Mark begin to undress with fluid movements, hip-rolls, squirm out of his turtle-neck sweater revealing his beautiful white torso in a mocking belly dance. Johnny deadpan, face frozen, breath quick, lips dry, remove his clothes and drop them on the floor. Mark lets his shorts fall on one foot. He kick like a chorus-girl, sending the shorts across the room. Now he stand naked, his cock stiff, straining up and out. He run slow eyes over Johnny’s body. He smile and lick his lips.
Mark drop on one knee, pulling Johnny across his back by one arm. He stand up and throw him six feet onto the bed. Johnny land on his back and bounce. Mark jump up and grab Johnny’s ankles, throw his legs over his head. Mark’s lips are drawn back in a tight snarl. “All right, Johnny boy.” He contracts his body, slow and steady as an oiled machine, push his cock up Johnny’s ass. Johnny give a great sigh, squirming in ecstasy. Mark hitches his hands behind Johnny’s shoulders, pulling him down onto his cock which is buried to the hilt in Johnny’s ass. Great whistles through his teeth. Johnny screams like a bird. Mark is rubbing his face against Johnny’s, snarl gone, face innocent and boyish as his whole liquid being spurt into Johnny’s quivering body.
A train roar through him whistle blowing…boat whistle, foghorn, sky rocket burst over oily lagoons… penny arcade open into a maze of dirty pictures…ceremonial cannon boom in the harbor…a scream shoots down a white hospital corridor… out along a wide dusty street between palm trees, whistles out across the desert like a bullet (vulture wings husk in the dry air), a thousand boys come at once in outhouses, bleak public school toilets, attics, basements, treehouses, Ferris wheels, deserted houses, limestone caves, rowboats, garages, barns, rubbly windy city outskirts behind mud walls (smell of dried excrement)…
Brion Gysin
from Cut-ups: A Project for Disastrous Success
[The queer polymath Brion Gysin was a friend of Paul Bowles in Tangier in the mid-1950s and had a restaurant there called the Thousand and One Nights, popular with the expatriate crowd. Gysin lost the business days after discovering, inside a ventilator, a hideous charm of seeds, menstrual blood, pubic hair, and other tokens, wrapped in a message to the Jinn of the Hearth: “May Massa Brahim [Brion] leave this house as the smoke leave this fire, never to return.” His path had crossed Burroughs’s in Tangier, but the men did not take to each other. They met again in Paris in 1958 and soon became close platonic friends and collaborators, sharing an interest in magic, mind control, and gadgetry. Both lived in Madame Rachou’s “Beat Hotel” on the rue Git le Coeur. With Gysin, Burroughs pioneered the Cut-Up, a technique for producing randomized but eerily sensible texts.—ed.]
I barely made it to London, where I sold my pictures of the Sahara and then crossed to Paris, which I have lived in off and on for the last thirty years. Ran into grey-green Burroughs in the Place St Michel. “Wanna score?” For the first time in all the years I had known him, I really scored with him.
Hamri and I had first met him in the hired gallery of the Rembrandt Hotel in Tangier in 1954 when he wheeled into our exhibition, arms and legs flailing, talking a mile a minute. We found he looked very Occidental, more Private Eye than Inspector Lee: he trailed long vines of Bannisteria Caapi [yage] from the Upper Amazon after him and old Mexican bullfight posters fluttered out from under his long trench coat instead of a shirt. An odd blue light often flashed around under the brim of his hat. Hamri and I decided, rather smugly, that we could not afford to know him because he was too Spanish. Obviously he would soon pick up with Manolo, Pepe, Kiki…whereas; “Henrique!” “Joselito!” Burroughs whinnied—sort of South American boy-cries, for all we knew.
I cannot say I saw Burroughs clear during the restaurant days that followed. Caught a glimpse of him glimmering rapidly along through the shadows from one farmacia to the next, hugging a bottle of paregoric. I close my eyes and see him in winter, cold silver blue, rain dripping from the points of his hat and his nose. Willie the Rat scuttles over the purple sheen of wet pavements, sniffing. Burroughs slices through the crowd in the Socco Chico, his raincoat glinting like the underbelly of a shark. He dashes at Kiki with a raised knife of rain-glitter running off his chop-finger hand. Burroughs lives chez Tony Dutch.72 He pokes a long, quivering nose out of calle Cristianos, picking up on: Is Kiki around? He plucks Kiki out of the Mar Chica [bar] with his glittering eye. When you squint up your eyes at him, he turns into Coleridge, De Quincy, Poe, Baudelaire and Gide… Now, wherefore stoppest thou me?
Hamri and me we waggle our beards—everything just like we always say. Meester Weeli-yam. ( Weeli, weeli! What Arab women cry in alarm. Hamri’s joke.) Meester Weeli-yam lives in a room Hamri and I know well, and we can imagine him down there, or so we thought, but we never could, really, because we never went to see him in all the years and really could never have imagined the celestial number of empty Eukudol boxes he had stacked up; we never knew. We never heard Kiki say: “Quedase con su medicina, Meester William,” and shut the door to go away and be killed by just such another knife. But that was in another country and the boy is dead.73
So, when Meester Weeli-yam show in St Michel, I pause; hearing Paul Bowles: “I really don’t know; they’re all so taken up with madness and drugs. I don’t get it. But you’d like Burroughs if only you’d get to know him.” We make a meet. He lives in “Heart’sease Street,” rue Git le Coeur, where I lived 1938–39. But “Must hurry to my doctor—yes, my analyst; recommended by a rich junky friend with whom I goofed on my apomorphine cure with Dr Dent, unfortunately.”74 Later, I make it up to room #15. Where are the alumni of room #15 today?
John Giorno
“I Met Jack Kerouac in 1958 for One Glorious oment…”75
I met Jack Kerouac on May 31, 1958, Saturday night at about nine at a party in New York. It was being struck by lightning, and totally great.
I was 21 years old, just finishing college at Columbia. Classes had ended and graduation was in three days. Alice Dignan, my girl friend and I were drunk, as usual, on vodka martinis. We hated parties, but Alice had heard from Carl Andre that a cool party was going to happen at 108th and West End Avenue. I was gay and the local famous poet; young, beautiful, and it got me what I wanted and all I wanted to do was sex and ready for anything; rich enough, my family gave me an allowance and paid my credit cards. Alice and I were a famous couple, small consolation for our suffering, and our egos were all that we had. We were obnoxious.
We arrived as dysfunctional royalty. Alice was wearing a black cocktail dress, and I, a rumpled white linen suit. We walked through the hot crowded party with the arrogant disdain of cats, scanning everything, but not looking at anything, nothing was worthy. We believed that being completely outrageous, burned away ignorance, that being completely over the top, destroyed delusion and dualist concepts. Crazy wisdom was absolute liberation.
We walked through several rooms of the large West End apartment, where people stood holding drinks, smoking and talking. We nodded occasionally, and headed toward the kitchen where the bar was. We ran into someone we knew, and were relieved there was someone to talk to. We moved on, and stood dumbly in a dim crowded hallway, drinking red wine and smoking Camels.
“There’s Allen Ginsberg,” said Alice. I didn’t understand. “John, darling, there is Allen Ginsberg… The one you really like, who wrote Howl!”
“Where?” I said, looking around and not seeing. Allen Ginsberg was standing behind me with his shoulder poking into my back, talking to someone. I was stunned. My hero poet, who existed only in myth, was touching me. I had read Howl in 1956, two years before; and it had completely changed my life. I was speechless.
“Hello, Allen,” said Alice, extending her hand grandly. He bowed and kissed it, like a gentleman. “My name is Alice Dignan…and this is John Giorno.” She was obviously deferring to me, to attract Allen. “He’s a poet.”
Allen got interested. “You’re a poet? Who are your teachers?”
“I had them all. And they weren’t altogether that good. They were wonderful, but
a big waste of time or a small waste of time.”
“How can you say that!” said Allen disapprovingly.
This was not what Allen wanted to hear. I was surprised at his being so straight. But I wanted him to like me and I would have done anything. “They are great!” I said enthusiastically. “And I’ve had them all. Mark Van Doren, Lionel Trilling, Moses Hadas, Eric Bentley, and Alan Watts. They are all great. They changed my life.” I was shameless. I was really hustling him. And I said boldly, “I am editor of the Columbia Review. Or I was.” I laughed gently. “Impermanence.”
“Wow!… You are!” said Allen, almost predictably impressed. I was quickly getting to know him.
We talked about Mark Van Doren, who I really liked, and Allen knew. “But that’s all finished. I’m at the moment of being liberated. Just now, this coming Tuesday, I graduate Columbia College. I’ve always been a student, going endlessly to classes. Now, I’m a free man, finally, a freeman.” Allen seemed charmed.
Someone came up and asked Allen something, and distracted him.
“You’re in luck,” Alice whispered. I didn’t understand. “He likes boys. You are in luck, John, darling!” I was offended and hurt, as I was secretly gay, nobody talked about it, and it was mean of her to say that.
Allen turned his attention back to me, and said, “What are your plans?”
“I’m a poet. I just want to write. I’m just going to work on poems.”
Someone else interrupted. Thin Peter Orlovsky bounced up and down. Then I realized standing with us was Gregory Corso; and Jack Kerouac was standing behind me, leaning his head over my shoulder, listening to us.
I was stunned speechless. Jack Kerouac, my poet god, was right here. I had read On the Road, The Subterraneans, and Dharma Bums. I really dug him. I got dizzy, a blissful rush in my head and heart palpitations. For an instant, I was in a god world; dumb struck.
After a while, I managed to say something to Allen, “What year were you here at Columbia?”
“1948,” said Allen, being exact.
“This is ’58.”
“And Jack was 1944… At our first meeting Jack offered me a beer over breakfast, and when I said, ‘No, no. Discretion is the better part of valor,’ Jack barked back, ’Awe, where’s my food!’ ”
Everyone laughed a little awkwardly. Jack Kerouac smiled warmly at Allen. Jack was so beautiful. He was wearing a dark blue button short-sleeve shirt, and had an amazingly handsome face, magnetizing and attracting.
“Oh, you went to school here?” I said daringly, leaning my shoulder toward Jack. I had to say something to him, I loved him. “I just finished, now. I’m being released from the suffering of school.”
Jack Kerouac leaned forward with his thumb stuck in his belt and his hand touched me, and he said, “You’re lucky.”
I was thrilled, I couldn’t believe he said those words, a rush of joy. Then, Jack leaned forward again, and said something else. It was very noisy and I couldn’t hear him. How could I not hear what Jack Kerouac said to me. A moment of panic. His lips touched my ear and I could ear sound, but I couldn’t understand the words. For an instant, we looked into each other’s eyes, our hearts hooked together through our eyes, bliss and clarity, beyond concepts.
I asked him something stupid, just to continue being connected with him. The party was very noisy and he couldn’t hear me. He put his ear touching my lips. And as we were drunk and staggering, our cheeks brushed and bumped against each other. I got an electric shock. We could have kissed; but there were so many people.
I said something stupid and he smiled, and said something. He was so beautiful. I was so excited. I still couldn’t quite hear what he was saying, but I was in love with the smell of his body, his heat and compassion radiating from his heart.
“Why are we here?” said Jack.
“I don’t know.” Looking in his eyes, I felt dumb and frightened. It was the right answer. The defeat of ignorance, that included the possibility of the mind resting in primordial purity, beyond answers, miraculously.
Gregory Corso said something loudly. He handed a joint to Jack, who took a puff, and passed it to me. I inhaled long and deep, held it in my lungs, and passed the joint back to Jack. I was ecstatic, smoking marijuana with Jack Kerouac. In 1958, Jack was a virtual god, plus he looked like Marlon Brando on the Waterfront as Julius Caesar. It was a very hot night. I was hyperventilating, and sweat poured from me in sheets.
Allen Ginsberg was very shrewdly watching us, taking it all in, and disapproving. He stepped forward, pushed between Jack and me, and moved deliberately to cut us off. He broke it up. “Oh! You two know each other!” said Allen, slightly peeved. He separated Jack and me, distracted Jack’s attention, and broke the connection.
“Oh no, what is he doing?” I froze and my heart sank.
“Let’s go!” Allen led Jack away. They all walked out, moved on, departed, and it was over. They vanished. I was in bewilderness. Happy beyond belief, at such an amazing thing.
“John, darling. Do you feel empty, now that they’re gone,” said Alice, puffing a cigarette.
“I feel totally great! I felt totally exhilarated! I can’t believe that just happened!” It struck me as a good omen, a very auspicious sign, meeting these guys, at the moment of the beginning of the rest of my life. I had no idea what I was going to do, but write, and work with poems and poetry, and be a poet.
Addendum: Little did I know that Allen Ginsberg breaking up Jack Kerouac and me was a sign of things to come. The first of many times that Allen would be an obstacle to me. An endlessly recurring pattern, that went on for forty years, until Allen died, and afterwards. Allen was a good friend on the surface, and a secretly obstructing force; paranoid, but true. Among the many reasons and complicated karma were that Allen was jealous of anyone close to William Burroughs and I lived with William for three decades in the Bunker at 222 Bowery in New York and in Lawrence, Kansas, and toured performing with him endlessly.
I ran into Jack Kerouac occasionally during his brief visits to New York over the next ten years, until he died in 1969. He became a nice, overweight, drunk guy. Nothing ever happened again, because it was too much trouble to make it happen. I had gone on to Andy Warhol and the 1960s, and the golden age of promiscuity.
John Wieners
A Poem for Cocksuckers
[The Boston poet John Wieners was a wunderkind whose first book, The Hotel Wentley Poems (1958), was written in six days of heartache while he lived in a crummy residential hotel of the same name in San Francisco. Out of the closet from the age of sixteen, Wieners spent time in mental hospitals, that crucible of postwar writers. He was a friend of Ginsberg, Michael McClure, and other Beat poets, and had worked with the Poet’s Theatre at Harvard, where he impressed Frank O’Hara—in part by wearing eye shadow in public—and studied with Charles Olson at Black Mountain College. The Wentley poems made Wieners famous in the small way of American poetry. “The whole book is the work of a naked flower,” wrote Ginsberg, “a tragic clown, doomed sensibility, absolutely REAL, no more self pity.” 76—ed.]
Well we can go
in the queer bars w/
our long hair reaching
down to the ground and
we can sing our songs
of love like the black mama
on the juke box, after all
what have we got left.
On our right the faeries
giggle in their lacquered
voices & blow
smoke in your eyes let them
it’s a nigger’s world
and we retain strength.
Our gifts do not desert us,
fountains do not dry
up there are rivers running,
there are mountains
swelling for spring to cascade.
It is all here between
the powdered legs &
painted eyes of the fairy
friends who do not fail us
in our hour of
&
nbsp; despair. Take not
away from me the small fires
I burn in the memory of love.
6.20.58
Harold Norse
from Memoirs of a Bastard Angel
[The poet and traveler Harold Norse lived in the “Beat Hotel” in Paris for three years while Burroughs was in residence, and was the first to apply the cut-up method to a novel. He was an early lover of Chester Kallman (W. H. Auden’s companion), friend of Tennessee Williams and James Baldwin. He once declined the honor of taking the gawky adolescent Allen Ginsberg’s virginity. In the 1970s, he wrote straight erotica with Charles Bukowski for Hustler, while writing some of the most memorable protest poetry in the gay liberation movement. Although elderly and infirm, he has spent the last several years working on a massive history of homophobia in literature, from early Christianity to the present.—ed.]
Gaït Frogé threw a party for me, attended mostly by writers and painters, including Corso, his girl friend Jean Campbell (the Campbell soup heiress), Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and my rich boyfriend Tom Donovan (name changed), who supplied the champagne…
Peter Orlovsky, stoned on hashish, sidled over. “Take off your clothes,” he said. I glanced nervously at Allen, who stiffened. “Come on,” urged Peter. “I wanna see you naked. I wanna blow you.” Allen blanched. Friendships have ended for less. “Sorry, Peter, I’m not stoned enough.” “ Get stoned,” he said. Straight friends egged me on, yelling, “Take it off! We wanna watch Peter suck it!” I smoked more hash and guzzled more Pfeiffer-Heidsieck. Peter slipped out of his sandals, dropped his jeans, and stood naked. As I peeled I heard Gait mutter to her lover, Norman Rubington, “Now we know. Short and thick, like the rest of him.” There was a burst of laughter. I reddened. “It’s not short,” I said. “It’s shy.” More laughter. “I’ll be right back,” said Peter, heading for the bathroom. “Don’t go away—I wanna see it grow.” Allen stood up, stripped, and drew applause; after all, he started the Beat myth of public nudity. He planted himself like a sentry before the bathrooom door and crossed his arms on his chest, bristling. His body language spoke loud and clear: “There will be no blow job tonight!” Some men, followed by several women, stripped and soon everyone, except for Corso and Jean Campbell, was dancing nude. Peter emerged and ignored me, for which I was grateful. Allen relaxed. I was relieved.
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