The Unknown Kerouac

by Jack Kerouac

  CHAPTER TWO

  DENNISON WOKE UP WITH A START at two o’clock the following Sunday afternoon. He squinted at the wrist watch on the chair beside the bed. It was two o’clock of a Sunday afternoon in August, of that he could be sure. Sleepy or not, only the facts interested him. He got up, a tall spindly man in his underwear, and began the day by pulling on his trousers, seersucker trousers they were, and scratching his head.

  Then the buzzer rang again. That’s what had awakened him so abruptly. He went with a businesslike air to the button and pushed it . . . That was Dennison’s life for you, a continual ringing of the buzzer. People flocked to him like lost sheep. Insecure Americans they were, coming up to this man of disturbing security at all hours of the day and night . . . They wanted to make sure that they were still there, for Dennison proved it by speaking to them and paying attention to their complaints . . .

  Dennison had his shirt on when his visitor walked in. This visitor was Danny Borman. A husky, rather tall, Italian of indeterminate age. He glided into the room with a charming smile on his face and said, “Oh I’m sorry if I got you up . . .”

  “Nothing at all, Danny, I would have slept all day if you hadn’t come . . .”

  They went on like that for a whole minute while Dennison dressed and combed his hair . . .

  Well, now, it seemed things were not going well with Danny Borman the past two weeks. He was a shipyard worker; he couldn’t get on a contracting job where all the overtime pay was, and didn’t want to tie himself down somewhere else. He told all this to Dennison, who listened, as always, with that gratifying intelligence that made you certain of the purpose of your visit—whatever it was.

  Of course, Danny Borman was not exactly the type who needed Dennison—at least, not in a vague way. He had come for a definite purpose. Dennison suspected a touch, a loan, was in the offing. Danny sat still for a moment, saying nothing . . . There was always that cruel furtive look in his eyes. A gleam in his eye, too, suggesting unspeakable notions, such as bayonetting dogs when no one was watching, at night somewhere . . . That was Danny. But a very polite person, altogether.

  Finally he said, “Will, I’d like to ask a favor of you.”

  “Yeh, what?”

  “I’d like to borrow your sap.”

  Dennison had been expecting something far worse. He shrugged and said, “Sure, Danny, glad to oblige.” He went over to the bureau and fished out a black-jack from under a pile of shirts. Dennison was thinking what a contrast this Danny was to Phillip and Al, who would never lift a finger to get money for themselves so long as they could mooch off someone else. Danny, in a way, now, was a lot like Agnes O’Rourke—he had enterprise. Altogether a charming Sunday afternoon call. Dennison wiped off the black-jack carefully with a silk handkerchief and handed it to Danny.

  “Watch yourself,” he said.

  “You know me. I’m always careful.”

  Danny got up. Dennison asked him which way he was going; he was going uptown; Dennison was planning to visit Al this afternoon, in which case he would ride uptown with Danny. At the door, Danny said, “After you.”

  Dennison placed a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “Please, I am at home here.” That was pretty high tone and Danny just had to walk out first, he being a stickler for etiquette, having read Emily Post from cover to cover . . . he realized Dennison’s consummate finesse, there. The next time, perhaps when he brought back the black-jack, there might be vouchsafed him an opportunity to dart home an equally refined touché. Danny had that on his mind the remainder of the day.

  They walked along the street, in the hot afternoon sun. On Seventh Avenue scores of young women strolled this way and that, looking for security, for a man, that is . . . In the subway, there they were by the scores. Many of them found Danny Borman attractive: he and his pin stripe double breasted suit, the light blue shirt, the blue polkadot bow tie, the well groomed hair. Well, if they wanted security, a man, there he was! Dennison, now, with his musty stoop and dreary factual expression . . . not so alluring a catch! Danny Borman mopped his brow with a perfumed handkerchief.

  “I’m mighty grateful, Will,” he was shouting over the roar of the subway train. “I’m in a kind of a fix, and this will come in handy.”

  “Not at all,” Will returned kindly.

  Danny got off at Times Square, waving goodbye. There he went, through the crowd of Sunday strollers, off to Times Square. From the center of the city he could pick any direction he chose, any person to follow . . .

  It was a beautiful day for strolling, in spite of the heat . . . Now we none of us knew what the relation was between Dennison and Danny Borman. Any cop on the street corner can tell us as much about it as anyone . . . Danny was just one of those countless unidentifiable individuals that roam New York City, year in and year out. They’ll never give you their address, or if they do, they’ve already moved: that’s a fact. You’re never sure what their names are: anyway, they might not have given their actual names away. People like this, when they died, when they by some hook or crook got to Bellevue Morgue, were always being described in the newspapers all the more vaguely than ever. The police records are full of such things . . . No ant in a dark cave under the root of a tree in winter, can boast of such anonymity.

  We only knew that Dennison had met Danny Borman somewhere, somehow—as bartenders do meet people, all kinds of them. Only Dennison was not a bartender all the time . . . Come to think of it, Dennison himself we hardly knew . . . He was all the more anonymous because you couldn’t recognize him in a crowd: he looked like a bank clerk, like Heinrich Himm­ler. At least Danny Borman could be recognized in a crowd!

  Yet they had met, two perfect strangers to everyone, and had known each other for awhile, as now, in Manhattan. There it was. They parted at Times Square and Dennison rode on up to 50th Street, where he got out and had himself a bit of breakfast in a restaurant.

  Then he walked to 52nd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, to where Ramsay Allen lived. It was a second floor walk-up apartment, with a French window at one end looking over a leafy and dirty backyard. On the wall, over a huge filthy fireplace full of cigarette butts, was a watercolor of a young man in bathing trunks, sitting underwater, with a finger against his cheek looking hammy and pensive, all done in mauve and light blue and pink. One of Allen’s artist friends. There was a long easy chair in the room . . . the only comfortable chair in the whole of Mrs. Frascati’s rooming house. Half of Mrs. Frascati’s tenants were in Allen’s room at the moment, plus some people from the East Side. Dennison walked into a den of smoke and talk . . .

  Hugh Maddox stood by the French window looking at the dirty backyard and scowling over his latest problem. Jane Bole and Tom Sullivan, the East Side people, sat on the couch with Ramsay Allen and a girl by the name of Bunny. Bunny was in love with Ramsay Allen. A Boston girl, from a Good Family, who claimed to be a kleptomaniac and was therefore absolved of all past or future thefts. In the long easy chair sat Agnes O’Rourke; on the arm of the chair was Della Packard. Della was an experienced Lesbian at twenty, with two or three soul-searing affairs behind her, and four suicide attempts. . . . We knew all this because she talked about it constantly, with an insane egocentricity.

  Sitting in a chair by himself in the corner was Chris Rivers. This fellow never took a bath nor cleaned out his room nor brushed his teeth, and there he sat grinning, showing his teeth covered with green scum, a silly sort of a person smiling and grinning idiotically in periodical turns around the room, like a lighthouse beam . . .

  Seven people altogether . . . nine with Ramsay Allen and Dennison. Three of them lived in Mrs. Frascati’s . . . Hugh Maddox on the top floor, next to Chris Rivers’ astoundingly dirty room; and Agnes O’Rourke, on the floor below that, in a large room completely unfurnished except for a couch in the middle of the room and an enormous bookshelf with one book in it.

  Dennison had no place to sit down. He waved to everybody and went to the French window to talk to Hugh Maddox.r />
  Hugh Maddox was a longshoreman, an Irishman about thirty years old, who came from a rich family, it was said, but who was no longer in contact with them.

  “What’s new?” Dennison asked him.

  He said the F.B.I. was looking for him. Dennison was surprised.

  “It must be about the draft . . . that’s the only thing I can think of. They were asking about me down at Pier 32. Nobody knows my address down there.”

  “Well what is your draft status?”

  “I don’t know exactly. You see, I gave them an address care of somebody else and this girl moved after that, and when they came to my new address the janitor thought they were from the finance company and told them he never heard of me. Then I moved out of that place without leaving a forwarding address because I owed a month’s rent.”

  “What was your original classification?”

  “It was 3A but my wife and I are divorced since then. That’s two years ago.”

  “Well what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going down and see them. No use trying to get away from those guys. I may get three years out of this.”

  “Oh just explain to them it’s all a mistake.”

  “It’s not so simple as that. Jesus I don’t know what the fuck’s going to happen.”

  Dennison sighed. “What you need is a lawyer,” he said.

  “Yeah, and pay him with what.”

  The conversation was taking a turn Dennison didn’t quite like.

  Hugh Maddox scowled down on the yard. He was a slightly built man with dark hair, blue eyes . . . perpetually swearing, too. Another indecipherable individual of Manhattan. No cop on the street corner could place him either—perhaps only the F.B.I.

  All these people in back of them were putting up a continual wall of talk and smoke . . . Someone, Agnes O’Rourke to be exact, got up and said, “Well I have to go now.”

  At this Ramsay Allen jumped up and said, “Well if you must.” Everybody laughed, Dennison included. Jane Bole dragged Tom Sullivan to his feet and said “Come along dear.” These two lived somewhere in the East Forties and spent each Sunday afternoon making a round of visits throughout the city . . . They had quite an itinerary . . . Ramsay Allen knew of no way to get off their route . . . They kept coming: a pair of perfectly dull people, trying to achieve a vague synthesis between respectability and criminal sophistication: they both had police records and you heard about that all the time.

  Everybody started to leave, grudgingly. Ramsay Allen went to the sink and busied himself with what he hoped might seem an intimate toiletry. Chris Rivers finally emerged from his corner and approached Dennison.

  “Hi Will, how is it?”

  “Fine, Chris.”

  “Say by the way, could you see your way clear to lend me a quarter.”

  “Why certainly.” Dennison fished in his pocket for a quarter. Chris sidled away throwing back a fishy grin. He could never work himself up to ask anyone for more than fifty cents: he didn’t work at all either. No one knew anything about him. He left alone, going off to spend his twenty five cents, out on the sunny afternoon street. You’d see him stroll this afternoon, too. Perhaps he liked to stare at those Sunday afternoon women who roamed around looking for prince charming. There he was!

  Jane Bole and Tom Sullivan left; they were going to visit someone else, next on their route. Bunny sulked because Allen hadn’t asked her to stay . . . She stood in the doorway awhile, as Allen went on with his business at the sink: then she was gone . . . Everybody left but Hugh Maddox.

  He stayed about ten minutes rehashing his problem and looking gloomy, and swearing up and down.

  Al said, “Well I guess it will turn out allright.”

  Hugh said he didn’t know what was going to happen. “And don’t say anything about this to Mrs. Frascati. I owe her a month’s rent.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  Hugh left after awhile.

  Allen closed the door with a flourish. “Thank God,” he said, “a little peace at last. Why, those people woke me up at twelve o’clock and they’ve been here ever since.”

  A very popular person, was Ramsay Allen. Everybody wanted him to pay attention to them, this charming Virginian. To add to his charm was the fact that he paid no attention to anyone but Phillip Tourian. As to Dennison . . . Allen regarded him like a brother. They’d met years ago in a bar where Dennison was bartender: they kept in touch. You saw them together sitting around and talking like two old men, tired and full of fine, almost imperceptible humor. They had a habit of cocking their heads to one side. It had all begun in a bar years ago . . . They regarded each other with that weary yet considerate way, like someone’s uncles. One would leave town, say Allen, to follow the wild Phillip . . . A year or so later, they’d get together again. “Well,” Dennison would say, “what’s been going on in your life?” They regarded each other’s lives with dignity.

  “Now I want to tell you about the amazing thing that happened last night,” Allen was now saying.

  Dennison rubbed his hands together and said “Yes?”

  “Well, when we got up on the roof Phillip rushed over to the edge like he was going to jump off, and I got worried and yelled at him, but he suddenly stopped and dropped a glass. You heard it?”

  “Yes, and I heard the woman . . .”

  “I went over and stood on the edge with him and said ‘What’s the matter?’ and started to put my arm around him. Then Phil turned around and hugged me, very passionately I must say, and dragged me down with him on the roof . . .”

  Allen paused. He watched Dennison in suspense.

  “I must say,” the latter said, “it looks like you’re getting there after four years. Well go on—what happened then?”

  “He hugged me several times, and for awhile I thought he was going to kiss me, then suddenly he pushed me away and got up.”

  “Yeah, well what happened then?”

  “Well, then Phil said ‘Let’s jump off the roof together shall we?’ And I said ‘What’s the point in that?’ and he said ‘Don’t you understand? After this we have to . . . it’s the only thing to do. Either that or go away’ . . .”

  “What did he mean by that? Go away where?”

  “I don’t know. Anywhere I guess.”

  “Why didn’t you say okay dearie, let’s fly to Newark

  tonight.”

  Allen was very serious about all this. Dennison, for his part, had been hearing this sort of thing ever since he’d met Al. He was accustomed to it . . . He could jest about it and Allen could understand . . . They were men of dissimilar tastes, of course.

  Allen was considering the latest remark. “Well I didn’t have money for one thing . . .”

  Dennison jumped up from the long easy chair. “Oh you didn’t have any money hey?” He started pacing around the room: he was now jesting for fair: there was something pathetically urgent about Al’s story: his only proper response, then, was to circumscribe the trembling nerve Allen was holding out to be touched, and laugh at it from a rear position. “Do you expect to have money sitting on your ass? Go to work in a shipyard. Hold up a store . . . Here you’ve been waiting for three years for this opening and now—”

  “Well I’m not sure I want to.”

  “You’re not sure you want to what?”

  “Go somewhere with him now. I’m afraid there would be a reaction and I wouldn’t accomplish anything . . .”

  Dennison went over to the fireplace and banged his hand down on the mantelpiece. Now he was turning his back on the trembling nerve. With dignity. He turned, as he had to. “So you want to wait. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow—waiting till you’re dead. Do you know what I think?” He squinted at Allen, showing his teeth, like a policeman grilling a suspect . . . “I think this whole Phillip complex is like the Christian heaven, an illusion born of a need—” he spread his arms eloquently—“floating around in some nebulous misty Platonic nowhere, always just around the corner like Prosperity but never
here and now. You’re afraid to go away with him, you’re afraid to put it to a test because you know it won’t work . . .”

  Allen flinched and shut his eyes, and drew back in his chair, crying “No! No!”

  Dennison had managed to return the trembling nerve to its proper place inside Allen. So now he sat down and said “But seriously Al, if you did go somewhere you might succeed in making him, after all that’s what you’ve been after all these three years.”

  “No, you don’t understand at all. That isn’t what I really want.”

  Dennison jumped up again . . . the nerve kept coming out tremulously. He sneered magnificently: “Oh so this is a case of Platonic love, hey? Nothing so coarse as physical contact, hey?”

  “No, I do want to sleep with him. But I want his affection more than anything. And I want it to be permanent . . .”

  “God give me patience! Patience I need!” This is what Dennison said, tearing at his hair. Perhaps now he wasn’t jesting anymore, though it was hard to tell. “Now listen, I’m going to say it again and I’m going to say it slow. Phillip isn’t queer . . . Anything permanent is impossible. Unless of course it’s just friendship you want.” He walked over to the French window and stood with his hands clasped behind him like a captain on the bridge of a battleship.

  Al said “I want him to love me.”

  Dennison turned around and took a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and started digging at a cavity. “You’re nuts,” he said.

  “I know he’ll come around to my way of thinking in time.” Allen sat on the couch saying this, abject and pensive.

  Dennison came over and pointed the toothpick at Al’s chest. “Get yourself some scratch and he’ll come around tonight.”