsy window curtain moving in the breeze, showing her to the fire escape, the flower pots. For fun she’d bleached her hair for autumn. She bit her lips suddenly ashamed of her present adventure. She lowered her head watching others in the room, as if she had no shame. “Do you find me pretty?” she seemed to say, heavy-eyed.

  Suddenly a shadow moved, and a tall girl six feet tall with red hair passed, in a black slip, to go in the kitchen. Rolfe jumped. She took off her slip, she got in the bathtub from which vapors of hot water rose. She was so tall she had to sit knees-at-chin in the little tub; her hair was tied high, you could see her long fine neck with the freckles. The water rose just almost to her shoulder, there was foam. Rolfe hung himself tighter in his corner. He listened for talk. He was making faces, eyes.

  “He thinks he’s in St. Petersburg,” the girl on the bed was laughing. “What a place to think of!”

  “Just old people in the winter, pensions, I know,” said the redhead in her tub.

  “No!” cried a man with a funny voice. “St. Petersburg Russia.”

  “Ha? Well goodness, that’s even worse!” cried the little blonde laughing. The big woman waited, her face like a hospital attendant in the tub. Suddenly the brown arm of a man came out and pulled the blonde across the bed yelling and you couldn’t see her any more, just the other one. Rolfe could see her wiping her nose. He wanted her to stand so he could see her; he didn’t believe he had already seen her. He was all mixed up in the visions of legs of both. He was stoned. He was scared, he looked around, wanted nobody to catch him, disturb him.

  “That’s how it goes,” cried the woman in the tub, washing her back, “they start wrestling, playing, pinching, torturing each other, all of a sudden they’re deep in a long kiss and they dont move any more, just a little—the woman—just enough to move the tassles of her dress—if she has one—ha ha.”

  “What you saying, baby?” cried the man from the other room. “Hurry up with your bath, we’re gonna tell stories.”

  “They’re those damn people pose for dirty pictures on cards!—They’re havin a party!” thought Rolfe.

  “Aw! Again I’m seeing a skeleton in the corner! What are we doing in Chicago?”

  “Now it’s Chicago!” laughed the blonde buried somewhere—

  “Well, I’m so high on this damn stuff I thot you had a big steel brace here—What would a woman be doing with a steel wire?”

  “Yes, I’m coming little ones,” said the Amazon in the tub, and she got up, grand and foamy, to reach for the towel on a pipe overhead. Rolfe shot like a jack-in-the-box when she got up, he was on the roof in an instant eating his lips. He came down again, slow. She was gone in. He listened. Heard nothing. “I might as well go home,” he told himself sadly. He asked the sky, “How?” “This is the house Pomeray’s supposed to live in? But yeah!—Well now what in hell are we doing? Yay, if I could have them naked girls with me in my room! Omer played us a wood!—damn Kentuck! All the good times we had in Denver in hotel rooms and look what he does! Man, the girls! I’ll have to go tell em, have to go back to Denver, that’s all, damn—I gotta go chew crap.” And he went downstairs.

  Inside the apartment, on the bed, it was Omer Leclerc himself, a “hepcat” he called himself, came from near Boston, was the pressman for Leo Duluoz in his shop in New England; he was having himself a big weekend in New York. Omer lived with his mother in a tenement on a canal. He made good pay; had good times and girls in his town; went to New York from time to time on binges; talked with everybody; some thought him crazy but he was a hard worker, a good son to his mother. He had curly hair parted in the middle; small, bowlegged, strong, looked everywhere quickly. It was the apartment intended for old Pomeray. It belonged to a certain Dick Clancy who never came there; Omer used it when he wanted, he’d been caught funny this time but he had what he always wanted: two girls; no courage yet to take out his dirty pictures. He had a deck of playcards with men and women all swallowed up naked in love.

  All the great city emerged from this place with its old plaster on the floor and the old architect board and chairs and a big magnificent bed put there by someone probably Clancy. Omer Leclerc knew everybody, Clancy for a long time, was having one of the biggest nights of his life, two beautiful girls with him for two days and two nights, one day in bed, this one the last; the two magnificent to play, laugh but so strange and they had been tapped on the head by a big dose of Benzedrine the whole gang, enough to kill, Leclerc was really out of his head and believed himself in Chicago, St. Petersburg Russia. “Beelzabur, Balabur, Bloobloom, what we gonna do in this big grisette de bebette” he babbled. “Isn’t it cloudy out?”

  “All day. But now it’s night,” Nicki said, the big one.

  “Already night. It was morning, night, morning, night—My angels, how can I ever thank you! My heart’s all broken in little pieces to love one more than the other, the two of you so beautiful, hell I talk like a Spaniard when I talk the truth.”

  “Oh, he’s cute!” laughed the little blonde Peaches. She had dark hair bleached blonde. It made a fantastic combination. The light was now out. It was dark in the room, except for the kitchen that was now like brown in the heavy reflections from the city outside. Everybody on their backs you could tell from the way of their talk, like mummys, like telling ghost stories in the dark.

  “For hours and hours I’ve been thinking profoundly of the little dimple in your shoulder, Monda.”

  “Monda. Oui, Soupçon, Soupçon—I hear all your pretty words, why do you have to go back to Boston tomorrow?”

  “For work for krissakes!” said Omer looking at her, making a face in the dark.

  “It’s not every week of the year Peaches,” said Nicki, “that we can be honored by the presence of Mister Leclerc.”

  “Ah but sometimes I believe you’re playing me a wood!” yelled Omer sick.

  The women laughed.

  “Grow a little mustache and I’ll tell ya!” laughed Peaches; and suddenly Omer looked in the corner of the room and saw the skeleton of a man.

  “There! There it is, the phantom—the skeleton—it follows me everywhere. One corner, another corner—”

  “Omer—drink some milk. Boy I can tell how hard it would be to take care of you.”

  “He ate all my brothers—he scared all my kids—”

  “Ah you’re raving, poetry—”

  “Blow, Omer,” said Nicki low.

  “I’m afraid of St. Petersburg Russia!” Omer held his head, pressed hard, he was really frightened.

  “Aw that again!” cried the little blonde disappointed.—“Finish your story Nicki, about the guys that used to give you a hundred dollars a night to play the tiger with—”

  “We’d put on tiger suits, we got down on our knees, grow-l-grow—” and Nicki did this at Omer, who retur
ned it. All three cigarettes in mouth. “It’s nothing. There were two men once who bought a big barrel of oysters and broke them and cut them and threw them in the bathtub, and they made me sit in there for a hundred dollars.”

  “Ah let me kiss you!”

  “Did they get in with you?” asked Peaches eyes in the dark.

  The wind of October made a big lament between the tenements; in the night Omer sensed but didn’t know the presence nearby of Rolfe, Pomeray, little Dean, Bull, Leo, Ti Jean waiting for him. “Another drink!” he yelled.

  “There isn’t any.”

  “We should have wine—the skeletons would leave—”

  Later———

  “Nicki!”

  “Yes?”

  “Let me play my fingers down your spine again, this time we’ll make the chills rise—”

  “Ooh yes,” said Nicki, burying her mouth in her own shoulder, wrinkling her nose, “aren’t bodies wonderful?”

  “Wow,” said Peaches; and at midnight the little model had to go. Omer was in his bathrobe, sitting on the edge of the bed, head fallen in her lap. Peaches was saying: “But yes, I have to get up early tomorrow morning, gotta go to work.”

  “Everybody has to work,” said Omer.

  “Of course idiot!—How long you gonna stay there in my lap?”

  “Okay, go on then. Go walk alone in the street, in the barrels—”

  “We won’t be here tomorrow night,” said Nicki, to Peaches, and they understood each other’s plans.

  “And me,” yelled Omer, “I’m waiting for—”

  “For what?”

  Omer didn’t know. He fell headfirst in the pillow. “Did you get her address Nicki?” He saw bats on the wall. Peaches left, with a little vivacious face full of the promise of the great Fifth Avenue and the great success of fashions there. You’d see her tomorrow, hatbox in hand, running through traffic. In the lobbies of big offices of the Millionaire Thirties . . . 1935, sad and gray year. Omer endured.

  “Omer don’t bang your head on the wall,” said Nicki, because Omer suddenly in the agony of his desire had thrown his head against the wall, bang, arms falling tired.

  “But it’s not possible to pass two three days like we were and not make love.” What does she want to charge me? he thought in his steeltrap head of Canuck workingman, mentally figuring his little figures he always kept in a wallet book, a hundred dollars?

  “I told you, I’m in love with Vincent,” said the woman.

  “Well, Vincent ain’t here.”

  “I have to keep my word cool.”

  “Aw, but I’m sick from it—from you—!! You’re beautiful! If we started to make love maybe you’d forget Vincent.”

  “No.”

  “You’re big as I am, bigger, you could beat the hell out of me. He he!”

  “No, my love.”

  “You’re playing with my hair, I like that.”

  “I love one man at a time.”

  “Aw but I had too much of this Benzedrine, I’ve lost 20 pounds I bet.”

  “You look it—Did you see your face, it’s like a skeleton.”

  Omer lit his wood matches, looked in a little mirror from her pocketbook. “My God, my eyes are big! My cheeks high! Play the radio!”

  “No radio. You look like a baby.”

  “Why’d you give me all that? You know I never had dope before.”

  “It’s not dope—it’s a medicine—You been high, huh? Come on let’s dress and go hear Lester at the Savoy before it’s too late. I’ll bet you anything he swings tonight!”

  “I bet—But I wanta make love to you.”

  “Oh no.”

  “We’re all alone in the night, in the tenements of the Lower East Side—it’s cold—we’ve gotta make love!”

  “For what reason?”

  “So we’ll know each other better—so we can start our . . . be together, close—our love—come on let’s love each other.”

  “No!”

  “Come on let’s love each other.”

  “I told you. But you don’t dig that I love you too; I know you after these two days! You remember we met only 2 days ago, and here we’re talking love—”

  “In bed, hey what?”

  “—I never saw you before, never been involved with you before—I got lotsa problems, I live a dangerous life. They got guns in the house those guys I live with, they steal.”

  “You been with them—You know what I mean—I never can talk right, ah?”

  “Sure—Oh, one way or the other. We had gang affairs—on the roof, in the summer when it’s hot in your ‘cold’ Lower East Side, man!”

  “Yah, I know those guys are robbers. It doesn’t make me happy—I mean, they can do what they want s’long as they let me alone—” Omer spoke with authority in his words. “. . . the thoughts we hide about criminals.”

  “If you wanta call it criminal—” It hadn’t made a hit with Nicki.

  “It isn’t criminal?”

  “I say,” yelled Nicki showing her teeth “do what you want, you only live once.”

  Suddenly Omer had a paranoiac dream: he had a vision that Nicki really wanted to make love with him to get a chance to fill him full of Benzedrine, and after that, half dead her gang of robbers would come in and carry him away, take his body, put it in a car, fill the car with alcohol, crash it, burn it, to say that their ringleader Zaza was really dead. Omer sweated great drops. He thought of the porches of Cheever Street in summer moonlight.

  “Honey, you’re all wet—; let me wash your brow with cold water.”

  “Nicki—I know why you don’t want to go all out with me—”

  “Why?”

  “Because you wanta wait for the guys to get here—I’ll confess you my thoughts—Wanta? Really truth?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “You wont have to if the guys get here—Ah Nicki I’m afraid—I’m afraid—You’re gonna be sore at me.”

  “Well tell me!”

  “Nicki, I’m afraid you want to steal my body for yr gang.”

  She listened, eyes slitted. “Yes? Why?”

  “To put in a car, burn—to use my body—to hide the boss of yr gang of guys—You unnerstand, I see skeletons . . . I think I’m in Russia—It’s all been an impossible hallucination everything we been doing for the last 2 days, it makes me realize the mad foolishness of my life—I gotta go back to work—”

  “Poor Omer!” Nicki kissed him, but he didn’t feel he deserved it.

  “You’re not mad? It’s crazy dreams! of a nut! Of a smalltown lout! You cant unwind crazy ideas out of your head once they’re there—we come to the city of NY, we want to have a good time, not spend too much—You’d think I wanted you to help me tie myself up—I dont understand those insulting ideas to you—”

  “Oh no it’s not insulting—it’s a funny little dream, a fairy tale.”

  “Ah it’s a nightmare.”

  “But you’ve already told me,” she laughed in his ears.

  Now she accepts me because the guys are coming any minute! thought Omer.

  “You accept me because—”

  “What?”

  He looked at her in that half dark. “I was going to confess you another idea. But you’re too beautiful.” He kissed her hard on the mouth; he caught her lips open. He’d done this a hundred times both nights, the kiss always lasted a half hour, this time it was wilder, they went into each other’s bodies to seek like angry people. She sank. The man had won, the woman made her little act of loss, their two bodies shivered as if they were cold, crazy and violent, the teeth chewing in the poor mouth, the legs, crazy, the arms everywhere, the importance of life. Omer with every beat of his heart faster and faster thought “She’s going to give herself to me now because those guys are coming . . .”

  It wasn’t the guys who were coming; it was him, that simpleton.

  Immediately Omer wanted to cry in her arms for the folly of it all, and made believe he was.

  “But what is
it?” she asked when he gnawed her arm.

  “I thought—the whole time we were having our love—that those guys were coming, that you were gonna sell me out for money—The whole time! Up till the end!—Just now!”

  “Naw! Yes truly? Poor Omer! Gawd, pull yourself together. Since you’re able to tell me these things you’ll be all right. Come let’s get dressed go see some jazz!”

  “You understood me?!” cried Omer, happy.

  “These ideas were developing for 2 days—you have to explode them—just like the rest of you—it’s a big scientific study—There’s a doctor, from Vienna, some boxes for cancer because there isn’t enough love, dig—Man, if I could tell you all the stories I know! I went through a whole high school, the girls just like the boys. I developed them one after the other—they’d come to me, I’d tell em ‘You still don’t know what to think of love?’ I lived nearby, in an apartment; it was in San Francisco, not far from Van Ness & Lombard—Know that corner?—The little Chinese guys with the well-combed hair, in sweaters, I showed em little tricks in my bed—Like the best of springtime—open your happiness bed early—parturience—I was out of my head on Mexican marijuana. Max had fetched me some, a shopping bag full—cured. I had those little blondes high for the first time in their lives—You shoulda seen their faces!—”

  “Holy Batchism” cried Omer.

  “—Sitting in bed, flipping out, looking up for whatever they’d lost—‘What’s happening, ba-by?’ I always asked—”