by (epub)
Seeing that Bruce was waking up, the burglar had pressed the tip of the sword against Bruce’s throat, warning him not to move. He must not have known who he was fucking with. Bruce grabbed the blade—cutting himself in the process—then jumped on the guy and took over. You don’t want to mess with those Italians from Boston, especially in the morning! The three roommates came running to the rescue and, holding the guy against the wall, they searched his pockets. Then they told him, “If we see you again, we’ll kill you. Got it? Go on, get the hell outta here.”
As they threw him out, Bruce laughed, “We should have called the cops” before walking into the living room where he discovered, a little late, that the TV was missing. The burglar must have already taken it, then snuck it down the stairs when they threw him out, like idiots, without checking the rest of the apartment first.
There was a little local band that was just starting out, and we liked to go see them. They were sort of a Stones copy, with the singer and the guitar player howling together in the same mic like replicas of Mick and Keith. They were funny, these guys: Aerosmith. But they had some really good songs and one that was especially great: “Dream On.”
We often went to a little movie theater that showed underground films. One night, we saw a movie we thought was incredible: The Harder They Come with Jimmy Cliff. It told the story of a “rude-boy,” a Jamaican hood, who became a hit singer on his island before the cops gunned him down. We’d already heard of Jamaica and these rastas who constantly smoked pot to “get closer to God,” but we didn’t yet know their music, reggae, and we became instant fans. So when we saw an ad in the paper for a reggae concert, of course we had to go.
Sitting down in this small club, we immediately noticed a faint smell of grass, which seemed to be coming from backstage and we decided to go see if we could have some too. We opened a door that said “staff only” and followed the smell to a small room where five or six Jamaican dudes with dreadlocks were smoking a huge spliff. It must have been the band. We casually sat down with them as if it was nothing and the one closest to me, skinnier and less hairy than the others, passed me the joint. He must have thought we worked there. We chatted and I remember they were all very cool. After a little while, we went back out to our seats, completely stoned. The concert was really great.
The band, which we’d never heard of, was called the Wailers, and it wasn’t until a few years later, when he became a huge star, that we realized we had—incredible as it may seem—smoked a joint with Bob Marley without knowing who he was.
We also smoked one with Joe, one of Bruce’s friends, and after dinner at his house, he offered us a few more to take home.
In bed the next morning, with nothing else to do that day, I decided to light up one of the joints he’d given us. I noticed a strange taste right off and, after a few puffs, I started feeling queasy. Suddenly, the head of Marilyn Monroe on the Warhol poster on my wall came within three inches of my face and said, “I’m dead and so are you!”
It couldn’t have just been grass! Instantly I was nauseated and overcome by a serious urge to puke, but as I got up to run to the bathroom, I discovered that my legs had shrunk. I had become a midget! On the tips of my toes, I made it just to the edge of the toilet seat and puked for what seemed to be forever. What a nightmare.
Meanwhile, seeing the door of my room open and half a joint in the ashtray, Bruce lit it and went back to his room. Hahaha! I seem to remember it went even worse for him!
“Oh, it was Angel Dust or PCP,” Joe told us later on the phone, laughing. “I should have warned you. Did you like it? It’s actually a tranquilizer for horses and elephants, you know? Great, ain’t it?!”
Quaaludes were also real popular then. And guaranteed trouble. In Boston they called them “panty droppers.” Two of these and you’d have no idea where you’d wake up the next day. Or who you’d be with.
At one point, we bought a whole bunch and sold them to friends. The problem was that they were “bootleg” and had a time-release coating, so you had to crush them with a spoon and put the powder in a gelatin capsule so it would work quicker. We couldn’t crush them as fast as we sold them, and we often ended up with a few colorful “customers” in the kitchen, fucked up out of their minds, trying to get crushed quaaludes into tiny capsules and falling on the floor. We’d constantly be begging them to just keep their hands off the turntable!
Nan Goldin and David Armstrong, Bruce’s best friends, were dreaming of careers in art photography.
Nan was very funny and spent most of her time discreetly snapping photos of everyone, trying to capture scenes that were intimate and spontaneous. She would show us the prints and everyone would grab the ones they were in. Who could imagine that twenty years later, these very same pictures were gonna be world famous? Or that one of Bruce and me was going to be on display, in large scale, at the Whitney Museum in New York?
We were both invited to spend a weekend at Cookie Mueller’s, a friend of John Waters. She was a really great girl who had a house in Provincetown, a little seaside village on Cape Cod, to the north of Boston. Bruce didn’t really know how to get to Provincetown, and the trip took us longer than expected. When we arrived around three in the morning, we couldn’t even find the house!
After some doing, we finally found the place, but when we knocked on the door, nobody answered. We figured Cookie must have been fast asleep, and seeing that the door was unlocked, we came to the conclusion she’d left it open for us. We tiptoed inside. We couldn’t see a thing, but we didn’t want to wake her up by turning on the lights. We managed to locate a pullout sofa by groping around in the dark, opened it up as quietly as we could, and went to sleep.
I woke up the next morning to a rifle barrel two inches from my nose. A huge rifle, like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, with this little guy in his pajamas at the other end. We were in the wrong house!
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, ready to blow my brains out.
“And who the hell are you?” his son asked, pointing a second rifle at Bruce.
Still lying down, arms in the air, we explained our mistake and told them the address we’d been looking for. They both started laughing and proceeded to cook breakfast. The man went to get dressed, still howling with laughter, and when he came back down a few minutes later we discovered that, to top it all off, we’d ended up in the house of the town sheriff!
“How do you like your eggs?” he asked, buttoning up his uniform.
After breakfast, he pointed us toward the right house, which was a bit further down the road, and told us goodbye, still laughing. Cops were nicer in Provincetown than in Phoenix.
We immediately fell in love with Provincetown, a place where there were only a few old fishermen of Portuguese descent and Caroline, a girl of about twenty with tattoos all over her face.
There were also Ohni and Benton, who had a little house right on the beach, and about a dozen other nuts who had come from Baltimore, including Divine and John Waters. John had just finished his first three films: Mondo Trasho, Multiple Maniacs, and the legendary Pink Flamingos, in which Cookie had a part. It was in Provincetown that I first saw a guy with blue hair. Sure, I’d had orange hair before, but I’d never seen blue.
We decided to rent a summerhouse with Nan and David.
Our house was on Commercial Street, right in front of the sea. Bruce and I worked odd jobs, like washing dishes in restaurants, to finance our share of the rent. Whenever we finished working, usually around midnight, there would inevitably be a party starting somewhere.
We really had a good time in Provincetown—like that day when the TV in the house we were renting started fucking up, and Bruce decided to go steal the antenna from the roof of the house next door. Of course, the neighbor in question was watching his own TV at the time, and seeing that it was suddenly going out of whack, the guy came out to take a look and instantly caught Bruce. He called the cops.
I think they were more bemused by this bunch of oddballs than anything else.
I remember one Saturday night, around five in the morning, they were throwing everybody out after a particularly noisy party. One cop pointed to Bruce, saying to his partner, “Look at this one, I bet he doesn’t even know what day it is!”
“Yes, I do,” Bruce snapped back. “It’s Tuesday!” He was stoned out of his skull.
I had a summer fling with Nan, who took pictures of everyone on the beach every day. I think she actually preferred hanging out with the girls, and Provincetown had no shortage of ultra-cool ones like Caroline, Cookie and her girlfriend Sharon, and many others.
I totally loved listening to all the old records Bruce had brought with us to Provincetown. A whole stack of old rock ’n’ roll 45s that I hadn’t heard before: Gene Vincent’s “Woman Love” and “The Swag” by Link Wray, “Cherokee Dance” by Bob Landers with Willie Joe & His Unitar and “Lonesome Train” by the Johnny Burnette Trio. “Tequila” by the Champs, the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie,” “Wooly Bully” by Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs, but especially “I Put A Spell On You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and “Sleep Walk” by Santo & Johnny, which I played nonstop. Bruce also turned me on to old country music like Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette. Bruce had inherited from his two older brothers a gold mine of rare singles, such as “Rainbow ’65 Part 1 & 2” by Gene Chandler on Constellation and other marvels. This was becoming my passion. From the Coasters to the Shangri-Las, I must have listened to those old American records thousands of times without getting tired of them. Songs like “I Just Want to Make Love to You” by Muddy Waters, “Temperature” by Little Walter, “I’m Shakin’” by Little Willie John and “Tornado” and “Susie Q” by Dale Hawkins. Rhythm and Blues, Rockabilly, Surf. … Dick Dale, the Ventures, the Trashmen. … Soul stuff like “Try Me” by James Brown. Wow! And the girl groups: the Ronettes, the Chiffons, all the old stuff from the fifties and early sixties. And listening to this incredible music on warm summer nights, on the porch of that old, very typically American house with its little hanging lights and Bruce’s old Ford Impala convertible parked out front only accentuated the effect. Where better to appreciate Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues,” “I’m Gonna Be a Wheel” by Fats Domino, or “Don’t You Just Know It” by Huey Smith & the Clowns. …
Speaking of clowns, the New York Dolls, a new band that was starting to make a name for themselves, was coming to play in Boston. Like Aerosmith, they were very inspired by the Stones but in a “Glam” way—dressed more or less in drag, makeup, hair teased to the max. They played retro-type rock, actually doing a few old covers, like the Cadets’ “Stranded in the Jungle” and the Shangri-Las’ “Give Him a Great Big Kiss,” with it’s famous intro: “When I say I’m in love, you best believe I’m in love, L-U-V.”
On stage, they had the reputation of really kicking ass. They were the hippest thing at the moment, so we went to see them, and it was completely worth it. It was definitely one of the best shows I’d ever been to.
Afterward, we were approached by Frenchie, a New York Dolls roadie, who was getting kids at the venue to come to a party at the band’s hotel. That’s where we met Johnny Thunders, the guitarist. We spent a few hours with Johnny shooting dice in the hotel corridor, except we were using those oversized pink foam dice, like people hang from their cars’ rearview mirrors.
Johnny and his girlfriend Sable Starr were really funny. Completely in their own trip, they had a contagious “I don’t give a fuck” attitude. Johnny, an Italian from Queens, instantly got along with Bruce. They immediately launched into a hilarious conversation about spaghetti and the “real” Italian tomato sauce. It was a scene worthy of a Scorsese mafia movie: “No, you have to let it simmer for at least three hours …” and “If your tomatoes aren’t ripe enough, you’re wasting your time.”
It was really funny to listen to this degenerate-looking “rock star,” dressed all in black leather, swapping spaghetti recipes with Bruce. They went on like this for the whole dice game, and in the end, since the New York Dolls were coming back in two weeks to play the Boston Armory—a huge place—Johnny got our phone number with the promise that he’d come try Bruce’s “real” Italian tomato sauce.
Still, we were pretty damned surprised when he actually called us two weeks later to invite himself and Sable Starr over for the promised Italian dinner. But we were even more astonished when they showed up, he in black leather and platform boots and she in a silver mini-dress—dropped off by a chauffeur and a limousine. They loved Bruce’s tomato sauce!
Now that Johnny and his muse had eaten dinner at our place, we thought of them as friends, and it cracked us up to see all those autograph-seeking fans getting told to fuck off, while we were instantly treated like family. It only goes to show how a good tomato sauce can change everything.
After the concert, Johnny invited us back to his hotel to smoke, and we left the theater with the band, which meant getting shoved into a limo swarmed by screaming fans. What was really funny was that their hotel was literally right across the street; the limo just had to make a U-turn to drop them off on the other side. Meanwhile, the same fans had already crossed the street to wait.
During this very short limo trip, I heard an unhappy Jerry Nolan, the drummer, grumble to the bassist, Arthur Kane, “That was a very good version of ‘Jet Boy’ you were playing. Too bad the rest of us were playing ‘Personality Crisis.’”
Johnny gave me his phone number in New York, telling me to ring him up if I was ever in town. Way cool.
By now, Bruce was working as a hotel bellboy, but as I had nothing to do, I decided to call Johnny to say hi. “Hey, Flipper! Why don’t you come over?” he said.
I didn’t hesitate for a second. Bruce decided to come along. We hitchhiked from Boston to New York, which took seven hours, and when we got there, Johnny opened the door, looking a bit surprised, and said “Flipper, Bruce, what took you guys so long?”
He’d thought we were in New York when I called, and had no idea we were going to hitchhike all the way from Boston. Not wanting to send us right back, Johnny and Sable invited us to stay with them for a few days.
There were guitars and rock-star clothes everywhere, empty champagne bottles in piles of silk scarves and satin shirts, a pink fur coat thrown over a Fender amp, a luxurious rock ’n’ roll mess. What a dream. A real rock star, who liked real tomato sauce and treated us like real friends. It was an honor. Unfortunately, he also liked real heroin. As soon as we got there, he offered us a line, which we snorted through a twenty-dollar bill.
Lying on the floor, I felt like I was melting into the carpet, or that I was made of sand and slowly being blown away by the wind until I’d completely vanished. Before vanishing, I went to puke in the toilet.
The next day, Johnny took us to a New York Dolls rehearsal. That was so exciting! We were their only audience, sitting on a sofa, rolling joints. Rehearsal was held in a big white room with white neon lights … somewhere. I have no idea where. I hardly knew Manhattan at the time and had no sense of where anything was in the city. It could have been Midtown on the West Side, but I’m not positive. Anyway, I remember they sounded incredible. They would stop in the middle of songs, talk a bit, crack a few jokes, light a few joints, play a few more verses. I’d never seen anything so cool in my life. The volume was so fucking loud, it made the whole room shake. I was in awe.
As they were wrapping up, I had the chance to talk some more with the o
ther band members. They remembered me from Boston. David Johansen greeted me with a loud “Hey, Frenchie!” followed by a loud whiskey-throat laugh and an exaggerated wink. Syl was especially cool and funny and always seemed to be dancing in place as he talked. He spoke French very well, too—much to my surprise.
Jerry just kind of snubbed me, at first. It would take some time before I could gain his trust and friendship. Arthur was really nice, though quiet. He would mumble little jokes every now and then, looking bemused, in his pink tutu and white platform boots.
They always dressed insanely onstage. Except those weren’t “stage clothes”—they dressed weird all the time. These guys were for real and as rock ’n’ roll as anyone could want. Most of all, they struck me as “street”—“New York Street”—and not pretentious at all, even though they were way ahead of everyone else at the time.
After the rehearsal, we all went to eat at some diner somewhere. I think it was the Empire Diner, all in shiny chrome. I thought I had died and gone to Heaven.
After four days and four nights of drugs and rock ’n’ roll in New York, we went back to Boston, dazzled. Sable Starr paid for our train tickets.
Winter in Boston was bitterly cold and Bruce was volunteering with a group of good Samaritans, bringing food to lonely old men and women who were having a hard time getting to the store because of the snow. That’s how he met Conny, a ninety-four-year-old man with no family left, who asked Bruce to bring some pot the next time he stopped by!
“The other young fellow who came to see me before would bring me a few joints for my rheumatism,” he told Bruce. Intrigued, I went to see Conny too. Conny Old Man, as we called him, was born in Boston in 1879 and had spent his entire life there. “There were only horses here when I was a young man,” he told us sucking on the joint like a pro. Conny Old Man had only one tooth left in his mouth and one joy left in his life: smoking pot while recounting his faraway memories to whoever would listen. And, of course, we were more than glad to be of service.