Waterfront Journals

by David Wojnarowicz

  Boy in Horn & Hardart’s on Forty-second Street

  NEW YORK CITY

  There’s this guy who hangs out down here, usually hangs out with a bunch of gangsters. One of the guys he hung out with had his own private phone at a window table in the Child’s Coffee Shop across the street. About a week and a half ago I was cutting school and I ran into him in Nathan’s. He bought me a cup of coffee and we talked for a while and then he invited me up to his place … he lived up in the Eighties somewhere between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenue so we went up there and got into bed, this was about five o’clock, we were having sex when there was this pounding on the door. We stopped and kept real quiet for a few seconds then he says: Who is it? and there was some more pounding and someone yelled: Open up it’s the police! I said: Oh shit what’ll we do? The two of us jumped up and started pullin on our clothes and I kept thinking: Oh god what’ll my parents say when the police call them up and I pulled on my pants and didn’t bother with my underwear and he was whispering something about being on parole for something. The police started ramming the door like they were gonna break it down so I grabbed my sneakers and my socks and put my shirt on and ran to the back window … we were on the second floor and his windows opened onto a big courtyard it ran the whole length of the block and there was no way out except through cellar doors … there were a whole bunch of fences and private patios. I threw open the window and tossed my shoes and socks and underwear down onto the concrete and he helped me out and held my arms and lowered me as far as he could reach and then I dropped the rest of the way. I thought I was gonna crack an ankle but I didn’t. I picked up my stuff and jumped over the first fence and then a whole bunch more … I kept trying basement doorways but they were all locked and I was afraid if I pounded on them someone would call the police so I ran almost the whole block and finally I went down this alleyway that came to a brick wall and there were some boards laying on the ground. I propped them against the wall and hid behind them. I left a little crack between them so I could see if the police came down the alley looking for me. After about twenty minutes I remembered my subway pass in my wallet so I got up and hid it under some other boards further away in the alley, then I crawled behind the boards again and sat there not moving until it got dark. I kept thinking the police would come any minute. When it got late I crawled out and started walking back through the courtyard trying doors on the opposite side. I finally found one building that had been burned out and I could walk through it to the front but there were iron bars over the window and an iron door that had a chain wrapped around the bars with a padlock on it … I thought I was gonna go nuts … I could see people pass by on the street and I could hear the traffic but I couldn’t get out. I went back into the courtyard and turned to the side of the building to try other doors when I saw a light on in a basement apartment. I peeked inside and there was a guy in there sitting in a chair and he was naked and talking on the phone. He was really handsome and I started getting excited. I wanted to knock on the window but I didn’t know if he would call the police thinking I was a burglar so after a while I went back into the burned-out building and checked all the window bars to see if there wasn’t some way to kick them out. Then suddenly I saw that the padlock on the chain wasn’t snapped shut so I quick undid it and opened the iron door and stepped up onto the sidewalk. I walked real slow to the corner and as soon as I turned it I started running … I ran from the Eighties all the way down to the Village where I lived …

  A Kid on the Piers near the West Side Highway

  NEW YORK CITY

  He’s got me down on my knees and I can’t focus on anything I have no time to understand the position of my body or the direction of my face I see a pair of legs in rough corduroy and the color of the pants is brown and surrounded by dark shadows and there’s a sense of other people here and yet I can’t hear them breathe or their feet move or anything and his hand suddenly comes up against the back of my head and he’s got his fingers locked in my hair and he’s shoving my face forward and twisting my head almost gentle but very violent behind the gentleness and I only got half a breath in my lungs the smell of piss on the floorboards and this heavy bulge in his pants getting harder and harder as my face is forced against the front of his pants the zipper tearing my lips I feel them getting fat and bruised and all the while he’s stroking my face and tightening his fingers around the locks of my hair and I can’t focus my eyes my head being pushed and pulled and twisted and caressed and it’s as if I got no hands I know I got hands I had hands a half hour ago I remember lighting a cigarette with them and I remember how warm the flame of the match was when I lifted it towards his face and my knees are hurting real bad from the stone floor hurting because they banged on the floor when he dragged me down the cellar stairs I remember a door in the darkness and the breath of his dog as it licked at my hands when I reached out to stop my headlong descent its tongue licking at my fingers and my face slams down and there’s this electric blam inside my head and it’s like my eyes suddenly opened on one huge bright sun and then went black with the switch thrown down and I’m shocked and there’s pressure on my face on my forehead and something cold and wet and his arms come swinging down he’s lifting me up saying looking for me? and he buries his face and I feel his saliva running down into the curve of my neck and my arms are hanging loose and my head is way back and I can see a ceiling and a dim bulb tossing back and forth and suddenly I’m on my knees again and my face is getting mashed into his belly and sliding down across rough cloth and the metal zipper and there’s this sweet musty smell and I can’t breathe and my head is pulled back and his dick is slapping across my eyes and being rubbed over my cheeks and bloody lips and suddenly it’s inside my mouth and his hands are twisted up in my hair cradling the back of my skull shoving me forward and I feel his dick hit me in the back of the throat and I start feeling pain for the first time like the open pants are in focus and he’s pulled his dick out of my mouth and I’m choking and he’s running one big hand over my face putting his fingers in my ears in my mouth dragging down my lower jaw and forcing his dick in between the fingers and the saliva and blood and shoving in and out and pulling on my hair and everything goes out of focus my eyes moving around blindly the smell of basement water and raw sewage and mustiness and he’s slapping my face like he wants to wake me up and I realize I’m crying and he tells me that he loves me and he lifts me up and pulls me towards him in a big hug and he puts his lips over mine and sticks his tongue in my mouth and buries his rough face down into my collar and licks and drags his tongue over my neck and shoulders and his hands are up inside my shirt and he’s rubbing them back and forth across my chest and belly and taking quick handfuls of flesh and twisting and pulling and then his hands are in the back of my pants to the sides and he suddenly rips apart my pants and punches me in the side of the head at the same time pulling my hair and pulling me back down on the floor and I’m on my belly I feel cold stone scraping my skin and he kneels down onto the center of my back and it hurts and I try to scream but he’s shoving my underwear into my mouth and I’m hit with such a feeling of claustrophobia and fear that it’s hours before I realize that my hands and legs are tied together and that I’m lying on my side and the rag in my mouth is soaking wet and making small bubbling sounds each time I breathe …

  Hobo in Train Yard

  PASCO, WASHINGTON

  I tell ya … if ya got a good story and an unknown face you can pick up ten or twenty dollars’ worth of food stamps from this welfare office about a mile from here in town. One time I found this old crutch somebody lost so I limped into this office where this woman was workin and I sat down and told her how my car broke down about ten miles down the road … I said me and my wife and my three kids had been drivin for days and we ran outta money … I told her that my wife was real sick and needed to go to a doctor and my kids ain’t had nothin to eat for the last couple of days … I tell ya I almost had that woman cryin … she was about to reach into
her own purse and give me money when this guy comes in who works there and he starts questionin me and after a while they caught on that I was tellin them a story and they told me: Man, you get your crutch and you use it to get out of town cause if we see you around here again we’re gonna have you arrested. I was embarrassed and I got the hell outta there as fast as I could. Yesterday I met two young hitchhikers just like yourselves … they took me out and bought me a nice breakfast and a couple jugs of wine. They were real nice but that wine made me sleepy. This mornin some guy comes into the car bangin on the wall and says: Okay I need me four guys to unload a truck … take ya about two hours and I’ll pay ten dollars. I rolled over and went back to sleep … unloadin a truck in that condition? Well, excuse me … I gotta go see if my buddy got paid … maybe we’ll go into town and bring back a nice bottle of wine …

  Man in Brew & Burger on Forty-second Street and Eighth Avenue

  NEW YORK CITY

  I guess things are going okay … a little slow since the convention in Portland. My son is out of the army and finally off drugs … he’s not so much a problem anymore … my wife still gets angry as hell but I don’t know what to say to him. I mean he’s working fairly regularly, drives a cab, starts around midnight and works till six o’clock in the morning … we hardly have words these days because when he gets home around seven he goes right upstairs and hits the sack. Some nights he’ll get into an all-night card game with the fellas down at the taxi stand … I can’t get angry with him … I mean, I don’t know what he’s been going through … he used to be a beautiful kid, long hair and built like an athlete. Now he’s gained weight he’s up to 250 pounds and lays around most of the time drinking beer but he does work. He rides in the car I bought him two years ago … god you should see that car now, what a mess, the two sides dented in like a nutcracker squeezed them, the back fenders hanging off and some days the backseat is piled up to the rear ledge with beer cans. My wife gets really upset because she’s home all day. My daughter, she’s a real doll, she’s a sophomore in college now, she’s engaged to this terrific young fella who’s with RCA … the two of them flew off for a week to the Keys together …

  Work has been slow for me since the beginning of the year. I feel bad because I’m not pulling my share of the load … it’s just that there’s so much mental activity holding me back … I try to stay away from the city … I’ve been pretty successful with doing so … I mean I walk down Forty-second Street and I’m sad to say it’s changed so much since ten years ago. I can remember that in the summer of ’69 you could walk down the block and there were all these beautiful kids hanging out … now they’re all addicts and in gangs looking to rob you … but occasionally I still go to the bars in the upper Forties … they have some great music and the dancing kids are really wild, good-looking kids and they move in a great way. But I don’t go for the sex in those places … it’s like two minutes in some smelly dark cabinet and there goes thirty bucks. Where I live I have some wild times … there’s young boys in their late teens, sixteen or seventeen, hitchhiking all over the place and a lot of them are into sex … it’s really something I mean I have to keep telling myself that I’m a man with responsibilities … I have an outstanding job and a wonderful family … I really can’t afford to get arrested. I’d lose it all yet I can’t help it … I mean it’s so simple to go for a drive … after I pick one of these kids up I work in four sex words into the conversation. There’s this one kid who goes to high school just a mile from where I work. I picked him up hitchhiking one time and three minutes later we were in the parking lot of my job in the backseat making love to each other. I’ve seen him a couple of times a week for a while but I guess he’s decided to end it … he hasn’t shown up in three weeks … I drive over to the school every now and then and wait for a half hour or so but I guess he’s not going to show up …

  Guy on Fourteenth Street 3:00 A.M.

  NEW YORK CITY

  I got busted once while I was in my apartment doin acid. I lived in this building that had an intercom but if somebody buzzed I’d just ring em in without askin who they were so the buzzer rang and I pressed the button and two cops in plain clothes came in. They flashed their narc badges and one of them said: We busted Daniel tonight and found your name in his telephone book. Now I really had balls that night … I said: Look man if you ain’t got a search warrant get the fuck outta here and they were pissed but left. About four days later the doorbell rang and this girl I knew was out there and asked to borrow somethin of mine so I told her come on in. She sat down on the couch and I got the thing for her and she continued sittin there all greased up with a towel around her … she was actin kinda dizzy so I finally said: Look I got someone in the other room and she said sorry and left. I saw a pack of cigarettes where she’d been sittin on the couch and I said to the kid: She’ll be back she forgot her cigarettes and sure enough the doorbell rang and I took the cigarettes to the door and didn’t even look out I just stuck my hand through the door and bam there was a handcuff on it … it was the fuckin cops so I said real loud: Oh, It’s the cops figuring the kid would hear me and flush his stuff down the toilet but he was young and so instead of getting rid of what he was holding he was too busy trying to wash the Vaseline off his ass. The cops threatened to charge me with impairing the morals of a minor and I said: What are ya talkin about? We ain’t done a thing and the cops say: Yeah? then why’s your dick all greasy? I said: Hey man, my cock’s all chapped from the cold weather so I cover it with Vaseline, works great ya oughta try it sometime … and man did they kick the shit outta me … broke my fuckin nose and busted two ribs …

  Man Drinking Coffee in Thirty-third Street Pizzeria

  NEW YORK CITY

  I have had no desire for sex for the last ten years … up till ten years ago I’d want to get into bed a lot … when I’d see some young cat with a good body I always wanted to have sex with him … or with some girl with a beautiful figure I wanted to put my hands around her but then suddenly I decided I was tired of waking up and feeling that sex is a head thing … I mean you use a lot of thoughts in sex like: What makes this person excited? What turns that person on? It made me very tired and so it just dropped from my life … There’s this one cat who lives in the building of a woman I know … now I never for the world thought that this guy would be involved with any kind of homosexuality. He was a fine-looking cat, a real nice-looking guy. One day he knocked on the door and asked if I would mind him coming in for a chat. I said: Oh no not at all man. I opened the door for him made us a couple of drinks with vodka and grapefruit juice and we talked on and on and suddenly he leans over and puts his hand on my leg and says: Man I want to go to bed with you. I was shocked and after a moment or two I said: I’m really sorry man but I can’t. If I got into bed with you I’d just get you all excited and get myself half excited and it wouldn’t work. After a few minutes he got up and left … I felt terrible … I sat down and wrote him a long letter trying to explain all the things that were going through my head and sent it to him … not long afterwards he sent me a very beautiful letter thanking me for mine …

  Man in Coffee Shop Midnight East Village

  NEW YORK CITY

  Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I got beat up when I was twelve or thirteen years old. It was in Cortland Park. I had gone there fishing with three other friends of mine and these older guys came along, like five or six guys, most of them about fifteen or sixteen and one guy older maybe around eighteen. They took turns beating us up, taking us into the bushes and punching us in the face and all over. One of my friends started crying and then another started crying but I was too furious to cry and then the third guy started crying and I was getting more and more punches in the face and finally I realized that if I could work it up to cry they would probably stop so I forced myself to cry a little bit, then we got split up, me and one friend were taken by the two oldest guys into some other part of the woods. The other guys disappeared and at some point the
oldest guy—boy was he good-looking, I didn’t think of it then but now years later looking back on it I realize he was a handsome boy with a good body and bluish eyes—well he had us take off our clothes saying somethin about keeping us from running away and then he had us unbutton his pants and take out his cock and then he said: Alright, which one of you has the biggest ass and he looked at both our asses. I remember squeezing real tight so my asshole would be smaller and he decided the other guy’s ass was bigger so he fucked the other guy for a while and then tried to fuck me. I remember he couldn’t get it in me cause I kept squeezing and so he fucked me between the legs and then he came. I remember it was revolting, his come smeared between my legs. Afterwards he let us go and we had to search around for soda bottles to cash in and get money to take the train home. My face was swollen. I had two black eyes and I was all bruised and scratched. I didn’t tell my mother that this guy tried to fuck me but she took me down to the police station and made me report it to the police anyway …