The History of Bones

by John Lurie

  This is crazy to me. The promoter never lets the musicians drive. It just doesn’t seem safe, but Zummo is driving and he, for sure, isn’t going to crash. I am fucked up, been up for days. But I am responsible for the van, even if Zummo is driving. I am trying to pay attention as he drives.

  We’re on the highway, and this must be some kind of a flashback to the month before, but I see a giant anteater hop the railing and come running across the Swiss highway.

  I scream, “Look out! The anteater!”

  I don’t think anyone in the band even made a comment.*

  * The World’s Longest Footnote

  They Are Trying to Disappear Me. Good Luck with That.

  When I was nine, I was on a Little League team, Shebro Builders.

  They gave us each a uniform, which even at nine I knew was a wool piece of shit. It had “Shebro Builders” written across the chest and my number on the back. It itched like mad.

  I would never play. I was nine, and the kids who played were eleven and twelve.

  I would come home to our place on Elm Street in Worcester, in my itchy uniform, and inevitably run into Mr. Pasowitz, the superintendent of the building, who lived on the first floor.

  Mr. Pasowitz was a large, strapping man. Almost handsome in a Burt Lancaster kind of way, but his face was a bit more swollen. I think he drank a lot. Kind of Burt Lancaster if he had been hit in the face with a board several times.

  He would see me in my uniform and ask, in his booming voice, “How did you do today?”

  I would say, “I hit a home run!” Though I had not even stepped to the plate.

  It felt horrible to lie like that. It made me feel creepy inside, but every week when I came home and he saw me, I would say, “I hit a home run!”

  After a while he seemed bored with this response, so I said, “I hit two home runs!”

  But he knew I was lying. I knew he knew I was lying. He knew I knew he knew I was lying. It just felt awful.

  I was nine years old. Jim Jarmusch is now sixty-seven. His uniform must really itch.

  Sometimes the bullshit rises so high that people don’t seem to see it. Like fish don’t see water.

  I didn’t want to take a left turn here. I wanted to keep the flow of the book. I want this book to be real and honest but not be ugly or negative where it doesn’t have to be. As much as possible to have it filled with love. I really didn’t want to allow someone else’s pathetic bullshit to influence what goes into the book, so I have made it a footnote. A long footnote.

  A string of things happened, right as I was writing this chapter, that were just really too much, and I felt that I had to address them. Felt phony not to.

  I knew the Barbican Centre was about to have an enormous show of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work.

  A few months before, I had been asked to speak with two young women concerning the show and the program they were working on. I usually say no to this stuff but felt like they should speak to someone who actually knew Jean-Michel, who had firsthand insights into the person. His history is getting out of hand, from the Schnabel movie onward. And in a way I felt like I owed him that much, to try to set the record straight where I could.

  Jean-Michel was for real.

  All the time. He was for real. And it is really awful to see these people who are very much the opposite of real legitimatizing themselves by pretending to have been close to him or understand him.

  I went to look up the Jean-Michel show and saw that it was happening. I sent an email off to the Barbican lady and said, “You were going to run my quotes by me, before you published your program.”

  It honestly hadn’t occurred to me that they hadn’t used anything I had said. I had given them over two hours of my time, and I think I really shed some light on him in a way that no one else could have possibly done. What it was like to be with him from a very young age and watch him transform.

  But they had not used anything from me. That was strange, but okay, no big deal.

  But then, in conjunction with the Jean-Michel show, I see that they are screening a Jarmusch movie, Permanent Vacation, like this is connected and pertinent somehow.

  They are also having several evenings of concerts under the banner The Music of Jim Jarmusch!

  To advertise The Music of Jim Jarmusch! there is a photo of me, from the movie Stranger Than Paradise, a movie made from an idea by me.

  I don’t know how many movies Jarmusch has made, but I believe I must have scored at least half of them.

  So they are using my photo, from a movie that was my idea, for a night of my music, and my name is not mentioned anywhere?

  I feel like I have to hurry up and get this book published before Jim Jarmusch gets hold of it and puts it out as his own memoir.

  What seems insanely rude is that the Barbican, who I was in touch with, never informed me that they were playing my music in several nights of concerts.

  To be candid, I am not bothered that the Barbican did not use any of my quotes in their program, but I am angered because places like the Barbican should be having enormous shows of my paintings. Of course, the art world will not get too close to an actual artist until they are dead and safely not moving. Just like what is happening with Jean-Michel or David Wojnarowicz now. It is all part of the Conspiracy to Maintain Mediocrity.

  I looked into the music thing further. The musical director, Coulter?, who was putting it together, said in an interview something along the lines of “John Lurie’s music was not particularly interesting to us. We liked that he played with Marc Ribot and Naná Vasconcelos but otherwise we weren’t interested.”

  So my name is finally mentioned, to insult me.

  What in the holiest of human fucks is going on with this?

  Okay, even though Jean-Michel used to follow me around like he was my kid brother, and I certainly had a great deal to do with who he became, I don’t want to glom onto him like so many people are doing. It is sick, but true is true; this shit is becoming like Stalin rewriting history and it appears they are trying to disappear me.

  Still. I was going to let all this go. Honest, I was really going to let it go. It seemed like a negative thing to pursue it.

  Let me work on what is positive. I will finish chapter 14 and then go work on this painting I have going. Concentrate on what is positive.

  The thing that made me just throw down the towel and say, “Oh fuck, this cannot stand,” is how Permanent Vacation is advertised:

  Famously, when Jarmusch was filming in a flat on East Third Street, the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat took to using the set as a crash pad. “Every time we did a reverse angle, I’d have to drag Jean-Michel in his sleeping bag under the camera so he’d be out of the shot,” reported the director. “He’d grunt and go back to sleep.”

  And what Jarmusch is saying in interviews is even worse and more untrue. He is saying things like he supported the young artist by allowing him to sleep on the set.

  Jean-Michel, on and off, for about two years, used to sleep at my apartment.

  Jim was making his student film Permanent Vacation. And basically, as a favor, I let him store the equipment at my apartment. It was not his set.

  Jean-Michel was not even there the day Jarmusch shot the one scene they did at my apartment, where Chris Parker is dancing.

  Jim and his NYU film crew needed to go through equipment and maybe change reels or something like that one day, and Jean-Michel was there sleeping on the floor. Jim had never met him prior to that and Jean-Michel never woke up.

  Jean-Michel was plopped in the middle of the way. At one point, eventually they decided it would be easy to drag him in the sleeping bag to the side of the room.

  What really offends me now, as it offended me then, was Jim’s NYU colleagues’ being so put out and somewhat disgu
sted that they had to deal with and touch this “homeless person.” Jim has a pretty good heart with things like this, he wasn’t disgusted, but still, he didn’t know Jean-Michel then, and now he gloats about it? Like he was supportive of the young Basquiat. HOLY HUMAN FUCK make it stop.

  As much disdain as I have for Jarmusch, I feel sorry for the guy. Can you imagine what it must be like to invent stories about yourself to vindicate who you are? I remember how I felt with my Shebro Builders uniform.

  It felt pretty awful.

  15

  Gaijin Sex Monster

  After a few months, my on and off girlfriend María moved to L.A. She rented a little house on Hammond with a dry backyard and a lemon tree. The house used to belong to TV’s Grandma Walton. You could imagine her in the kitchen with an apron on, or maybe I am seeing Granny Clampett. María wanted me to come out, so I booked a solo concert and went out for a week or so.

  Jean-Michel met me at the airport with a limo and insisted that we stop at Fatburger. He was in love with Fatburger. Jean-Michel was staying at the house of his art dealer, Larry Gagosian. We snorted some coke and smoked some of Willie Mays’s strong pot. Then I practiced while Willie painted on the floor. I was doing this chromatic thing that slowed down and got to a whisper in the higher register and then came back down. What I was doing on the horn was really nice. I had been practicing a bunch for the solo concert and had a really good hold on the horn. It was doing that pot thing where a phrase of music can tickle a spot in your brain. Willie looked up from his painting and gave me a big grin and nodded. That grin was amazing. Had such an approving warmth in it.

  He had that thing some babies have, that thing where they look at you and it seems they are seeing right through you. If you are doing something phony or there is something phony in your soul, the baby will see it. If you are doing something real and right, they will see that, too, and beam with delight.

  He was amazingly powerful and could make me feel insecure in a way that no one else ever could. And now that there was all this money flying around and I was so broke, he was kind of ugly in how he was always putting that in my face.

  But then I was playing and I was really hitting this thing, this beautiful strange thing, and there was that grin. I could be playing that music for a million other people and no one would grasp it like he did.

  I fell asleep on the couch. I suppose it was the fat from Fatburger being pushed out by the cocaine, but when I woke up, there was a pool of grease sitting on the right side of my stomach, perfectly mapping out my liver.

  With the fame and the money, Jean-Michel at times seemed to be turning into Idi Amin.

  His girlfriend, Suzanne Mallouk, was there in L.A., and on a tirade. She was clearly really hurt and angry, crying and yelling about something he had done. It was disturbing me quite a bit but didn’t seem to faze him at all. Wouldn’t look at her. Or if he did it was only with a momentary, ice cold stare.

  He threw $500 at her and told her to fly back to New York. What is odd is that a few years before, he had come to me in the middle of the night, with a lot of yearning and angst, wanting advice about how to deal with this girl he loved, Suzanne, who wouldn’t go out with him because he was poor and homeless. We actually recorded our conversation about how he could go about making a living. I still have the tape somewhere but don’t want to listen to it.

  María didn’t know how to drive. You can’t live in L.A. and not know how to drive. She had a car but couldn’t drive it. I would drive her somewhere and then watch hours of TV on her bed and practice a little.

  I went back to New York, but Third Street was becoming insane.

  I started getting fucked up as soon as I got back. Hang out with Rockets Redglare and freebase.

  * * *

  —

  Still, I was not getting high all the time. I would go three days on a binge without sleeping and then shut myself in to kick. Over and over. Kicking has many levels. At this point it wasn’t so bad—like I had a bad flu and my hair hurt and I’d get really insecure, but after a day or two I’d be okay and start over. Not exactly start over; in between, I would have a day or two where I just felt too fucking good. Exorbitant energy and unbearably friendly.

  I had been cast in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. The book, by Nikos Kazantzakis, is brilliant. Somebody had told me that Scorsese and De Niro were talking about me on the set of The King of Comedy and that I should call Cis Corman, Scorsese’s casting agent, about getting a part in the film. Raging Bull and Taxi Driver are two of my favorite movies. Raging Bull is perfect, frame by frame, perfect. At this time I thought that acting was, in most cases, completely superficial, but to be in a Scorsese film was something else.

  So I got the number and called Cis Corman. She scheduled me to come in the next morning at ten a.m. It would have been impossible for me to go to bed and then get up in time to make a ten o’clock meeting in the morning, so I just stayed up all night and went in.

  I like Cis Corman and she seems to genuinely like me. She tells me that The King of Comedy is already cast but that I should get the book The Last Temptation of Christ because that’s what Marty is going to do next.

  The book is hard to find. It’s out of print. Suzy Lawrence has a copy I can borrow. The band played the night before. I don’t remember why, but I haven’t been home, and I haven’t paid the band yet. I’m still in my suit from the night before.

  So I go around the East Village with about $1,500 in my pocket and pay the guys in the band. Then I go to get the book. I start reading it at Suzy’s place and it just hits me really hard. And what really hits me is that my life doesn’t have to be like this. I don’t have to live on Third Street with all these hideous, murdering people from the men’s shelter. I don’t have to take drugs every night. It is possible to get out of this squalor. Even if I do live on Third Street, I can direct my consciousness. I can find a purer light in the midst of all this.

  So I come down Second Avenue and turn onto my block. Now, Third Street, because of the men’s shelter, at this time has to be one of the ten worst blocks in the world. When I first moved there in 1978, it was kind of great and fascinating. Partly because I’d always felt a kinship with people who led their lives outside of the normal modes of society and I was certain some—though certainly not all—of these people were actually in touch with a higher reality that made being part of normal society both incongruous and ridiculous.

  There was that one guy who would say, “Armageddon, Armageddon,” wait maybe five minutes, and then say it again, over and over, all day. All day. Every day. I’d hear him from my window, and the weird thing was that I never actually saw this guy. I just heard him all day long. Like those frogs in the jungle you can hear but never see. There were a lot of great characters. The block was not dangerous.

  Then at some point, I think in ’81, Rikers Island had become overcrowded and they released a lot of prisoners who definitely should have still been incarcerated. The block changed overnight. These people were cold-blooded predators, and the sweet, defenseless bums who had previously occupied my block were chased away, or literally killed off. There would be people screaming outside the window, being beaten or robbed. Call the police and they wouldn’t show up. So I’d throw things out the window. I had a big bag of blue lightbulbs that I’d found on the street. I don’t know what I was going to do with them, make a sculpture or some such idiot thing, but I’d keep these lightbulbs near my third floor window so I could throw them at these marauders when they were attacking someone. The smashing of the bulbs on the street would usually deter whatever was going on for about three seconds.

  Third Street has turned into a prison yard, and it’s ruining my life. I live in the middle of the block, and going to the corner to get a pack of cigarettes is hell. It’s terrifying. I literally have to be prepared to defend my life every time I walk down that block. Second Aven
ue is okay; I think the police have a sort of deal with them that, if they stay on Third Street, they can do what they want, but if they come out onto the avenue, they’re in trouble.

  I’ve developed ways of looking completely insane so I can walk down the block without being accosted. I’ll have wild, bugging eyes or twitch spasmodically and violently as I walk. This usually works, but if I’m dressed nicely, then it doesn’t.

  So I come around the corner. I’m in this green suit from the night before. There are maybe forty people on the corner. Loud. Usually, if I walk down the block, I’ll scope everyone out as I walk. If someone speaks to me, I’ll show respect and try to keep moving. But now I’ve just had an epiphany and I don’t want it soiled. I don’t want this debauched circus to enter into my consciousness. I’m going to see the higher light.

  I’m smoking a cigarette. A woman from against the wall asks me for a light. I don’t stop, I don’t acknowledge her. Now, as I write this I can see that, in fact, I am a complete asshole, this guy in a suit who’s too good to stop and give someone a light. But the harassment was so constant and so brutal, an unceasing attempt at intimidation. But not today. I’m not going to put up with this today. And blam!!

  I’m out, unconscious. I find myself on my hands and knees. My shoulders are wet. I put my hand back behind my neck to see what the wetness is and it’s blood.

  The bottle of cranberry juice I just bought, the expensive kind, is broken in the gutter. I see the book in front of me and pick it up. My head is cracked open. Blood is spurting out of the top of it like a little fountain. I’ve been hit over the head with a full quart bottle of Colt 45.

  I stand up and reel. There are people around me. The initial primordial thought that happens when you are really hurt and really in trouble is that people will come to your rescue. Someone is handing me my keys, but at the same time he’s got his hand in my pocket. I push him away and suddenly I’m surrounded by, at least, seven or eight guys, and they are holding me against the wall and going through my pockets. They’re filthy. Humans help other humans. But this is Third Street and I’m being preyed on. Thank God this didn’t happen half an hour ago before I paid the band.