Visions of Cody

by Jack Kerouac

  JACK. Talk about what?

  CODY. Make as if he owned her!

  JACK. Would that make the girls hot?

  CODY. No!—because it was very…pedantic and, ah, very, ah, speculative but I was—you know, I’d just stay there and talk about…well now for example, we know that I—

  JACK. You had no cunt yourself?

  CODY. Oh yeah, I usually always did have a cunt, always have, yeah, in fact, always have, always have had…yeah…but, ah, those weren’t the things I was meaning to talk about, but I do recall at that time that was the end of it, I finally got so sick of it, not that I was doing it artificially or nothing, you know, in fact I was completely hungup on it, but—well I’ll tell you exactly, you know what ended me? from that whole period? From the time that I was fifteen till I was eighteen, or, nineteen even, well, and I was hung in there completely, and I mean some real crazy way, why, ah, and I mean things to be proud of too, in fact things that I see guys now hungup on that—which I have told you about sometime, a guy that’s, see, who’s, but at any rate, I won’t now, but he’s a brakeman that lost his job after two, three days because he—he used to stand up on top of the boxcar, but that’s not the reason he had an accident, but that’s not the point either…what happened is, that, ah, one day I was—and I had just got out of jail, I’d been in jail eleven months and ten days, and ah, Justin still loved me enough so that he got me a job, a good job recapping tires, a trade that I had learned earlier, three years earlier under his auspices, and, workin at night and goin to school daytime and so on, so I had a good job, and a…great cunt, and I had everything all lined up, I was living…real fine, in fact, I was living real fine, see, and so I was the boss of the joint after five o’clock because everyone went home and I was alone so that every night the boys would come down with their girls and we’d have a big beer bust and a ball, and Benzedrine too, but any rate, so ah, one day about five o’clock just when the place was closing, they have tire changes, you know, four or five of ’em, three or four of ’em changing tires all the time, course I didn’t do that, I let them cap the tires themselves, which is different, but at any rate, this blondheaded kid there, he was bendin over changin tires, and finally he got up, and I happened to be standin there watchin him for a second or somethin, and he said, “Say,” he said, “isn’t your name, ah, Cody Pomer—” I said “Yes.” He said “Well my name is Val Hayes, and ah, and ah, Justin Mannerly, I think we have mutual friends, Justin Mannerly.” I said “OH! Val Hayes!! Yeah I heard about you, yeah, you’ve got such a great brain and everything” and he said “Well,” and all that, and he came on very…cool; at any rate but I popped right on him right away and hung to him, so much so in fact that he came back—

  JACK. You what to him?

  CODY. Hung to him, you know, so, so much so that he came back after he went home to eat supper—but Val has always been, as he still is now, only of course more so, so that we never see him or hear from him, he’s always been very “Well now I, I’m sorry but I’ve got to go do this, and go do that, and so I can’t,”—but, ah, that night, that first night of meeting he said, ah “Well I do have to go home and eat supper, however I’ll come back around seven, seven thirty or eight, see I’ll g—and we’ll talk,” I said “Fine,” so he went and he came back, and, so I closed up shop, and we went over and ate, to eat supper—usually I ate my lunch or something but I closed up the joint and we went over to a cafe and sat there and talked and everything, and ah, so, that very first night if I’m not mistaken or very close to the first time I ever met him why, ah, I was startin to come on oneway or another and like I said “Well Val, course I think the most important men in the world, the most important thing in the world of course and the thing that really counts of course is philosophy,” and he said: “Oh, why no, it’s, ah, to me I should think that the…poet is much more important than the philosopher.” I said “What?” and I was so stupefied and astounded and nullified and disturbed that anyone could honestly believe that, that I, well I—you know, I really was, ah, upset about it, and ah, went into it—but of course by this time I had rehashed all my thoughts completely and extended the limits of my thoughts in every direction so much so that everything as I was telling you ab—ah, last night when I was telling you about the skeletonized form? and about…the remembrance, see? like if you tell mey—ah, or have gone through a thing completely in your own mind yourself, ah, and so that you’ve got it all formulated, and so that sometime a guy’ll say “Hey, when’s the first time you met Val?” well you say “Oh well I was walking down the street and that’s how it happened,” well, and so you say it three or four times, so pretty soon, especially if it’s a thought, not a happening, but a thought, so if you have to go through a thought again and again pretty soon it becomes an abstraction of the thought and you still follow the form and structure of it but you just say “Well so this happened and that happened,” and it becomes just a dry, drab nothing, you see? It’s not like it was at first. So at any rate, ah, I had that disadvantage you see, ’cause I was right at the tail end of my whole…school of all that, and the whole system that I was concerned about and everything that was my-self and so completely wrapped up in-to that that I really had nothing with which to answer him because everything I said—course I could think of a thousand things and come up with ’em all the time but, but it was just…statements, period, this and that you see, without the—without all the things that are between that build it up into a solid building, like you can’t make it out of just bricks, but, so, at any rate, after Val said that and, ah, what, by golly after, ah, three four days and also—probably, I don’t really want—care to speculate to say why, that the reason came about, but suddenly I realized that the philosopher was not—that the poet was more important than the philosopher, you see—

  JACK. Course!

  CODY.—and ah—well of course now! (and laughs)—that I understood immediately and completely, but you see, actually what it means then that I must have lived in a very—well I did of course live in a very strange, frantic world th—I, ah, I’d go sit in the library and get all hungup on those things, just completely involved trying to find what it was, or whatever it happened to be, but at any rate that was…my whole life and everything, ah, so much so that I developed a great smugness and complacency and a, ah—‘course I was never a snob or anything of that nature, really, except perhaps the way that I happened, or might be, not that it concerns me at all but I’m just saying that—that’s how I met Val…and that summer was real great because, about three or four days later why I happened to remem—see I don’t remember now of course absolutely this or that happening or this or that happening, but I do remember is…all—days that we had together, and other nights, and—but I would just…briefly without going into a lot of things like, ah, like ah, well like one morning, see, he would do things that he wouldn’t ordinarily do, now, I see he wouldn’t, you see, so that I got him up at five A.M., ah, got this girl for him, who was my girl you see, but of course she was so great and so gone and everything, besides at that time I’d never known what such a thing ima—I couldn’t possible imagine such a thing as jealousy, or anything, couldn’t possibly be concerned with the fact that, ah, anything of that na—like I say, but, so, therefore naturally I was always making a girl and turning ’em over to my other boyfriends, I did that with several girls but all this is all nothing but what, wa, what a lot of other fellows have also done that doesn’t mean anything, but what I’m saying is, so, for those reasons and everything why, I said, “Come on Val, I’ve got this great girl,” and which was my…girl, and at the same time I’ll pick up on somethin else that I ran into the other day, a fifteen-year-old girl, so ah, he said “Fine” so I said “Alright I’ll come around your house about five o’clock in the morning,” this girl has to get out early ’cause for…some reason or other so I picked her up, went to his house, and at that time I’d—rent trucks from Hertz system, it only cost two bucks a day, see, and I’d disconnect the spee
dometer, that’s why—

  JACK. From who?

  CODY. Hertz…system, drive yourself system, trucks, and, ah, Hertz, yeah, yeah, H-e-r-t-e-s, ah, z, and, ah, so I’d get a panel truck, panel, you know enclosed?…small…drive…pickup, only it’s not a pickup it’s a panel, but I put a mattress in the back, see, Kriloff’s mattress, see, I’d take off the, ah, and throw blankets in there, see, so then I’d pick up the people and we’d take off to the mountains, where I had a cabin up there who was a…friend of, well the cabin belonged to a friend of Jim Evans, but, at any rate, so, we—

  JACK. I knew Jim Evans

  CODY. Yeah I know that you do know…him, that’s why I mentioned it, but, ah, so we went up there, and we had our kicks all day man, and I mean my…kicks then were driving kicks, see my—here’s, here’re what I’d do, I’d go pick up two or three or whatever I had, a couple or, one, or one person or no persons, and drive ’em up to the cabin, then I’d…take right off and go back to town, pick up some more, by that time somebody else had to go home from the cabin so I’d take them home, that’s what I’d do, see, thirty-five miles, just back and forth, back and forth, gettin my gun off that way, see?—at the same time bangin and everything (socking palms) and having my kicks, but, so I did that that day of course, see, and finally it got so involved that, that Val had to go home by himself, so I stayed there for another reason and, and so ah, he didn’t get back till after midnight, see, and we spent the night up there just he and I layin there talkin and everything, and then at any rate, ah, it finally became so that, ah, I would meet him, ah, every…night around suppertime, er, no, I would meet him whenever he was free, like say Saturday noon or something, and we’d go to the…bar, directly across the street, fifty yards, ah, from his house, we would sit there and drink beer—you know that little bar, the Marion Inn—

  JACK. Marion Street

  CODY. Yeah Marion, that’s right, the little bar up there at Park, Seventeenth and Marion, Park Avenue also, it’s a three-way intersection

  JACK. I know that bar

  CODY. Yeah, and, so we sat—well that bar also has a lot of other happenings and meanings to me which I won’t go into now, I mean ’cause they’re more a—ah, different type of thing, but at any rate—

  JACK. I got unconnectedly drunk in there one time (a lie)

  CODY. Yeah. Well I did too—I got so drunk in there that…Val would have to go home and I’d lay in the grass, beside the bar there, and I couldn’t get up or anything see, and he said “Well, I’m sorry to leave you Cody but I’ve got to go home and eat supper and,” so on, and he’d go on about his business see

  JACK. You’d lay in the grass real drunk

  CODY.—I’d—so drunk I couldn’t stand up man, I was a drunkard boy! I’m telling you I was—all the time I was drunk! man I was never—’cause that’s all I had, see? and ah, so ah, but at any rate, that’s what I’d do, Benzedrine ’n’ everything, but what I’m saying, I can recall our conversations now, more, like he’d say “Well now take for example if you would, ah, well what for instance, say, if we didn’t have an army? what would happen if we didn’t have an army, what if we didn’t have any kind of defense? I say let’s not have any and so on and so forth, nothing could happen, so we get taken over, so that doesn’t matter—” and all that kind of stuff, see, at that time he was hungup because he thought the Army had almost ruined him, see, and things like that, see—

  JACK. Yeah…he did…

  CODY. And other things, ah—er there were a lot of other things that bothered him…but at any rate gradually it dwindled off, toward the end of the summer, as he, as he began to approach going back to school I bet, so—you know—so I said “Well I’ll see you,” and everything and “I’ll write to you and everything;” so we did write some letters, you remember?

  JACK. Oh I read them

  CODY. Yeah, that’s right. And, ah, so then I told him come out, then you know from then on—

  JACK. The first letter I read that you wrote—

  CODY. Ah?

  JACK.—was written from, ah, Ed Wehle’s ranch…

  CODY. Oh yes…yeah…it wasn’t—and already at that time, I had written the first word of this book w—which I’ve got right here in the prologue, ah, at, er, I said to myself “Well, at last,” after Val wrote to me or something, I said to myself “At last I’m going to begin my novel,”—been thinkin about it for a year or two, not thinking about it at all completely, I just knew I’d be doing it, never occurred to me I couldn’t write. So I sat down, I said, ah, “Cody Pomeray was born on February eighth, ah, ‘twenty-six, ah, well?…” couldn’t get past that—and from that day until four years later I never wrote another word, ’cause I realized I couldn’t—it never occurred tome the problems of the writer, or problems of anything, I just—it never, it was completely blind, I’d have never imagined, I’d never—can’t believe that I was so naive, not naive in the sense of naiveté but stu—so dumb as to believe that it was possible to sit down and just write. But at any rate…ah…Val…I remember that particular letter, I think, ah, I’d, ah—already I had…disintegrated then, I was—there was a whole form of me that was entirely different, from that point on I just went, ah, different, in different directions…much stuff…had gone before, yet the whole thing to be understood, has to be taken as a whole, I guess, like everything does—

  JACK. On account of Val

  CODY. No, not on account of Val, no, no, I’m just saying in general, I, ah, I changed, or course…but, there were, there were…great number of things—

  JACK. Want me to tell you somethin about Val?

  CODY. Yeah

  JACK. We was in…Boston, Massachusetts—

  CODY. Yeah?

  JACK.—and we went, and we got a, hotel room with a…fifty night, fifty cents a night flophouse in back of, ah, Old Howard Burlesk theater?

  CODY. Yeah…which is world famous…yeah

  JACK.—in back of Scollay Square, see…yeah

  CODY.—which I don’t know anything about except that—

  JACK. I remember the name of the flophouse, in my notebooks, but I don’t have it now (CODY, Hmm, yeah, yeah) So we paid fifty cents each, and there was a partition separating us from another room, and all sorts of stuff, and it RAINED!! like a sonofabitch that night, it rained and rained and rained and I woke up in the middle of the night saying to myself “What the fuck are we doing—what am I doing, in the first place, back here in Boston, Massachusetts,” (CODY, Hmm!) And then, Val…he was asleep and had his hand thrown over my cock (CODY, Hm hm)…and I was dreaming of cunts…(CODY, Hm hm)…and I woke up…with a hard-on (CODY, Hm hm)…and I, and I realized what was going on so I went—I coughed “Brrp bllp opoop heh!” see? then I got up and went to the toilet and pissed, my hard-on went down when I pissed, you see (Cody goes Hm hm all the way through)…came back to bed…in the morning when we woke up, see we didn’t do anything but sleep, there was a picture of a young…sort of boy, eight years old, and we said, we speculated, “Wal the fucking thing was probably painted by somebody in Alaska, in 1910, and taken to Boston, in 1925, and now…1945, or 1948, here we are looking at the painting, in back of the Howard…Burlesk…” you know…

  CODY. (after silence)…Do you feel through your shoes the machine? I’m also high, see? it took forty-five minutes after twelve o’clock, fifteen minutes after twelve thirty—

  JACK. Wow, are you high now?

  CODY. Yeah, I feel it

  JACK. We got another big…long…sonofabitch to go!

  CODY. Yeah…yeah…well not really

  JACK. W-whole big reel—ass!

  CODY. Yeah but that’s nothing compared to all the things we can talk about, or say

  JACK. Oh I’ll—that can be solved easily

  CODY. How?

  JACK. Wal, by stopping it now (REEL ENDS)

  (MACHINE BEGINS)

  CODY. (from a month-old tape) God-damn! (click) (present reel begins)

  JACK. (drunk, lying on the floor wi
th mike in ear)…and I want you to tell me about this here…parking lot in L.A. on…Main Street…that has a only waist high and painted-up-all-green…that I dug, you see—naturally…. But I wanta know why you made such a big situation about it being waist high

  CODY. Man that’s almost impossible to answer, it’s one of those things

  JACK. But it was a big thing about it because you came and you peeked over it…what did it used to be?

  CODY. That’s true, that’s one thing—Oh it used to be the very—

  JACK. That was the used-to-be—it usen’t to be what it is now!

  CODY. Wal, I dunno, it’s probably pretty much the same

  JACK. Well, the name of it

  CODY. System Auto Parks, no it used to be “System” and now (tape blur)…(as Jack keeps saying That’s right) Walt’s…yeah, he’s taken over, yeah, Five eighty South Main. Ah…when I hitch-hiked to California, ah, fourth, third or fourth time, no really actually I guess it was the second time, at any rate, my sister who still thought of me as a little boy of course and very surprised that I stayed out all night and fucked around, but any rate, her, ah, boyfriend told me why didn’t I get a job in a parking lot ah, like I. Magnin’s or someplace like that, which he had once done years before, so I said “Alright,” and so introduced me to a fellow down at System Auto Parks and I…went down to learn how to park cars—

  JACK. What was HE like?

  CODY. He was a big fella, his name is, ah, gee I can’t remember his name, but any rate he’s, he was a big fella, he was quiet, his name is Vince I guess something like that, but he’s, ah, quiet, but he’s, he’s pretty—an average, ah, L.A. type, it’s hard to describe, I mean they know what’s going on, the kinda wise guy type but they’re really very nice, I mean they’re not, ah, hungup on a lot of, you know, viciousness in their makeup or anything, but he’s a little bit plump, er, nice fella, very considerate type of guy, but, at the same time he knows what’s going on all the time, see?