In the Shadow of the American Dream

by David Wojnarowicz

  1 small bag sunflower seeds

  1 gallon distilled water

  2 small cans peaches

  3 cheese cracker packages

  Went and got a haircut at a slightly redneck place. The guy said (when I got up), Oh you’re the one getting a haircut … ha ha … that’s a surprise. Usually the guy who really needs the haircut doesn’t get one and the guy with short hair does … ha ha … really that’s happened before.

  He gave me a classic short haircut while joking about the trials and tribulations of hitchhiking: You ever hear about the minister who picked up three girls who were hitchhiking and they held a knife to his throat and raped him? First he said, Sorry but I can’t, but when they held a knife to him he did it. It was written up in all the papers around here. You never heard about it?

  He charged four bucks for the cut. Also asked about hitching. How easy it was to hitch etc. I told him the best was as a pair—a girl and a guy, second best a guy, and that two guys represent hostility psychologically to motorists. His reply was, Well I guess one of you will have to start wearing a dress … ha ha.

  David lived in Brooklyn Heights in his early twenties and was hanging out with writers and artists, taking drugs, and going to downtown Manhattan nightclubs and gay bars. He started to take himself seriously as a writer at this time, and began collecting material for stories he called monologues.

  July 26–September 4, 1977

  Brooklyn Heights, New York

  Human Head

  July 26, 1977

  Woke up early with a phone call from Herbert Huncke. He was calling to ask me to please meet him at the courthouse on 100 Center Street. He had been busted on 14th Street around 3rd Avenue a couple of weeks ago. The neighborhood is all broken bottles, yellowed milk-colored glass marquees, and coffee shops which are hangouts for the night crowds—those that gather slowly in the daytime moving from doorways of pawn shops to used magazine stores to tobacco stores to dusty apartments all heatroached and sticky with summer weather. At night the whores come out along with pimps and everyone struts in high-heeled regalia under the glitter of a half-dead moon and fluorescent lights and lamp poles. Small kids with their trusty collarless dogs dash through it all. Avenues of pushers and between 3rd and 2nd Avenues—it’s hot like wall-to-wall body tension, like people waiting for a connection somewhere in that wall of sound and flash. The cops had been after one pusher for a while and were watching him through the window of a closed-down shop. Huncke bought four Valiums and felt a hand on his shoulder just after he dropped them into a little brown paper bag. He dropped the bag to his feet and said, Wha … What’s going on here?

  Two cops said, Okay, where’s that stuff you bought? I saw ya put it in the bag. Oh … here it is. Stooped down and picked the bag off the street. Huncke said, That’s not mine, I don’t know what you’re talking about. The cop said, Now ya wanna make it rough on yourself or what?

  By this time the other cop was relieving the pusher of bottle after bottle of pills, all colors and effects. They were booked and the cop said to Huncke that they didn’t want to prosecute him just the pusher.

  Met Huncke at the courthouse around 9:35 A.M. wandering down the hallway towards the room AP3, where his case was gonna be. We smoked cigarettes and hung around inside the courtroom all day long with a procession of cases in front of the judge. The judge was “lenient” as compared to most judges, but sentences were reeling out right and left along with fines. One girl who lifted a wallet stood holding her rosy black arms around her slim sides and traded back and forth with the legal aid lawyer with the sentence. She was caught up in it with no chance. Sixty days minimum. She didn’t want it so they had her sit in a chair to the side to think about it while more cases were heard. She sat down and looked over the courtroom with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen. I only saw a look like that on cattle before shot between the eyes with a hammer upstate on a slaughter.

  A lot of people paid their fines and took their sentences without any arguments. The prosecutor district attorney hung out leafing through volumes of papers inside folders recommending this or that for the defendants. He was blond and very handsome but looked like he was straight out of the colonial-style suburbs of Long Island where lawn sprinklers whizz—whizz all day around vast columnar houses and little kids run through shady quiet streets oblivious to anything even faintly resembling the dome of New York City.

  Huncke’s legs jumped up and down and his fingers twisted around in half-knots from tension. Periodically he rushed downstairs to the bathroom or out in the hall with me for a cigarette. His legal aid lawyer didn’t show up once all day and during lunch recess Huncke frantically called his office and asked other legal aid lawyers to give this guy a message that he was waiting for the man.

  The tension was so unbelievable I wanted to put my fist through a wall. Poor Huncke and I were dancing in our seats, twisting right and left with apprehension.

  The lawyer showed around 4 o’clock and Huncke showed him the two letters—one from a methadone clinic he was in at this time, and the other from a professor of English in New Jersey. Both had good effect on the judge and the district attorney who let Huncke plead disorderly conduct and let him off. I rubbed his back and hugged him in the hallway and we crash-stumbled around trying to get out of the fucking building as soon as possible. We walked over the Brooklyn Bridge ’cause we were broke and Huncke borrowed five dollars from a neighbor in the building and slipped me one dollar saying, Here’s a fin for ya.

  At lunch recess we walked around through Chinatown with Huncke showing me all the old eating joints and telling me how the Chinese gamblers gamble all day and young whores’ll come up and each gambler will take a break and fuck for a while—ten dollars a shot—and then return to the game. We shared a couple of oranges and a candy bar, and I bought him a Coca-Cola.

  The sunlight was dazzling and beautiful, almost unreal against the shady streets of Brooklyn Heights—freedom in different measures after such a day. I was walking Huncke down State Street on the way home and I was slightly ripped from the smoke at Ondine’s and Louis’s, and that mixed with the weariness of the day brought the sunlight broken lenses and center crossroads traffic light sky into a swirl looking up. Feels real good, I said to him. Yeah man, it feels good, he answered.

  Up at Ondine’s Huncke asked me to come up ’cause he needed to hit on Louis for some of his piss. He had done two Valiums the night before court to get some sleep. He was real nervous and it didn’t help. Wednesday he was going to have to give a urine sample at the methadone clinic and the only thing that should’ve shown was meth, not Valium. Louis was slightly ticked that Huncke had called me up to come down to the courthouse and didn’t ask him to come. Huncke assured him that he did it only ’cause the wait would’ve driven him up the wall. I agreed knowing how it would’ve felt to Louis after the third hour. Louis could only piss a little into the bottle so I pissed the rest and a couple of drops of methadone was added to make it look cool.

  July 28, 1977

  Had a hopelessly beautiful dream—whole landscapes sliding by at rapid pace, retarded child imagery, lots of body movement, embracing. One old guy reappearing quite often in the frames, married and exuding all kinds of strange sexual energies. As soon as a guy appears in my dreams it seems I am faintly aware of the sexual currents inherent therein. Nothing terribly physical came of it all but the dream was one of the first I’ve had that when I woke up I recalled no violent fears or pressure of death and anxieties floating within it in the ropy passages of light and dark. It was like a night on the grand calliope of Breton’s Amusement Park—something more soothing than the sexual Asbury Park of my seven-year-old mind.

  July 30, 1977

  What will I think of all this scribble ten years, thirty years from now in the change of history, where will Jim be or John or me in relation to all these activities? It’s the starry mirror of the eyes’ slow revolution to the impossible or fictional future then reeling back again to the past. F
ZZAMMM …

  August 1, 1977

  Met Huncke after work, dropped over to Arlene’s house where he was staying. He was wrapped up in a bathrobe with white flesh coming out from the folds of cloth. He made us a vodka and grapefruit drink and we talked about Louis and the book. He said Burroughs and Ginsberg were to write notes for the back cover of the book and he would do the intro! I told him about Louis and Ondine trying to fix me up with the girl in Brooklyn. We were eating pitted black cherries and vanilla ice cream. I explained that I slept more with men than women at this point in my life. He said he understood and before I knew it he was calling it an evening. He repaid twelve dollars of the original twenty-two. I was under the impression that he owed me seventeen dollars, not twenty-two. Since he had no change of a twenty, he gave me twelve. Don’t know if I’ll see the rest and at this point don’t care. I like Huncke both in an awestruck way: it’s been great meeting him after reading stuff by and about him; and he is a kind of model in roles that I form my life after, things that directly influence me in directions. I also like him personally: his storytelling abilities are almost unmatched. But I’m not sure what he thinks of me. I’m sometimes like this naïve dude who’s very easily taken, not by him necessarily but apt to be taken by anybody who has the desire to do that. I don’t know if he looks at me that way, if I should assert myself at times and not do certain things. The things I see as going along to make a strong friendship, someone else could see as foolhardy or soft.

  August 13, 1977

  Jim McLaughlin, Louis Rivera, Dennis Deforge, and I went to a bar on Christopher Street. A miniature Ponderosa Ranch—style place with bleached cow skulls on the wall and a horse hitching post in the center of the room. Little lightbulbs flickering all over the place which was shadowy dark. One leather guy with muscle-bound chest and belly protruding from suit of leather with straps and white pants low sexy the belly kept moving through the crowd like one moves through a thick fog or water of a flood—looked like an SS agent with marble eyes and abandon wiped across his lips.

  Met a guy there. Had noticed him looking in my direction but he didn’t seem to want to approach with Jim, Louis, and Dennis around so when they split I stayed behind and talked with him.

  We went for a walk around the Village near Soho—Houston Street—West 4th. His name was Ken Sterling. I liked him immediately, can’t tell exactly what it was but a mixture of self-assureness. He was handsome in a way that people are handsome but not centered on it—one who doesn’t spend time exercising good looks is extremely attractive in itself. We ended up at a cafe drinking cappuccino and a thunderstorm broke out. He finished college at nineteen. Just turned thirty years old. Was interested in linguistics, self-taught five languages, and currently studying Chinese. We went to his place in the West Village—a small two-room place with two small dogs, Electra and [?], a broken frame containing a print, an old washed color of North American Indian basket lid weaving of frog. Showed me a book on linguistics that had references to Aztec codices that had been banned by the Catholic Church. Burroughs had talked about such incidents in The Job and Book of Breething, I think. We lay down on a small mat/foam pad half under a desk and he read part of a poem by some guy twenty years old. It was quite good language smooth and rounded, rough in spots but not as hindrance. We turned out lights and made love without actually going the route for a fun time. The man is sensitive as hell. I can feel it through his touch and eyes and skin surfaces. Even without getting sexually involved to a high degree he was satisfying to be with. Someone I feel I could spend time with.

  August 14, 1977

  We woke up and walked the dogs and talked a bit then went to breakfast. We had omelets and coffee and I found a mosquito spread-eagled on the corner of my eggs and after hem and hawing we sent it back. The waitress came over and said, Oh I didn’t realize they were even in season …

  Ken would reach beneath the table and rub my leg or hand occasionally without much forethought—real natural and it was exciting. Never before have I been relaxed like that and able to accept the touch of a man who was also a lover in public—even beneath a table. I just didn’t give a shit what anyone thought. It felt warm and nice. A friend of his came in who is into Gertrude Stein a great deal and was very gentle in voice and thought. Quoted lines from Stein that I could only paraphrase: A river in its rush and turn can become muddy but in its course of flowing the mud gradually settles and the water runs clear again.

  This fella had recently broken up with a lover and said this sentence was like his life. He was all calm and had accepted the outcome of the relationship although the love pains were evident. Who can I read Gertrude Stein with now that we are no longer together? He had a marvelous voice for Stein’s work.

  Ken and I walked through the Village and Soho checking out bookstores. Ken bought a copy of Ezra Pound’s The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry and another book on Chinese root segments of characters. He walked me to the subway and we kissed before parting. I literally moved home through fine gray filaments of sound and shapes, emotions running like flashes to past and projected future.

  August 15, 1977

  Ken called me at work. I had smoked a good deal with two other employees and was rather ripped. Felt tight in the head as I spoke to him because I had been thinking of him all day and really wanted to call but felt I should cool down and take it as it moves, like no frantic feelings, was excited hearing from him. Plans to get together Wednesday night. Will call him at eleven Tuesday night (tomorrow).

  Stayed up last night until five A.M. rewriting “Cutting through the South,” put in a quote from “Christ Is Alive in the Bum Sleeping in His Piss on a Sidewalk” by Plymell in the beginning under title of story. Made the story much more personal with prose—strange beautiful brain stuff—was half dead to finish it.

  Got up at 8:30. Called work at 9:55. Was so tired and out of it that instead of squeezing my nose to pretend sickness I wrapt my hand around my throat, squawkin’…

  Ken called. We talked for two hours on the phone. I was out of it having had no sleep at all. Hamburger was on the stove. We talked about hamburger burning up on a stove but I didn’t get up to shut it off, kept talking about different stuff. I tried to explain the editorial qualities of REDM but fucked it up and blab-blabbed, felt terrible that I had come out sounding like personality judge. But it was really a fear that people would think that we have no notion of good writing ’cause some stuff was raw or rough, can’t worry about it any longer really.

  Met Ken in the evening, went to fantastic Animation Film Show. Ken touched me throughout the film putting hand over mine massaging it, his arm around my shoulders. The light on the screen alternately plunging the audience into discreet darkness and illuminating them/us. I felt a variety of changes in my head, at times extremely self-conscious of the moment other times feeling fine about it and glad of the changes I was working in.

  We went to Sandalino’s for salad and I talked a bit afterwards as we walked down Bleecker about what I felt as far as open affection in public places, that it was new to me, scared me a bit at times but that the embarrassment or fear was good for me to go through/handle/work with. Immersing oneself in one’s fear produces opposite results—that area where it produces neither anxiety or ego-excitement. Don’t know what the fuck to say about all this—

  September 1977

  New York

  Human Head II

  First-draft poems and other stuff …

  … While I searched continually to find the place and the formula.

  September 10, 1977

  Walked through Soho and over to Christopher Street, went to the big pier past the old truck lines and Silver Dollar Café/Restaurant where I spent many a night on the streets. Funny I see it all different—no longer a rush of (many) sad weird feelings hanging out in old areas. Feel real good today—kinda sad—good like a backwards glance over everything and seeing it all as okay and good vibes for the future it seems. Walked onto the p
ier and sat at the very end with my feet dangling like Huck Finn from his eternal raft with waves plash-plashing beneath every once in a while a great SWASH of water from a passing party boat or tug. Sunlight drift over New Jersey cliffs illuminates sparse architecture and great warehouses and piers and ships all shapeless from the blinding show of sun making it all look like India with orange postal card skies and you expect a huge herd of cows to be flat-walking over the river surface—where’s the Taj Mahal!?

  Came home and walked the Promenade a couple of times, the night sky clouds still slightly illuminated. Ghost whites beyond the night (sunset long gone) and met some fella named Bob walking through the streets a commercial artist and also artist/artist in the personal sense. He was out for a break in work—working in his own apartment/studio on some whiskey ads for Monday morning. We yakked awhile before retiring. He was wonderfully honest about his head and feelings—nice nice evenings of which I hope there will be more. I’m gonna get into weight lifting with him on Tuesdays and Thursdays 8-10 o’clock. He’s got a healthy build and was previously like me in terms of skinniness so finally I’ll have a chance to work out without hitting some gym.

  Coming home on Montague Street. I stopped by the homemade ice cream parlor and ordered a vanilla-banana scoop with whip cream—sugar addict’s delight. Real sweet girl behind the counter now recognizes me in fact two of them do. Said hi and all that and gave me a huge sundae for 85¢. NICE DAY—

  September 19, 1977

  SEEING MYSELF SEEING MYSELF SITTING BY AN OPEN WINDOW

  When dawn comes on after a night that has spent itself by the window, dark ships ease into the frame of sky taking the place of clouds. Upside down they are sailing on and on toward an imagined horizon where the seekers of love stand to the side of the curtains peering out. There is great mystery, one of foreign soils and oceanic breath disappearing beyond the fine line of water and sky. We are growing steadfastly, fingernails and hair and subtle gray curves in the head. Lessons come in all forms from every direction, out on the bench by the river an old man sits swayed by neither water nor air, yet from this porthole several stories up I am seized by a continent of my own making.