Desolation Angels: A Novel

by Jack Kerouac

  Till they re-establish paradise on earth, the Days of Perfect Nature, and we’ll wander around naked and kissing in gardens, and attend dedicatory ceremonies to the Love God at the Great Love Meeting Park, at the World Shrine of Love—Until then, bums—

  Bums—

  Nothing but bums—

  I fall asleep, and it’s not the sleep in the mountaintop shack, it’s in a room, traffic’s outside, the crazy silly city, dawn, Saturday morning comes in gray and desolate—I wake up and wash and go out to eat.

  The streets are empty, I go down the wrong way, among warehouses, nobody works on Saturdays, a few dismal Filipinos walk in the street pass me—Where is my breakfast?

  And I realize too that my blisters (from the mountain) have grown so bad now I cant hitch hike, I cant take that pack on my back and walk two miles out—south—I decide to take a bus to San Francisco and git it over with.

  Maybe a lover there for me.

  I have plenty of money and money is only money.

  And what will Cody be doing when I get to Frisco? And Irwin and Simon and Lazarus and Kevin? And the girls? No more summer daydreams, I’ll go see what “reality” has in store for “me”—

  “To hell with Skid Row.” I go up the hill and out and immediately find a splendid serve-yourself restaurant where you pour your own coffee as many time’s you want and pay that on an honor basis and get your bacon and eggs at the counter and eat at tables, where stray newspapers feed me the news—

  The man at the counter is so kind! “How you want your eggs, sir?”

  “Sunny side up”

  “Yes sir, coming right up,” and all his stuff and griddles and spatulas as clean as a pin, here’s a real believing man who wont let the night discourage him—the awful brokenbottle sexless gut night—but’ll awake in the morning and sing and go to his job and prepare food for people and honor them with the title “sir” to boot—And exquisite and delicate come out the eggs and the little shoe-string potatoes, and the toast crisp and well buttered with melted butter and a brush, Ah, I sit and eat and drink coffee by the big plateglass windows, looking out on an empty bleak street—Empty but for one man in a nice tweed coat and nice shoes going somewhere, “Ah, there’s a happy man, he dresses well, goes believingly down the morning street—”

  I take my little paper cup of grape jelly and spread it on my toast, squeezing it out, and drink another cup of hot coffee—Everything’ll be all right, desolation is desolation everywhere and desolation is all we got and desolation aint so bad—

  In the papers I see where Mickey Mantle aint gonna beat Babe Ruth’s homerun record, O well, Willie Mays’ll do it next year.

  And I read about Eisenhower waving from trains on campaign speeches, and Adlai Stevenson so elegant so snide so proud—I read about riots in Egypt, riots in North Africa, riots in Hong Kong, riots in prisons, riots in hell everywhere, riots in desolation—Angels rioting against nothing.

  Eat your eggs

  and

  Shut up

  70

  Everything is so keen when you come down from solitude, I notice all Seattle with every step I take—I’m going down the sunny main drag now with pack on back and room rent paid and lotsa pretty girls eating ice cream cones and shopping in the 5 & 10—On one corner I see an eccentric paperseller with a wagon-bike loaded with ancient issues of magazines and bits of string and thread, an oldtime Seattle character—“The Reader’s Digest should write about him,” I think, and go to the bus station and buy my ticket to Frisco.

  The station is loaded with people, I stash my rucksack in the baggage room and wander around unencumbered looking everywhere, I sit in the station and roll a cigarette and smoke, I go down the street for hot chocolate at a soda fountain.

  A pretty blonde woman is running the fountain, I come in there and order a thick milkshake first, move down to the end of the counter and drink it there—Soon the counter begins to fill up and I see she’s overworked—She cant keep up with all the orders—I even order hot chocolate myself finally and she does a little “Hmf O my”—Two teenage hepcats come in and order hamburgers and catsup, she cant find the catsup, has to go in the backroom and look while even then fresh further people sit at the counter hungry, I look around to see if anybody’ll help her, the drug clerk is a completely unconcerned type with glasses who in fact comes over and sits and orders something himself, free, a steak sandwich—

  “I cant find the catsup!” she almost weeps—

  He turns over a page of the newspaper, “Is that a fact”—

  I study him—the cold neat white-collar nihilistic clerk who doesnt care about anything but does believe that women should wait on him!—She I study, a typical West Coast type, probable ex-showgirl, maybe even (sob) ex-burlesque dancer who didnt make it because she wasnt naughty enough, like O’Grady last night—But she lives in Frisco too, she always lives in the Tenderloin, she is completely respectable, very attractive, works very hard, very good hearted, but somehow something’s wrong and life deals her a complete martyr deck I dont know why—something like my mother—Why some man doesnt come and latch on her I dont know—The blonde is 38, fulsome, beautiful Venus body, a beautiful and perfect cameo face, with big sad Italianized eyelids, and high cheekbones creamy soft and full, but nobody notices her, nobody wants her, her man hasnt come yet, her man will never come and she’ll age with all that beauty in that selfsame rockingchair by the potted-flower window (O West Coast!)—and she’ll complain, she’ll say her story: “All my life I’ve tried to do the best I could”—But the two teenagers insist they want catsup and finally, when she has to admit she’s out they get surly and start to eat—One, an ugly kid, takes his straw and to pop it out of its paper wrapper stabs viciously at the counter, as tho stabbing someone to death, a real hard fast death-stab that frightens me—His buddy is very beautiful but for some reason he likes this ugly murderer and they pal around together and probably stab old men at night—Meanwhile she’s all fuddled in a dozen different orders, hot dogs, hamburgers (myself I want a hamburger now), coffee, milk, lime-ades for children, and cold clerk sits reading his paper and chewing his steak sandwich—He notices nothing—Her hair is falling over one eye, she’s almost weeping—Nobody cares because nobody notices—And tonight she’ll go to her little clean room with the kitchenette and feed the cat and go to bed with a sigh, as pretty a woman as you’ll ever see—No Lochinvar at the door—An angel of a woman—And yet a bum like me, with no one to love her tonight—That’s the way it goes, there’s your world—Stab! Kill!—Dont care!—There’s your Actual Void Face—exactly what this empty universe holds in store for us, the Blank—Blank Blank Blank!

  When I leave I’m surprised that, instead of treating me contemptuously for watching her sweat a whole hour, she actually sympathetically counts up my change, with a little harried look from tender blue eyes—I picture myself in her room that night listening first to her list of legitimate complaints.

  But my bus is going—

  71

  The bus pulls out of seattle and goes barreling south to Portland on swish-swish 99—I’m comfortable in the back seat with cigarettes and paper and near me is a young Indonesian-looking student of some intelligence who says he’s from the Philippines and finally (learning I speak Spanish) confesses that white women are shit—

  “Las mujeres blancas son la mierda”

  I shudder to hear it, whole hordes of invading Mongolians shall overrun the Western world saying that and they’re only talking about the poor little blonde woman in the drugstore who’s doing her best—By God, if I were Sultan! I wouldnt allow it! I’d arrange for something better! But it’s only a dream! Why fret?

  The world wouldnt exist if it didnt have the power to liberate itself.

  Suck! suck! suck at the teat of Heaven!

  Dog is God spelled backwards.

  72

  And I had raged purely among rocks and snow, rocks to sit on and snow to drink, rocks to start avalankies with and snow to t
hrow snowballs at my house—raged among gnats and dying male ants, raged at a mouse and killed it, raged at the hundred mile cyclorama of snow-capped mountains under the blue sky of day and the starry splendor of night—Raged and been a fool, when I shoulda loved and repented—

  Now I’m back in that goddam movie of the world and now what do I do with it?

  Sit in fool and be fool,

  that’s all—

  The shades come, night falls, the bus roars downroad—People sleep, people read, people smoke—The busdriver’s neck is stiff and alert—Soon we see the lights of Portland all bleak bluff and waters and soon the city alleys and drivearounds flash by—And after that the body of Oregon, the Valley of the Willamette—

  At dawn I restless wake to see Mount Shasta and old Black Butte, mountains dont amaze me anymore—I dont even look out the window—It’s too late, who cares?

  Then the long hot sun of the Sacramento Valley in her Sunday afternoon, and bleak little stop-towns where I chew up popcorn and squat and wait—Bah!—Soon Vallejo, sights of the bay, the beginnings of something new on the cloudsplendrous horizon—San Francisco on her Bay!

  Desolation anyway—

  73

  It’s the bridge that counts, the coming-into-San Francisco on that Oakland-Bay Bridge, over waters which are faintly ruffled by oceangoing Orient ships and ferries, over waters that are like taking you to some other shore, it had always been like that when I lived in Berkeley—after a night of drinking, or two, in the city, bing, the old F-train’d take me barreling across the waters back to that other shore of peace and contentment—We’d (Irwin and I) discuss the Void as we crossed—It’s seeing the rooftops of Frisco that makes you excited and believe, the big downtown hulk of buildings, Standard Oil’s flying red horse, Montgomery Street highbuildings, Hotel St. Francis, the hills, magic Telegraph with her Coit-top, magic Russian, magic Nob, and magic Mission beyond with the cross of all sorrows I’d seen long ago in a purple sunset with Cody on a little railroad bridge—San Francisco, North Beach, Chinatown, Market Street, the bars, the Bay-Oom, the Bell Hotel, the wine, the alleys, the poorboys, Third Street, poets, painters, Buddhists, bums, junkies, girls, millionaires, MG’s, the whole fabulous movie of San Francisco seen from the bus or train on the Bridge coming in, the tug at your heart like New York—

  And they’re all there, my friends, somewhere in those little toystreets, and when they see me the angel’ll smile—That’s not so bad—Desolation aint so bad—

  74

  Wow, an entirely different scene, San Francisco always is, it always gives you the courage of your convictions—“This city will see to it that you make it as you wish, with limitations which are obvious, in stone and memory”—Or such—thus—that feeling, of, “Wow O Alley, I’m gonna get me a poorpoy of Tokay and drink it on the way”—The only city I know of where you can drink the open in the street as you walk and nobody cares—everybody avoids you like poison sailor O Joe McCoy just off the Lurline—“one of the bottlewashers there?”—“No, just a old seedy S.I.U. deckhand, and’s been to Hongkong and Singapore and back more time’s almost he’s et that wine in backalleys of Harrison”—

  Harrison is the street the bus comes in on, ramping, and we go twaddling seven blocks north to Seventh Street, where he turns into the city traffic of Sunday—and there’s all your Joes on the street.

  Things happening everywhere. Here comes Longtail Charley Joe from Los Angeles, suitcase, blond hair, sports shirt, big thick wrist watch, with him’s Minnie O’Pearl the gay girl who sings in the band at Rooey’s—“Whooey?”

  There’re the Negro baggagehandlers of the Greyhound Company, described by Irwin as Mohammedan Angels I believe—sending precious cargo to Loontown and Moontown and Moonlight in Colorado the bar where they’ll be tonight whanging with the chicks among U-turning cars and Otay Spence on the box—down among the Negro housing projects, where we’d gone at morning, with whisky and wine and oolyakoo’d with the sisters from Arkansas who’d seen their father hanged—What notion could they get of this country, this Mississippi—There they are, neat and welldressed, perfect neckties and collars, the cleanest dressers in America, presenting their Negro faces at the employer-judge, who judges harshly on the basis of their otay perfect neckties—some with glasses, rings, polite pipesmokers, college boys, sociologists, the whole we-all-know-the-great-scene-in-otay that I know so well in San Fran—sound—I come dancing through this city with big pack on my back and so I have to hustle not to bump into anybody but nevertheless make time down that Market Street parade—A little deserted and desolate, Sunday—Tho Third Street be crowded, and great big Pariahs bark a-doors and discuss Wombs of Divinity, it’s all houndsapack—I crap along and farty up Kearney, towards Chinatown, watching all stores and all faces to see which way the Angel points this fine and perfect day—

  “By God I’m gonna give myself a haircut in my room,” I say, “and make it look like sumptin”—“Because first thing I’m gonna do is hit that otay sweet saxophone Cellar.” Where I’ll immediately go for the Sunday afternoon jam session. O they’ll all be there, the girls with dark glasses and blonde hair, the brunettes in pretty coats by the side of their little boy (The Man)—raising beers to their lips, sucking in cigarette smoke, beating to the beat of the beat of Brue Moore the perfect tenor saxophone—Old Brue he’ll be high on Brew, and me too—“I’ll tap him on the toenail,” I think—“We’ll hear what the singers gotto say today”—Because all summer I’ve provided myself my own jazz, singing in the yard or in the house at night, whenever I had to hear some music, see which way the Angel pours the bucket, what stairs down she goes, and otay jazz afternoons in the Maurie O’Tay nightclub okay—music—Because all these serious faces’ll only drive you mad, the only truth is music—the only meaning is without meaning—Music blends with the heartbeat universe and we forget the brain beat.

  75

  I’m in San Francisco and I’m Gonna take it all in. Incredible the things I saw.

  I get out of the way for two Filipino gentlemen crossing California. I pass through to the Bell Hotel, by the Chinese playground, and go in get my room.

  The attendant is immediately succinctly anxious to please me, and there are women in the hall gossiping Malay. I shudder to think the sounds will come in through the courtyard window, all Chinese and melodious. I hear even choruses of French talk, from the owners. A medley of a hotel of rooms in dark carpeted halls, and old creaky night steps and blinking wallclock and 80-year-old bent sage behind the grille, with open doors, and cats—The attendant brings me back my change as I wait with waited door. I take out my little tiny aluminum scissors that cant cut buttons off a sweater, but cut my hair anyway—Then I examine the effect with mirrors—Okay, then I go and shave anyway. I get hot water and I shave and I square away and on the wall is a nude calendar of a Chinese girl. Lot I can do with a calendar. (“Well,” said the bum in the burlesque to the other bum, two Limies, “I’m avin er naow.”)

  In hot little flames.

  76

  I go out and hit the street crossing at Columbus and Kearney, by Barbary Coast, and a bum in a long bum overcoat sings out to me “When we cross streets in New York we cross em!—None a this waitin shit for me!” and both of us barrel across and walk among cars and shoot back and forth about New York—Then I get to the Cellar and jump down, steep wooden steps, in a broad cellar hall, right to the right is the room with the bar and the bandstand otay where now as I come Jack Minger is blowing on trumpet and behind him’s Bill the mad blond pianist scholar of music, on the drums that sad kid with the sweating handsome face who has such a desperate beat and strong wrists, and on bass I cant see him bobbing in the dark with beard—Some crazy Wigmo or other—but it’s not the session, it’s the regular group, too early, I’ll come back later, I’ve heard every one of Jack Minger’s ideas alone with the group, but first (as I’d just dropped into the bookstore to look around) (and a girl called Sonya had prettily come up to me, 17, and said “O do yo
u know Raphael? He needs some money, he’s waiting at my place”) (Raphael being my old New York crony) (and more about Sonya later), I run in there and am about to turn around and swing out, when I see a cat looks like Raphael, wearing dark glasses, at the foot of the bandstand talking to a chick, so I run over (walking fast) (to avoid goofing the beat as the musicians play on) (some little tune like “All Too Soon”) I look right down to see if it’s Raphael, almost turning over, looking at him upsidedown, as he notices nothing talking to his girl, and I see it aint Raphael and cut out—So the trumpetplayer who’s playing his solo wonders what he sees, knowing me from before as always crazy, running in now to look upsidedown at someone then running out—I go running up to Chinatown to eat and come back to the session. Shrimp! Chicken! Spare ribs! I go down to Sun Heung Hung’s and sit there at their new bar drinking cold beers from an incredibly clean bartender who keeps mopping the bar and polishing glasses and even mops under my beer several times and I tell him “This is a nice clean bar” and he says “Brand new”—

  Meanwhile I watch for a booth to sit in—none—so I go upstairs and sit in a big curtained booth for families but they throw me outa there (“You cannot sit there, that’s for families, big parties”) (then they dont come and serve me as I wait) so I slonk back my chair and stomp downstairs fast on quiet feet and get a booth and tell the waiter “Dont let nobody sit with me, I like to eat alone” (in restaurants, naturally)—Shrimp in a brown sauce, curried chicken, and sweet and sour spare ribs, in a Chinese menu dinner, I eat it with another beer, it’s a terrific meal I can hardly finish—but I finish it clean, pay and cut out—To the now late afternoon park where the children are playing in sandboxes and swings, and old men are staring on benches—I come over and sit down.

  The little Chinese children are waging big dramas with sand—Meanwhile a father gathers up his three different little ones and heads them home—Cops are going into the jailhouse across the street. Sunday in San Francisco.