Waterfront Journals

by David Wojnarowicz

  Man in Portland Movie Theater

  OREGON

  When I was little I used to come to this movie house every chance I got … I’d sneak in through the alley … I’d tap on the door real soft until one of the people sitting here got up and opened it up for me. Sometimes I’d see the same movie fifteen times … the fun of it was hanging out in the balcony with popcorn and ice cream and watching all the goings-on around me in the seats. One time I was hanging out for the late show I was about thirteen years old and I had been to bed with a few guys but I never slept with a girl … I had been wanting to for a long time but I was never good on the rap like most of my friends … so this one night I was sitting and watching this monster movie some old Dracula film with British actors and I heard someone coming down the aisleway. It was pretty dark up there but I could see it was a woman. She was big not fat but something like six feet tall slightly heavy with big legs she had a huge bustline and she was wearing shocking pink hot pants … what a vision … every head in the balcony turned. She had these bright red painted lips and she was carrying a little black bag. I watched her enter the line of seats I was in and my heart almost fell out when she sat down a chair away from me … there weren’t too many people in the balcony that night so she could have chosen a number of other places to sit down in order to be alone so I didn’t know what to make of it … my mind was racing … all these fuckin fantasies … I turned back to the screen and kinda let my popcorn drop down to the floor cause it seemed childish to be chewing on popcorn. I was afraid she might see it and get turned off … I didn’t really know what she was thinking but I was hoping for the best. I kept watch out of the corner of my eye for the longest while and finally let my hand kinda drift down onto the seat between us … I let it sit there after a couple of seconds she let hers drift down and slowly covered my hand with hers … my heart was racing! I got really red but I was glad it was dark so she couldn’t see that. We kinda played with each other’s hands and after a few minutes she got up and went back upstairs to the main aisle and disappeared. I wanted to follow her but I was too self-conscious with all those people watching from the other seats … my legs were like rubber … I watched the film for a few more minutes and then the woman came back down the stairs … she was carrying a cola and she came back into my aisle and sat down right next to me … in a few seconds she found my hand again and placed it across her breasts. I got a big hard-on and played with her tits for a while. Then I slipped my hands under her blouse and rubbed on her nipples … after about fifteen minutes I leaned over and asked her if I could go home with her … I was living at home with my parents and there was no way I could bring her there … she said her lover lived at home with her but if I wanted to make it with her we could do it down the back stairs of the movie house, it was a staircase hardly anyone used. I was delirious I said yes and we got up and climbed the stairs to the main aisle. I was aware of the guys in the balcony watching us but I was too excited to care. I mean it meant so much to me that in a few minutes I wasn’t gonna be a virgin anymore so we went down the back staircase which wasn’t lit too well and she took my cock out of my pants and leaning against the wall she pulled down her pants she had her stomach flat against the wall which kinda struck me as weird but I figured she wanted me to enter somehow from behind … she took hold of my cock and guided it into her ass … I didn’t want to fuck her in the ass so I pulled back and tried to get it under her and she moved away … all this time I was holding on to her breasts and so then I let my hands go down to her cunt so she would get the message that that’s what I wanted … when my hands got down near her crotch she gave a wild jump and moved away from me … then she stepped back to where she was standing before and took my cock and guided it to her ass this time after placing both of my hands back on her breasts … I don’t know what it was but something made me suspicious … she wouldn’t let me go near her crotch with my hands so I started playing with her breasts again and at the same time I moved back slowly so that in order to get my cock into her ass she would have to move away from the wall. When she did this and was far enough away from the wall to give me room I quick slipped my hands down to her crotch and sure enough there was a cock and balls there. The guy turned around with this look of terror on his face … his mouth fell open and he looked like he was afraid I was going to beat him up … I was upset … it was like some kind of fantasy that had slowly started coming true and then it was suddenly exploded. I just said: Oh fuck! and pushed him away. I pulled up my pants and rushed down the stairs and out into the street … I felt like crying but I just ran all the way home …

  Fourteen-Year-Old Runaway Girl

  WOODSTOCK

  I think I need some kind of care … not mental care ya know but medical care because I think my heart’s bad … I gotta bad heart I get heart attacks all the time … I just keep movin around. Ya know what I’m doing? I’m lookin for Bob Dylan. I think he’s in California or maybe he’s back in New York City … but I figure I gotta be in control of myself before I meet him … I don’t want him to say: Hey look, you’re just a little kid, real young … ya gotta grow up.

  I only talk with guys that got hook noses, with noses like Bob Dylan’s. I find I can usually get along with them … like they’re more sensitive … I talk to sensitive guys cause they’re good for me … they know what I’m talkin about … they do things for me ya know? I sometimes talk with guys with other kinds of noses, sensitive noses … like yours …

  I was in a program for a while, in a hospital. They taught me to see myself … let myself come through … that’s why I’m much nicer than last year. Last year I was angry but that was because people would come up and make faces at me … people play a lot of games ya know? At the hospital I went through a lot of stuff … sometimes I’d get real angry … I wouldn’t get violent, I’m not a violent person but I’d get physical ya know? like I’d hit somebody but I knew what I was doing … it was like a game … I’d say to myself: I’ll hit that person and then I’ll say I’m sorry … but the program was good … we had to be on detroxin or destroxan or something like that … a shot every two weeks … not a shot that hurt … and I’d feel good …

  I don’t hitchhike, I’ll hitchhike only if I know the place I’m going … like if I was goin to Jersey I’d hitchhike cause I know Jersey … but I meet strange guys on the road. One time I was hitchin in Kansas and this big fat guy picked me up … we were drivin along and all of a sudden he reached over and grabbed my arm. I said: Oh shit and tried to jump out of the car but he wouldn’t let me so I quick tore my arm away and got the door opened and jumped out. He yelled out at me: Don’t you get back in this car girlie.

  I gotta get some ID so I can go to work but I don’t remember what hospital I was born in and my mother died and my father retired and is somewhere in Florida and I can’t get the name of the hospital … I figure maybe I should go back to the program … that’s the best thing for me cause my image of myself is totally shattered … I might have pneumonia … I got this terrible cough and I’m allergic to sugar … I wanna get me a guitar and a harmonica once I start workin … then I can practice and get good at it … and I’ll go down to the Village around Bleecker Street and find me some folkies and we’ll all live together and get the revolution started again …

  Young Guy Hanging Out on Market Street

  SAN FRANCISCO

  I used to hustle with a buddy but things got bad between us … it was hard cause we were good friends for a long time before we hustled together and we just couldn’t get it on with a guy in front of each other so some guy would pick us up, see we’d help each other out by tellin guys that we wouldn’t go with them without each other, some guys dug the idea of two kids but when we’d get up to their place we’d end up not wantin to go down on the guy or whatever while the other was watchin. That caused a lot of hassles and sometimes it’d almost keep us from gettin paid. The last time me and my friend hustled together some spade approached my friend and
told him that there was a guy waitin in the parking lot around the corner who was interested in makin it with him. My friend said he wouldn’t do it without me comin along, so the spade checked it out with the guy and the guy said okay. We walked around the corner and into the parking lot and there was this black limo sittin there. This young couple got out of the limo and stood there watchin us as we walked up … it was weird … I can remember the girl was real beautiful and she gave me this funny look with these sad eyes, I mean we were pretty young, only about thirteen or fourteen, so this fat guy inside the limo told us to get in and we did. He had this color TV and a pink phone in the backseat of the car and a driver with a uniform. So we agreed that he’d pay us fifty bucks each and then we drove to this fancy apartment building. The guy lived on the thirtieth floor … he told us he was with the Mafia. When we got inside his apartment he showed us a bunch of San Francisco Police badges and a German Luger. It was a pretty gun, had a clip with seven copper-tip bullets in it … my friend picked up the gun and aimed it right between my eyes and I almost kicked the shit out of him for it … thank god the fuckin gun wasn’t loaded … so this guy starts suckin us off and then after a while he sees we ain’t gonna do anything in front of each other so he takes my friend into the other room. After a few minutes my friend came out and tells me the guy wants me to go in. Well I got in the room and I lay out on the bed and the guy flips me over and tries to stick it in me … it was killin me … he’s breathin in my ear like a sick hog goin: I’ll give ya another twenty-five bucks if ya let me. I couldn’t get him off me he weighed too much and he kept trying to stick it in … finally I twisted over and the two of us fell off the bed on the floor like a fucking earthquake boom! so the guy gave us our money and told us to get out … we split and after that I stopped hustlin with my friend …

  A couple of times we tried to do some muggin to get some money but we were really bad at it, we didn’t have the guts for it. One night we stayed up all night walkin around the fuckin city tryin to find an easy mark. Around four in the morning we spied some guy with a suit walkin about three blocks away and we figured we would run as fast as we could and slam into him, knock him down and grab his wallet and run. So we started runnin and we get up right behind the guy and he must’ve heard us cause he turned around and we saw that he was just an old bum wearin some suit that was too big for him and we burst out laughin right there … it was awful. Another guy we met was real drunk and we started talkin to him tryin to get invited up to his place for a drink. We figured we’d tie him up and take whatever was in the place and fence it. So we wandered round with the guy for three hours makin friends with him. At one point he gave my friend five bucks to go get him a pack of cigarettes at the all-night coffee shop. My friend ran down and got the cigarettes and while he was gone the guy started tellin me how he was wounded in World War II and how he laid up in the hospital for a year and a half and then he started crying and tellin me about how his father died in World War I and how he still missed him after fifty-something years. I almost started crying cause it made me think of my father … I mean the guy really reminded me of how my father was when he got drunk. Well my friend came runnin up with the cigarettes and the guy was thankful for the favor. He invited us back to his place for food or somethin. My friend said yeah yeah but I told the guy no we had to get goin and maybe some other time. My friend got pissed off at me and after the guy split I tried to explain to him why I couldn’t go through with it … he thought I was off my rocker …

  Man in Mickey’s Dining Car 2:30 A.M.

  ST. PAUL

  I’ve been living here a few weeks and it’s starting to get a little hot for me … I’ve written myself out of several states in the last six years … Florida would love to get a hold of me I’m sure … see I was working for a bank seven years ago. I worked in the section that dealt with the papers and accounts of persons deceased. I was cashing checks against the accounts of this doctor who had dropped dead and whose money was tied up pending the outcome of some wills he’d left behind. I finally got snagged and did a little time in Elmira for it … it was easy for me to go through it … if you got a little money on the outside you can get a lot of shit … steaks, drugs, even women if you pay enough … but I ain’t that interested in women … too much time in prisons changed all that. I’ve been mostly going with young boys from every meat market between L.A. and New York City … lots of cute kids out there. I got four sets of checkbooks from dead doctors and a load of ID and some sweet fuckin smiles that pay my way through every state. See that kid over there he’s into smack pretty bad. I’ve known him since I got here and he’s hustling down by the terminal just about every night … sweet kid, lemme tell ya. I did something that I ain’t proud of … don’t know why I did it and it’s left me with a bad taste about myself … I can’t look the kid in the face no more. See I’ve wanted to fuck the kid since I met him but he’s always refused and there was no way I could get him to turn over in bed. Two nights ago he came up to my hotel room pretty sick … he said he had to get some money fast did I wanna trick with him. It was awful he was getting the sweats already and in pain. I told him: How bad do you need the money? bad enough to turn over? He started crying but he turned over and I went ahead and fucked him … gave him thirty extra cause I felt so fuckin guilty afterwards. I really don’t know what to say … I don’t know why I did it to him … he hasn’t said a word to me since then and I figure it’s about time I split from here … maybe head back to New York. There’s some halfway houses I can work in keep a low profile for a while anyway …

  Young Boy in Times Square 4:00 A.M.

  NEW YORK CITY

  It’s okay down here … I got lots of friends lots of people watchin out for me … a couple of prostitutes are like my second parents … they give me money for coffee or cigarettes when things are tight … I let em know when I see the vans comin around … I tell ya I learned more down here about real people in a year than the last seven years in school. Tell me what the fuck Lewis and Clark would do if they sailed down the Hudson and got off on Forty-second Street and they didn’t have no money to get somethin to eat … I could hook em up with a guy who’d put both of em in soft fuck films in a second … ha ha … no no, really I do okay down here … there’s a weirdo once in a while but most of the guys are nice … ya learn to pick em out by the way they move … if a man’s crazy you can pick it up in his eyes in a second. There’s other ways to pick up money besides hustlin the Square … by Saturday afternoon business is bad … most of the payin johns have got some kid for the weekend and there’s not too much goin on … there’s this crazy kid I know he’s been showin me a lot of shit … he took me out to Coney Island and hipped me to kickin clothes … that’s when ya get two kids like me and him and ya take off your shirts just like any normal kids on a beach and when it’s crowded ya run down the beach chasin each other and every once in a while ya stop and throw each other around in the sand and all ya gotta do is keep a smile on your face and laugh a lot like you’re just two kids havin fun … then ya get over by a blanket where there’s some pairs of pants folded up and if no one’s watchin close ya chase each other past the blanket and kick the pair of pants in front of you … ya just keep shouting and laughin and kickin the fuckin pants down the beach till ya get a ways away and then ya fall down like you’re out of breath. If no one comes screamin down at ya for kickin their pants around ya go through the pockets and take whatever money’s there … we did this for a whole summer on the weekends … I finally stopped doin it though cause the last time I did it see usually I’d let my friend kick the pants and we’d split it fifty-fifty but he got tired of it and said if I didn’t kick for a while he’d give me a smaller cut so I started kickin and about the seventh time I kicked we got far down on the beach and I reached into the pants for the wallet. It was thick like there was a lot of money and when I opened it my eyes almost took a vacation there was this fuckin gold detective badge hooked inside it … I gave it up then a
nd there. This guy hipped me to a lot of other things too. We’d ride dumbwaiters up and down these old buildings in Brooklyn from the roof and kick in doors and pick up some cash. Sometimes we’d raid the refrigerator if there was anything worthwhile in there. Lemme tell ya this guy is crazy though … a couple of weeks ago he walked into this butcher shop downtown the owners were busy in the back makin repairs and he walked over and picked the key to the register off the wall and opened the cash drawer. There was about three hundred bucks inside. He stuffed it into a shopping bag and walked out. We bought a couple of tubes of glue and a pair of socks and split to Jersey for the day. We went to this amusement park and sniffed behind the beauty show stage and walked around in the freak show for a while. We saw this two-headed turtle in a jar of alcohol and a load of pictures of women with small bodies growin out of their bellies. We ate too much food and then my friend got the idea that we should ride the octopus and sniff while it’s going around so we went up and this fuckin machine is goin up and down and spinnin around every once in a while. I started getting sick from the glue. They put this onion or garlic oil in it now so that ya get sick if ya sniff it. So I started getting ready to heave and I yelled down to these two guys runnin the machine: Whoa let me off I’m gonna be sick and these fuckin guys think it’s funny. They start pointin at me and laughin like it’s a big joke so I start chuckin and I hold it in till we’re stopped right over the guys runnin the ride. We’re spinnin and I let go … it was like a fuckin April shower all over em … well they stopped the fuckin ride fast and when I got off I could hardly walk and these two guys are screamin at me: Why the hell you go on ride if you sick! … ha ha … they were covered, man …