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Travels with Lizbeth

Page 29

by Lars Eighner


  I returned to Tucson for a charity reading and discovered an entirely different and more agreeable part of town that reminded me more than a little of Austin in the late Seventies and was much pleasanter than parts of Tucson I saw the first time. Beaders and other craftspersons squatted on the sidewalks and offered their wares. There was an organic grocery, an independent bookstore, and so forth, all within a few blocks. On the other hand, Benson, which had seemed nice in a quaint way, had experienced a burst of development that had obscured or replaced places I might have recognized.

  Jack Frost produced as John Summers and his true name was Vaughn Kincey. He died in his home in North Hollywood in 2010. He last made news with a claim, rejected by the courts, that Michael Jackson had stolen his idea for a black-cast version of Cinderella. I think Kincey himself believed this claim, and he did have many contacts within Jackson’s entourage. Kincey had been in adult entertainment since most of the industry was underground, and was a hustler to the last.

  I learned no more about the fiery car crash when Lizbeth and I camped along San Gabriel Canyon Road, north of Azusa. There must have been contemporary reports, but online archives do not go back that far. I have learned that this road is no stranger to spectacular crashes. At least some of the perceptions of peril I had at the time appear to have been well-founded.

  I do not know Tim’s ultimate fate, but I suspect the worst. Tim had, by chance I think, discovered me in the bar when Clint and I were camping in it. I had told Clint about Tim and in particular that Tim had informed on me when we were camped in the bamboo. Clint had a word with Tim outside the bar. I do not know what was said, but I never saw Tim again. Tim was involved with the Davidians (or so he claimed) when we camped in the bamboo, but it was a fractious group (hence the “Branch” in Branch Davidians). At any rate he seems to have still been living after the conflagration of the compound near Waco, whether he was ever associated with that faction or not.

  Billy (Robert Crane) told me Tim had managed to succeed in his dream of dating a cop, but later Clint reported that Tim was camped farther north on Shoal Creek. When, a few years later, I had a chance to inspect the camp that Clint indicated, it was trashed or torn up by storms. I found a few objects that convinced me Tim had been there, but I cannot now recall what the objects were. His camp was near a very well-established and extensive camp created by a man who had been there for many years. I suppose if Tim had been annoying, that man may have run Tim off, or worse. It has been fifteen years since I found Tim’s destroyed camp, and I have discovered nothing more of him since.

  The bar I called Sleazy Sue’s was known as Sally’s Apartment when it closed. It had been founded as The Apartment by B.K. “Bunch” Brittain (whom I have called Tiny) in the late Sixties. For several years the management of the bar was let to Houston-based interests who had a bar there called “Dirty Sally’s” and so renamed The Apartment. In a college town, history seldom goes back further than four years, so when Bunch terminated his arrangement with the Houston group, the name became Sally’s Apartment in deference to customers who had never known it as anything but Sally’s. The Apartment had not been the first gay bar in Austin, but it soon became the longest lived. Bunch founded and often presided over the Austin Tavern Guild and was a force for good in the early days of the gay community. Bunch was very flattered by the book. He had heart problems for many years and moved to New Orleans where there was an experimental treatment program that he thought might do him some good. We spoke many times, at length, by telephone. He died in March of 1995. I wrote a small eulogy in the form of a letter to the editor and was honored that it was inserted in the program of his memorial service.

  Ramblin’ Red’s was Oat Willie’s on 29th Street. Such shops are now, and at the time of my book, generally called “smoke shops” in observance of Texas laws designed to put them out of business. There is more history to Oat Willie’s than I can recount here, but it is the successor of The Austin Underground City Hall, and gained its name and mascot from underground cartoonist Gilbert Shelton (Wonder Wart-hog, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers) who was a partner in the original venture. The proprietor is Doug Brown, who was very helpful in many ways when I was camped in the area.

  The Grackle was The Austin Chronicle, now best known nationally as the founder and sponsor of South by Southwest (SXSW), an annual showcase and convention that has expanded from music into electronic games and motion pictures. I took the name (with her permission) from Sarah Bird’s fiction. It turned out that her fictional Grackle was based on a different Austin publication. I thought it would be mildly amusing to perpetuate the Grackle name, but I have since had inquiries from historians of the underground press who have turned up no information about The Grackle aside from Sarah’s books and mine. There was a Grackle bookstore for a while; it might have had a newsletter. Otherwise there never was a real publication with the name.

  Of Don, Daniel, Mr. Two Dogs, other homeless people I mentioned and people who gave me rides I know no more than what I have written.

  Jack Walden is F. Valentine Hooven III, an illustrator himself, who has produced several works about early gay cartoons and cartoonists including Tom of Finland: His Life and Times (Stonewall Inn Editions). Carl is Ken Bartley.

  During the time I stayed in Ken’s place near Santa Monica Boulevard and Western Avenue I was told Ken once had a bathhouse and I could see he was somewhat involved in a community clinic. Later I learned Ken had been an early activist in the gay community, including at the Gay Community Services Center as early as 1972. Ken’s health led him to retire to work in his family’s bakery after I left Los Angeles and, I suppose, his rooming house closed. I somehow gained the impression that the building subsequently was razed in the riots of 1992, but present-day photographs seem to suggest the building survived and has been extensively refurbished. When I was in the area, many buildings still bore alien-ese inscriptions from a time when the motion picture Alien Nation was made in the area. I cannot find a present-day photograph in which any of these markings survive.

  Steven Saylor, who collected my drafts, sent parts of it around, and acted as my literary agent, is a very successful mystery novelist whose best-known books are set in ancient Rome.

  After Clint, Lizbeth, and I removed from the bar I was never again much in that neighborhood. We had our ups and downs, but had them elsewhere. After the book came out, Doug Brown at Oat Willie’s told Clint that Lefty was looking for me. Lefty had learned of the book, but somehow thought I might be persuaded to return to watch his building for free. As I had thought, soon after I left vandals began to demolish the building, bit by bit, which must have hit Lefty very hard. Because of a lack of parking, subsequent enterprises (various restaurants and drive-throughs) were confined to the footprint of the original building. After Lefty died I heard from several of his neighbors who had recognized him in my book. They all commended me for disguising his name and disguised it shall remain.

  Clint counts our relationship as beginning the day we met, making it twenty-six years last year 2012. That suggests to me that so far as he is concerned, he foresaw that our fates were entwined from the first day. Being a little slower, I tend to count it from when he first moved in with me in the shack on Avenue B and to deduct the time we were separated by homelessness, making it more like twenty-three years. In any event, he did not sign on to be a public person and so remains “Clint.”

  My main regret is that I did not remove from Texas for good when I had the means to do so.

  Lars Eighner

  Austin, Texas

  2013

  Also by Lars Eighner

  Bayou Boy and Other Stories

  BMOC

  “[A] compelling narrative … An elevated manner of address and a rich vocabulary at odds with his impoverished state and deadbeat friends make Mr. Eighner a quirky guide into the homeless condition as he plunges on, through Miracle Miles, desert flea markets, and dusty truck stops, surviving en route the complex architectu
re of highway access ramps, subzero temperatures, psychotic companions, and an amazing encounter with the Texas welfare system.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  “Eighner’s account of his life on the streets is great writing, factual and declarative like George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, personal and affecting like The Diary of Anne Frank. And he is funny.… I found myself remembering its visceral details in my dreams.”

  —L.A. Style

  “Strongly recommended … His unique voice [is] part naive innocence, part eccentric fool. Remarkable.”

  —Library Journal

  “Lars Eighner has written a remarkable book, and introduced us to an unforgettably singular character—himself. His elegant, courtly language and wry sense of humor play a perfect counterpoint to the grubby misadventures he recounts. Comparisons to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Hamsun’s Hunger—as well as, of course, Orwell and Ackerly—leap to mind. Eighner is a witty and informative commentator (he knows a lot of odd, interesting stuff), and an astute, economical portraitist of various grifters, scroungers, pathological liars, and Good Samaritans who cross his path. This book will become a classic of down-and-out literature. But beyond that, Eighner belongs with the classical personal essayists, who can compel our attention on any subject, because of the idiosyncratic suppleness and sanity of his voice.”

  —Phillip Lopate

  “An unaffected, absorbing narrative. Eighner fills his pages with vivid descriptions, perceptive observations, humor, and a writing style that carries the reader easily and almost painlessly over troublesome issues.”

  —Booklist

  “In spare, unsensational and often elegant prose, Eighner tells how it was possible for him to live from what he gleaned in Dumpsters.… [He’s] a clearheaded observer of the world.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  LARS EIGHNER was born in Corpus Christi, Texas. In 1988 he and his dog, Lizbeth, became homeless and their experiences over the following three years are chronicled in this book. His work has appeared in Harper’s and The Threepenny Review, among many others, and has been widely reprinted. He now lives in Austin with his parter.

  TRAVELS WITH LIZBETH. Copyright © 1993, 2013 by Lars Eighner. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Parts of the introduction and chapters 1 and 2 and brief passages of several of the essays appeared in somewhat different form as “Travels with Lizbeth” in The Threepenny Review, Winter 1991.

  “On Dumpster Diving” first appeared in The Threepenny Review, Fall 1991, and was first published in book form in The Pushcart Prize XVII (Pushcart Press, 1992).

  “Phlebitis” first appeared in The Threepenny Review, Spring 1992.

  “Daniel” first appeared in The Threepenny Review, Winter 1993.

  Cover design by Kerri Resnick

  Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-03625-4 (trade paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-4668-3644-0 (e-book)

  e-ISBN 9781466836440

  First St. Martin’s Griffin Edition: December 2013

 

 

 


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