Desolation Angels

by Jack Kerouac

  “That sonofabitch wouldnt a given you two cents for your own mother!” yells Julien.

  “Even with a bedstead,” adds I.

  “’Avin ’is ’anging in Turkish Baths!” yells Julien.

  “Or in Innisfree.”

  “Throw another log on the fire, Muzz,” says Julien, “Dazz” to the kids, to Muzz Momma, which she does with great pleasure. Our movie reveries are interrupted by visitors from his office: Tim Fawcett yelling because he’s deaf:—

  “C a—rist! That U.P.I. dispatch told all about some mother who was a whore who had to do with all the little bastard’s horror!”

  “Well the little bastard’s dead.”

  “Dead? He blew his head clean off in a hotel room in Harrisburg!”

  Then we all get drunk and I end up sleeping in Julien’s bedroom while he and Nessa sleep on the open-out couch, I open the window to the fresh air of the blizzard and fall asleep beneath the old oil portrait of Julien’s grandfather Gareth Love who is buried next to Stonewall Jackson in Lexington Virginia—In the morning I wake up to two feet of snowdrifts over the floor and part of the bed. Julien is sitting in the livingroom pale and sick. He wont even touch a beer, he has to go to work. He has one softboiled egg and that’s it. He puts on his necktie and shudders with horror to the office. I go downstairs, buy more beer, and spend the whole day with Nessa and the kids talking and playing their piggy back games—Come dark in comes Julien again, two hiballs stronger, and falls to drinking again. Nessa brings our asparagus, chops and wine. That night the whole gang (Irwin, Simon, Laz, Erickson and some writers from the Village some of them Italian) come in to watch TV with us. We see Perry Como and Guy Lombardo hugging each other on a Spectacular. “Shit,” says Julien, drink in hand in the leather chair, not even tweaking his mustache, “them Dagos’ll all go home and eat ravioli and die of puking.”

  I’m the only one who laughs (except Nessa secretly) because Julien is the only guy in New York who’ll speak his mind whatever his mind is at the time it happens, no matter what, which is why I love him:—a Laird, sirs (Dagos excuse us).

  34

  I had once seen a photo of Julien when he was 14, in his mother’s house, and was amazed that any person could be so beautiful—Blond, with an actual halo of light around his hair, strong hard features, those Oriental eyes—I’d thought “Shit would I have liked Julien when he was 14 looking like that?” but no sooner I tell his sister what a great picture it was she hid it, so the next time (a year later) when we again accidentally visit her apartment on Park Avenue “Where’s that great picture of Julien?” it’s gone, she’s hid it or destroyed it—Poor Julien, over whose blond head I see the stare of America’s Parking Lots and Bleakest Glare—the Glare of “Who-are-you, Ass?”—A sad little boy finally, whom I understood, because I’d known many sad little boys in Oy French Canada as I’m sure Irwin had known in Oy New York Jews—The little boy too beautiful for the world but finally saved by a wife, good old Nessa, who said to me one time: “While you were passed out on the couch I noticed your pants were shining!”

  Once I’d said to Julien “Nessa, I’m gonna call her ‘Legs’ because she has nice legs” and he answered:—

  “If I catch you making any pass at Nessa I’ll kill you” and he meant it.

  His sons were Peter, Gareth and one was on the way who would be known as Ezra.

  35

  Julien was mad at me because I’d made love to one of his old girlfriends, not Ruth Erickson—But meanwhile while we were having a party at the Ruths some rotten eggs were thrown up at Erickson’s window and I went downstairs with Simon later to investigate. Only a week before Simon and Irwin had been stopped by a gang of juvenile delinquents with broken bottles at their throats, only because Simon had looked at the gang in front of the variety (variety indeed) store—Now I saw the kids and said “Who threw those rotten eggs?”

  “Where’s that dog?” said the kid stepping up with a sixfoot teenager.

  “He wont harm you. Did you throw the eggs?”

  “What eggs?”

  As I stood there talking to them I noticed they wanted to pull out knives and stab me, I was scared. But they turned away and I saw the name “Power” on the back of the jacket of the younger kid, I said:—“Okay Johnny Power dont throw no more eggs.” He turned around and looked at me. “That’s a great name,” I said, “Johnny Power.” That was more or less the end of that.

  But meanwhile Irwin and Simon had arranged an interview with Salvador Dali. But before that I have to tell you about my coat, but first Lazarus’ brother Tony.

  Simon and Lazarus had two brothers in the madhouse, as I say, one of them a hopeless catatonic who refused attention and probably looked at his attendants with the thought: “I hope those guys dont teach me to touch them, I’m full of hopeless electric snakes” but another brother who was only a schizoid (advanced) personality hoping to still make it in the world and consequently and no lie was helped to escape from the hospital in Long Island by Simon himself in some well worked scheme like the schemes of Rififi French Thieves—So now Tony was out and working (of all things, as I’d done as a kid) as a pinboy in a bowling alley, in the Bowery however, where we went to see him and where I saw him in the pit bending to set up the tenpins fast—Then later, the next night, while I was hanging around Phillip Vaughan’s apartment reading Mallarmé and Proust and Courbière in French, Irwin rang the bell and I answered the door to see the three of them, Irwin, Simon and little short blond pimply Tony between them—“Tony, meet Jack.” And as soon as Tony saw my face, or eyes, or body, or whatever it was, he turned abruptly and walked away from everybody and I never saw him again.

  I think it was because I looked like the older catatonic brother, at least Laz told me so.

  Later I went to visit my old friend Deni Bleu.

  Deni Bleu is that fantastic character I lived with on the West Coast in my road days, who stole everything in sight but gave it away to widows sometimes (Bon coeur, good heart) and who was now living meanly I’d say in an apartment on 13th Street near the waterfront with an icebox (in which nevertheless he still stored his home made special recipe chicken consommé)—Who’d put on Chef hats and roast whole huge Turkeys on Thanksgiving for parties of Village hipsters and beatniks who only ended up sneaking out with drumsticks in their coats—Only because he wanted to meet a cool Greenwich Village chick—Poor Deni. Deni who had a telephone and a full icebox and bums who preyed on him, sometimes when he went away on weekends the bums’d leave all the lights on, all the water running and the doors to his apartment unlocked—Who was continually being betrayed, even by me, as he claimed. “Now Duluoz,” says this big 220-pound blackhaired fat Frenchman (who’d stolen and now only scrounged for what was due him), “you have always messed me up no matter how you tried to do otherwise—I see you now and I feel pity for you.” He whipped out some government bonds with photos of him pointing at the government bonds and in red ink is written: I shall always be able to afford consommé and turkey. He lived only a block away from the Ruths. “Now that I see you so scroungy, and sad, and down on your luck, and lost, and cant even buy yourself a drink, or even say ‘Deni, you’ve fed me many times but will you please lend me so and so?’ because you’ve never, never asked me to lend you money” (he was a seaman and a furniture mover between trips, an old prepschool friend of mine my father’d met and liked) (but Julien’d said his hands and feet were too small to go with his huge powerful body) (but who you gonna listen to?) he now says to me: “So I’m giving you this genuine vicuña coat as soon as with this razor blade I cut out the very important fur lining—”

  “Where’d you get the coat?”

  “Never mind where I got the coat, but since you insist, since you’re angling for some way to mess me up, since en effet vous ne voulez pas me croire, I got this coat in an empty warehouse while I was moving out some furniture—It so happens that I had information at the time that the owner of the coat was dead, mort, so I took it, do yo
u understand Duluoz?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah he says” and looking up at his Angel-like Tom Wolfe’s brother. “All he’s got to say is ‘Yeah’ and I’m about to give him a two-hundred-dollar coat!” (It was only a year later the Washington scandal about vicuña coats, unborn calf coats, was about to start) (but first he took out the fur lining). The coat was huge, long, hung to my shoes.

  I said “Deni, do you expect me to walk around the streets of New York with a coat hanging to my shoes?”

  “Not only do I expect that,” he said putting a woollen ski cap on my head and yanking it down over my ears, “but I expect you to keep stirring those eggs like I told you.” He’d mixed six scrambled eggs with a quarterpound of butter and cheese and spices, turned on a low flame, and had me stir with a tablespoon while he busied himself mashing buttered mashed potatoes thru a strainer, for supper at midnight. It was delicious. He showed me some infinitesimal ivory elephant figurines (about as big as a piece of dust) (from India) and explained to me how delicate they were and how some joker had blown them out of his hand in a bar last New Year’s Eve. He also produced a bottle of Benedictine Liqueur which we drank all night. He wanted to be introduced to the Ruths. I knew it wouldnt work. He is an oldfashioned French raconteur and bon vivant who needs a French wife, and shouldnt be hanging around the Village trying to make those cold lonesome chicks. But as always he held me by the arm and told me all his latest stories, which he repeated the night I invited him to drinks at Julien’s and Nessa’s. For this occasion he sent a telegram to his favorite not-interested girl saying that we would have cocktails at the home of “le grand journaliste, Julien Love” but she never showed up. But after he told all his jokes Nessa got going on her own jokes and Deni laughed so hard he sheed in his pants, went to the bathroom (he’ll kill me for this), washed out his shorts, hung them up, came back laughing, absentmindedly forgot them, and when Nessa and I and Julien woke up next morning bleary eyed and sad, we laughed to see the huge world wide shorts hanging from their bathroom shower—“Who could ever be so big to wash those?”

  But Deni was no slob.

  36

  Wearing Deni’s huge vicuña coat with the ski cap over my ears, in cold biting winds of December New York, Irwin and Simon led me up to the Russian Tea Room to meet Salvador Dali.

  He was sitting with his chin on a finely decorated tile headed cane, blue and white, next to his wife at the café table. He had a little wax mustache, thin. When the waiter asked him what he wanted he said “One grapefruit … peenk!” and he had big blue eyes like a baby, a real oro Spaniard. He told us no artist was great unless he made money. Was he talking about Ucello, Ghianondri, Franca? We didnt even know what money really was or what to do with it. Dali had already read an article about the “insurgent” “beats” and was interested. When Irwin told him (in Spanish) we wanted to meet Marlon Brando (who ate in this Russian Tea Room) he said, waving three fingers at me, “He is more beautiful than M. Brando.”

  I wondered why he said that but he probably had a tiff with old Marlon. But what he meant was my eyes, which were blue, like his, and my hair, which is black, like his, and when I looked into his eyes, and he looked into my eyes, we couldnt stand all that sadness. In fact, when Dali and I look in the mirror we cant stand all that sadness. To Dali sadness is beautiful. He said: “As a politician I’m a Royalist—I would like to see the Throne of Spain reborn, Franco and the others out—Last night I finished my latest painting using a pubic hair for the last final touch.”

  “Really?”

  His wife paid absolutely no attention to this information like it was all natural, which it certainly is. When you’re married to Dali with the pubic cane, ah Quoi? In fact I got very friendly with his wife while Dali himself spoke broken French-English-Spanish with crazy Garden who pretended to (and indeed did) understand his speech.

  “Pero, qu’est ce que vous penser de Franco?”

  “C’est nes pas’d mon affaire, mon homme, entiendes?”

  Meanwhile, the next day, old Deni, no Dali himself but just as good, invites me to earn $4 lifting a gas stove six flights up—We bend our fingers, sinew our wrists, raise the stove and go up six flights to an apartment of queers, one of whom, seeing my wrist’s bleeding, puts kindly mercurochrome upon it.

  37

  Christmas coming up, and Ruth Heaper bored by her grand-father’s sending her a whole portable TV, I head south to see my mother again—Ruth kisses me and loves me goodbye. On the way down I plan to see Raphael at the home of Varnum Random the poetry consultant of the Library of Congress—What a mess! But how funny! Even Varnum must remember it with horrified glee. A cab from the railroad station takes me out to the suburbs of Washington D.C.

  I see the swell house with dim night lights and ring the doorbell. It’s Raphael answers saying “You shouldnt be here but I’m the one told you I was here so here you are.”

  “Well does Random mind?”

  “No of course not—but he’s asleep with his wife now.”

  “Is there any booze?”

  “He has two beautiful grown daughters you’ll see tomorrow—It’s a real ball, it’s not for you. We’ll go to the Zoo in his Mercedes Benz—”

  “You got pot?”

  “Still got some from Mexico.”

  So we turn on in the big empty piano livingroom and Raphael sleeps on the livingroom couch so I can go down in the basement and sleep in the little draped-cubicle couch the Randoms have arranged for him.

  Once down there high on pot, I see tubes of oil paint, and paper watercolor books, and paint me two pictures before I sleep … “The Angel” and “The Cat”.…

  And in the morning I see the real horror of it all, in fact I added to the horror by my really importunate presence (but I wanted to see Raphael). All I remember is that the incredible Raphael and incredible me were really imposing on this gentle and quiet family the head of which, Varnum, a bearded Kindly Jesuit I guess, bore everything with a manly aristocratic grace, as I was to do later? But Varnum really knew that Raphael was a great poet and drove him off that afternoon to a cocktail party in Cleopatra’s Needle while I wheedled in the livingroom writing poems and talking to the youngest daughter, 14, and the oldest, 18, and wondering where the Jack Daniels bourbon of the house was hidden—which I got to later—

  There’s Varnum Random the great American poet watching the Mud Bowl on TV over his London Literary Supplement, Jesuits always seem to be interested in football—He shows me his poems which are as beautiful as Merton’s and as technical as Lowell’s—Schools of writing limit men, even me. If there were anything somber about holy airplanes during the war I would add the last dark touch. If everybody in the world, when they dream of roosters, died, as Hsieh An said, everybody would be dead at sunrise in Mexico, Burma and the World.… (and Indiana). But no such thing happens in the real world not even in Montmartre when Apollinaire climbs the hill by the pile of bricks to get to his drunken room, as winds of February blow. Bless the ride.

  38

  And there’s insane Raphael with a huge nail and a huge hammer actually banging into the smartly decorated wall so he can hang his oil-on-wood painting of Michelangelo’s David—I see the housewife wince—Raphael apparently thinks that painting will be held and revered there on the wall forever right by the Baldwin grand piano and the T’ang Tapestry—Furthermore, he then asks for breakfast—I figure I’d better get going. But Varnum Random actually asks me to stay one more day so I spend the whole afternoon writing poems high on benny in the parlor and I call them the Washington D.C. Blues—Random and Urso argue with me about my theory of absolute spontaneity—In the kitchen Random takes out the Jack Daniels and says “How can you get any refined or well gestated thoughts into a spontaneous flow as you call it? It can all end up gibberish.” And that was no Harvard lie. But I said:

  “If it’s gibberish, it’s gibberish. There’s a certain amount of control going on like a man telling a story in a bar without interrup
tions or even one pause.”

  “Well it’ll probably become a popular gimmick but I prefer to look upon my poetry as a craft.”

  “Craft is craft.”

  “Yes? Meaning?”

  “Meaning crafty. How can you confess your crafty soul in craft?”

  Raphael took Random’s side and yelled:—

  “Shelley didnt care about theories about how he was to write ‘The Skylark.’ Duluoz you’re full of theories like an old college perfesser, you think you know everything.” (“You think you’re the only one,” he added to himself.) Triumphantly he swept off with Random in the Mercedes Benz to meet Carl Sandburg or somebody. This was the great “making it” scene Irwin had crowed about. I yelled after them:

  “If I had a Poetry University you know what would be written over the entrance arch?”

  “No, what?”

  “Here Learn That Learning Is Ignorance! Gentlemen dont burn my ears! Poetry is lamb dust! I prophesy it! I’ll lead schools in exile! I dont Care!” They werent bringing me to meet Carl Sandburg whom I’d known anyway seven years ago at several parties where he stood before the fireplace in a tuxedo and talked about freight trains in Illinois 1910. And actually threw his arms around me going “Ha ha ha! You’re just like me!”

  Why am I saying all this? I felt forlorn and lost, even when Raphael and I and Random’s wife went to the Zoo and I saw a female monkey giving the male monkey some skull (or as we call it in the Lower East Side, Poontang) and I said “Did you see them practicing fellatio?” The woman blushed and Raphael said “Dont talk like that!”—where’d they ever hear the word fellatio!

  But we had one fine dinner downtown, Washingtonians stared to see the bearded man wearing my huge vicuña coat (which I gave Random in exchange for an Air Force fur collared leather coat), to see the two pretty daughters with him, the elegant wife, the tousled bedraggled black haired Raphael carrying a Boito album and a Gabrielli album, and me (in jeans), all coming in to sit at a back table for beer and chicken. In fact all miraculously piling out of one tiny Mercedes Benz.