Waterfront Journals

by David Wojnarowicz

  Man in Casual Labor Office 6:30 A.M.

  SAN FRANCISCO

  I’m tired of being a tramp … my father was a tramp and he’s dead … I’m a tramp and I don’t want to be one … I stopped drinking … I wear only old-man clothes … I wash up every day … I work … and I’m still a tramp … does anybody want to tell me the secret? How do I de-tramp myself? I read Machiavelli and he done me no good …

  Now my wife, she tried to do me good … she thought she could put me away in some asylum … you know, what’s the name of that place up north of here? … well anyway she said to the neighbors: You think I can’t put him away? You just wait and see. So she cooked me a fine meal … ummm, it was good and when I came home she said: Baby, you just sit down and lemme take care of you. So I sat down and ate and after dinner she drew me a bath with all that bubble stuff in it and then she said: Now you wash up and I’ll wait for you in the bedroom. So I took the bath and when I finished I walked into the bedroom and she was lying there with her silks on and her legs spread apart … mmm, she took care of me real good … then when we finished she said: Baby, why don’t we go for a ride okay? I said: Why? and she said: Cause I want you to meet somebody in that hospital on top of the hill. So I said: Okay let’s go and we drove up to the hospital parked in the lot and went inside. We were walking down the hall and I see this group of attendants walking towards us … I knew what the bitch had in mind so I quick reached down and took hold of her skirt and pulled it up over her head and started shouting: “Hey you. Over there. Quick grab this woman she’s crazy and I’ve been trying to commit her.” So she was screaming and they took her and locked her up … she’s been there twenty years now … I’m the one who’s crazy and they got her in there and they won’t let her go till I sign her out …

  Man on Interstate Heading Towards NYC

  We have plenty of time so I’ll start from the beginning … see I was managing about thirty-eight stores at the World’s Fair and making some decent money. It meant working for the mob … and around that time I met this beautiful guy, a burly football jock with translucent skin all cock and no brains but he was sweet. He was one of those guys who didn’t think he was—I hate to use the word gay can’t stand it but for the moment let’s say it: gay—I made it with him but he still considered himself straight … around that time while I was managing these stores someone came up to me and said: Hey I figured out this system for roulette that’s unbeatable and he gave me the system and there was this guy working for me in one of the stores, sleazy slick pool shark kind of guy and mean too but smart so I took this system to him and said: Hey Sal check this out and let me know what you think, will it work? Sal checked it out and said: Look, it’s an old system it’ll work for you for a while but eventually you’ll get cleaned out. It just doesn’t work for long. So me and Sal and the jock got a whole lot of money together, we stole a lot of it, and took off to Puerto Rico. We moved into a hotel but Sal didn’t want any part of our scene he wanted to be alone so me and the jock moved into another hotel not far from his near the casino districts. For the first few weeks we’d each take some of the money and go out to the different casinos and work them using this system. It was great, we were making a thousand a night, we got pretty well known at the casinos. We’d be there every night and it got so that the croupiers hated us couldn’t stand the sight of us but we were having a ball making lots of money spending lots of money. The jock was delirious we were all excited and having fun but after about six weeks I started getting a little crazy, bored with the whole scene and then one night I was working the tables and this entertainer from one of the nearby hotels showed up and played. He was playing against the house and I was playing with the house. Do you know what that means? So he was taking even numbers and I was taking odds with the house and well, do you know what the record is for throwing straight passes, for throwing the dice like evens so many times in a row? Well the record was something like thirty straight passes and this guy threw twenty-seven straight passes in a row and I was putting a lot of money down and by the end of the evening we were cleaned out, had absolutely no money and to tell you the truth I wasn’t upset at all, Sal was pissed off, the jock was upset but I felt relieved, like it was the answer to everything and I didn’t have to deal with it anymore.

  So we split up … Sal disappeared got himself into some trouble and ended up in La Princhessa, that was the name for the worst prison on the island. This prison was situated on the bottom of a cliff and guys used to go over to the top and look over and the inmates would jerk themselves off through the bars of the window screaming and yelling all sorts of stuff. Anyway Sal ended up in La Princhessa, but we didn’t find out about it till later … we didn’t know where he was he just disappeared and me and the jock ran into some American woman who had a condominium on the beach and a couple of kids and her husband had just left her. They were in the midst of a messy divorce and she had something like sixty bucks left to her name and her rent was due and right around then I met this French woman who was trying to get off the island before she got deported. She was having some trouble over something but was pretty much broke and she had the lease to this bar that was closed down, a street-corner bar and I asked her how much she needed and she said about fifty bucks and I said: How about handing over the lease to the bar and I’ll give you the fifty bucks and she said: Sure okay so I went back to the American woman and got fifty bucks from her and traded it for the lease to the bar and with the other ten bucks we got these cards printed up saying good for one free drink at The Bar on the corner of Valencia and such ‘n’ such and we went into the bar and covered the front of the door on the outside with a thick piece of black velvet and put a door knocker in the center of it, covered the windows, bought some ice and cans of Coca-Cola and a few bottles of cheap rum something like fifty cents for a fifth and after that we put a spotlight over the front door aiming it at the knocker and then we went down to the beach passing out the cards to everyone we saw: drag queens people from the circus and tattooed guys and the jock got into what I was doing and he handed out some too and then we opened the bar and the place was filled, packed with every freak on the island. We had gone downtown to a jukebox joint and gotten one so the place was hopping every night and some of the characters from the sideshow of the circus made it their hangout and this one drag queen got a flamenco dress left to her in a will and she showed up and we had her dancing on tables to the songs from the jukebox and one time a giant from the circus showed up. He was taller than any basketball player but not really a giant, and he got a blow job from the flamenco dancer in the middle of the bar one night. Things were going well I never had any trouble or anything until one night when this Puerto Rican guy said: Hey how come you got yourself a bar and I’m Puerto Rican and I ain’t got one and I said, Hell I did it with fifty bucks you can raise the money go open your own and one night this guy threw a knife at me and it just missed my head flew right past me and stuck in the wall so I grabbed this lead pipe we kept behind the counter and hopped over the bar yelling: Turn on the work lights and the guy ran through the door into the street screaming: Policia Policia. Other than that I never had any trouble … a couple of guys here or there would try to lay some muscle on me but I usually could talk my way out of any situation … so around then things were going great, the bar was a success and me and the jock were living with the American woman and he fell in love with her. I remember one night we were lying in bed and he rolled over towards me in his sleep and I went down on him and it just drove him up the wall. He flipped out about it and I said: Who needs this shit and got my stuff together and left Puerto Rico …

  Woman in Coffee Shop

  SAN FRANCISCO

  Man I’ll tell you … they wouldn’t take me down under a hundred grams … shit my habit was big when I walked in there … the first day they tried to take me down ten grams … hell they can’t get away with that, with that new law that came into effect … I threw myself down on the floor and sta
rted screaming: Aghhh, uhhnn, I’m sick, I’m sick. Shit man they can’t take me down till I’m ready. Ya know today I checked out my file got a look at it and it said I don’t give in at all … like when I’m in an argument about something even when it becomes ridiculous, you know like when I know I’m wrong, I still give reasons and arguments no matter what I don’t admit that I’m wrong. It said a lot of other shit too like about when I went to jail for the first time I walked in there and I was scared cause they got a lotta big women … they sit around and as soon as the door opens they say: Aahhhaaa, look at this young turkey look at her, so small and young. And they start laying for ya man just like it is in men’s prisons. Five broads holding your arms and legs while one goes down on your box … especially if you’re small like I am ya know man. Like Louie now he had a lotta problems with that kinda stuff cause he’s small, shit he had to bang someone on their head with a board soon as he got in jail cause otherwise they’ll getcha … hell he even got in trouble for settin fire to someone with hair tonic or aftershave or some shit like that … ha ha … I shoulda looked around for a two-by-four to carry around everywhere with me …

  Boy in YMCA

  SAN FRANCISCO

  I arrived here by Greyhound … I had one of them Ameri-pass tickets … it was good for two months. I started out in New York City … figured they wouldn’t be able to follow me if I rode the bus … I didn’t stay in one city too long and I’d decide what direction I was gonna go in only after I was at the bus station but they would always find out where I was going and follow me. I’d get on the bus choose a seat by myself and look out the window. At first the people who got on looked normal, like I didn’t know them and they’d act like they didn’t know me. Then after an hour or so they’d all be talking in conversations between themselves and would start to let little words or sentences slip into the conversations … things that only I would know about, little references to what happened in New York … like I knew this guy … we were lovers and after a year of living together he suddenly didn’t want to live with me anymore. I was really upset and I knew his parents didn’t know he was a homosexual so I called his mother up and told her … I knew it was fucked up but I didn’t think about it … another time I called the police on a guy I knew … there was some murderer going around. I told the police that he was the one doing it … he was a dealer and when the cops got in his apartment they found the stuff … I felt guilty about it and tried suicide. I swallowed this bottle of some kind of pills and just got really sick … Then I realized that’s what they wanted me to do so I left New York but they always catch up to me … I’m really tired of running … I have no more money and this is the end of the line for me … I don’t know exactly what I’m gonna do … I wish I would die … that’s all I’m waiting for now … I can’t do it myself but I don’t want to go on existing … just waiting for it to happen. Everywhere I go I find people who I think might not be part of the plan … then after a while I begin to realize that they’re just acting like strangers … they’re just waiting for me to do it … like you … I don’t know why I’m talking to you … for a few minutes I thought you were okay … but as I keep talking I see little things going on in your expressions so I’m not really sure …

  … I keep having these strange dreams … last night I dreamt that I was a giant … I was draped over the planet … my head rested on North America and my legs rested on South America … my arms stretched for miles and miles over the oceans … and I could feel millions of fish just below the surface of the water … I could feel them nibbling on my arms … real gentle …

  Man in Lower East Side Tenement Room

  NEW YORK CITY

  One night during the summer I was in the park and all of a sudden it started pissing rain I mean raining hard … all the regulars took off and I was left standing there alone. I was still cruising and this kid appeared we were both drenched and he said hello … well we talked for a few minutes and then he mentioned money and I said No, I’m not about that and I was leaving the park when he called out something. I turned and he called me back over and asked me if I had enough to get some beer and I said Yeah. He was about twenty, a Puerto Rican kid, absolutely gorgeous, sorta moved like this, with his arms out with this loping gait so we left the park and he starts walking north and I say Where the hell you going and he says he knows of an all-night deli further up around Twenty-first Street … so we walk uptown in the rain and we get to the deli. Finally we get this quart of beer and we start walking downtown again and he’s going off about this and that and somewhere along the way he stops to talk to this hooker and share the quart of beer with her … we finally get here I bring him back to my place … that was when I didn’t have any electricity I had told him this but I guess he didn’t believe me so when we get back here he’s sort of surprised. I had all these candles lit in the room and it was pretty dark … he liked that chair over there and he sat in it while we talked … then he looks out the window at the mission house and says Man, it’s not very nice to look out there or something like that and Man, you have to fix this place up … and at some point I mention that I do some acting and he starts telling me about his family about his mother and his grandmother and there was this knife of mine on the table and he picks it up as he’s talking and then he starts imitating them, acting out the role of his grandmother as he’s talking about her, I mean it was scary, this whole sort of ritualistic thing passing the knife back and forth as he’s acting out parts of this movie talking in different voices and flashing his eyes … it was pure voodoo …

  I brought him back here a couple of times and mentioned him to other people I know … then one time I was in the park and he showed up and I didn’t want anything to do with him so I left and he followed me out and started demanding money. I just happened to have about forty bucks on me so I said Sure okay I can give you a few bucks and I gave him some and he kept following me and then he wanted a beer so I stopped in a deli and bought him a bottle of beer and wanted to get rid of him so I walked on ahead of him and instead of coming around Second Avenue it’s too dangerous that way at night I walked up Fourth Street to the Bowery and then cut down to Third Street. I didn’t see him anywhere so I figured he was gone well I get near my building and I spot him sitting out in front in a car drinking the beer. I thought Uh oh. So I go into my building and he caught me between the two doors and said Let’s go up to your place and I said No, look I’m tired I’m going to go to sleep he said Look do I have to rough you up or are you going to let me come upstairs? so once he got inside he started demanding money. I got up from the couch and went into the kitchen and tried to get rid of the money in my pocket. I fumbled doing it. He threatened me and then he said he was gonna start picking up my cats and throwing them out the window so I gave him the money … I had some pot here and he took that and sat down and started rolling joints … I told him I was tired and wanted to go to sleep, I asked him to leave but he wouldn’t … then he got up and went into the bathroom he did this several times during the time he was here and at one point I told him I was really tired and going to sleep and got into bed and lay down and closed my eyes I didn’t sleep I couldn’t do that but I lay down and he came back into the room and started throwing money on the table and the floor and then finally he left. As he was leaving he said I’ll be back and I said No you won’t. You can’t come back here …

  I would get phone calls from him every once in a while up until just a month ago he would call me collect from St. Mark’s. I’d get this operator saying Will you accept a collect call from Jose or Stanley? his name was Ricardo but he would call up using these assumed names. One time he called up having actually deposited a dime in the phone and I said Hello Ricardo and he said I wanna come over and I said No you can’t and he said Look man you owe me ten bucks …

  Girl Sitting on Pavement in Front of Coffee Shop

  ALBUQUERQUE

  I live in a hotel a few miles from here … I come down just about every day s
ince I quit my job … I was working as a waitress in a restaurant downtown … worked at it for two years … I don’t know how I did it for so long … it’s like the time just went by behind my back. Before I became a waitress I hitched all over the U.S. … I’m originally from San Antonio … my family still lives there and I hate the place … the people there are almost dead … all into their little trips with the way they think lives should run … the way their folks taught them … my father had a lot of money and my two sisters got married real young … I didn’t want nothing to do with the whole apron thing … I just wanted to run around … I mean there’s just so much going on in the States alone that it makes me dizzy to think of what I’m missing sitting here. My father said he’d cut me out of the will if I didn’t go to school so I split … it’s kinda romantic I mean I’ve been hitching for the past five years … lived just about everywhere and mostly followed the migrant people picking produce and stuff. What got to me was that it was only romantic because I had the choice … I mean there was security behind me if I chose to go back … but no, I was tough and could make it on my own. So I worked this waitress job because I was tired and I thought maybe I could settle down and do some thinking instead of all that continuous experiencing but man after two years of serving all those people … let me tell you there’s two things in life people get really bitchy about: one’s money and the other’s their food … I’d hassle with these people over food and then sit down and like the counter is over here and the kitchen is over there and the windows are here and the door is there … that’s the only part of the job I really liked … walking out that fucking door. I mean everything’s outside and I was thinkin how much it picked me up to walk through the door so I said: That’s it I quit I have money saved up not a whole lot but enough to make some plans to go somewhere else. Right now I’m just taking it easy and thinking. I come down here because there’s a lot going on on this street … all these people rushing around helps me to make sense, to see how to live. This afternoon I was sitting out here watching those prostitutes across the street and one of them stepped out of the doorway and took this little guy with a guitar by the hand, he had just jumped off some dump truck from Arizona, she took him by the hand really gentle like he was a kid going to school for the first time and they walked down the street to the hotel together, him carrying this guitar without a case, like he played that guitar all around the country just to end up in some squeaky bed in a ratty hotel where somebody’s gonna hold him for a while, even for ten minutes ya know … and like I felt kind of sad because that’s really it … it’s never any more than that scene … and when it becomes more … then the whole idea of measure in your life is forgotten … you never make sense of nothing …