Desolation Angels

by Jack Kerouac

  “There’s lots of bastards out there.”

  I’ve wondered about that ever since.

  And I had spent most of the time talking to the doctor’s charming wife, 65, who described how handsome Bill had been in his young days.

  But there’s a man for you.

  44

  Irwin Garden’s father Harry Garden comes to Dr. Williams’ house to drive us home, to his own house in Paterson where we’ll have a supper and a big talk about poetry—Harry is a poet himself (appears on the editorial page of the Times and Tribune several times a year with perfectly rhymed love and sadness lyrics)—But he’s a bug on puns and as soon as he walks into Dr. Williams’ house he says “Drinkin wine, hey? When your glass is always empty that’s when you’re really sippin”—“Ha ha ha”—Rather a good pun, even, but Irwin looks at me with consternation as tho it was some impossible social scene in Dostoevsky. “How would you like to buy a necktie with hand painted gravy stains?”

  Harry Garden is a high school teacher of about 60 about to retire. He has blue eyes and sandy hair like his eldest son Leonard Garden, now a lawyer, while Irwin has the black hair and black eyes of his beautiful mother Rebecca, of whom he wrote, now dead.

  Harry gaily drives us all to his home exhibiting ten times more energy than boys young enough to be his grandsons. In his kitchen which has swirling wallpaper I go blind over wine as he reads and puns over coffee. We retire to his study. I start reading my silly far-out poem with just grunts or “grrrr” and “frrrrt” in it to describe the sounds of Mexico City street traffic—

  Raphael yells out “Ah that’s not poetry!” and old man Harry looks at us with frank blue eyes and says:—

  “You boys are fighting?” and I catch Irwin’s quick glance. Simon is neutral in Heaven.

  The fight with Raphael the Mobster carries over to when we’re catching the Paterson bus to New York, I jump in, pay my fare, Simon pays his (Irwin stayed with his father) but Raphael yells out “I aint got no money, why dont you pay my fare Jack?” I refuse. Simon pays it with Irwin’s money. Raphael starts to harangue me about what a coldblooded money-fisted Canook I am. By the time we get to Port Authority I’m practically crying. He keeps saying: “All you do is hide money in your beauty. It makes you ugly! You’ll die with money in your hand and wonder why the Angels wont lift you up.”

  “The reason you havent got money is because you keep spending it.”

  “Yes I keep spending it! And why not? Money is a lie and poetry is truth—Could I pay my bus fare with truth? Would the driver understand? No! Because he’s like you, Duluoz, a scared tightfisted and even tight-ass son of a bitch with money hidden in his 5 & 10 socks. All he wants to do is DIE!”

  But tho I could have used a lot of arguments like why did Raphael blow his money on a plane from Mexico when he could have rode with us in the woesome car, I cant do anything but wipe the tears in my eyes. I dont know why, maybe because he’s right when all is said and done and we’ve all given good money for all our funerals, yay—O all the funerals ahead of me, for which I’ll have to wear ties! Julien’s funeral, Irwin’s funeral, Simon’s funeral, Raphael’s funeral, Ma’s funeral, my sister’s funeral, and I already wore a tie and bleaked at dirt for my father’s funeral! Flowers and funerals, the loss of broad shoulders! No more the eager clack of shoes on the sidewalk to somewhere but a drear fight in a grave, like in a French movie, the Cross cant even stand erect in such silk and mud—O Talleyrand!

  “Raphael I want you to know that I love you.” (This information was imparted eagerly to Irwin the next day by Simon, who saw its importance.) “But dont bug me about money. You’re always talkin about how you dont need money but it’s the only thing you want. You’re trapped in ignorance. I at least admit it. But I love you.”

  “You can keep your money, I’m going to Greece and have visions—People will give me money and I’ll throw it away—I’ll sleep on money—I’ll turn over in my dreams on money.”

  It was snowing. Raphael accompanied me to Ruth Heaper’s where we were supposed to eat supper and tell her all about our meeting with William Carlos Williams. I saw a funny look in her eye, in Ruth Erickson’s too. “What’s the matter?”

  In the bedroom my love Ruth tells me her psychoanalyst has advised her to tell me to move out of her room and go get a room of my own because it isnt good for her psyche or mine.

  “This asshole wants to screw you himself!”

  “Screw is just the right word. He said you were taking advantage of me, that you’re irresponsible, do me no good, get drunk, bring drunk friends—all hours of the night—I cant rest.”

  I pack up all my gear and walk out with Raphael into the increasing snowstorm. We go down Bleecker Street, or Bleaker Street, one. Raphael is now sad for me. He kisses me on the cheek as he leaves (to go have supper with a girl uptown), and says, “Poor Jack, forgive me Jackie. I love you too.”

  I’m all alone in the snow so I go to Julien’s and we get drunk again in front of the TV, Julien finally getting mad and ripping my shirt and even my T-shirt off my back and I sleep drunk on the livingroom floor till noon.

  The next day I get a room in the Marlton Hotel on 8th Street and start typing what I wrote in Mexico, double space neatly for the publishers, thousands of dollars hidden in that pack of mine.

  45

  With only ten dollars left I go down to the corner drugstore on 5th Avenue to buy a pack of butts, figuring I can buy a roast chicken that night and eat it over my typewriter (borrowed from Ruth Heaper). But in the drugstore the character says “How are things in Glacamora? You living around the corner or in Indiana? You know what the old bastard said when he kicked the bucket …” But later when I get back to my room I find he’s only given me change for a five. He has pulled the shortchange hype on me. I go back to the store but he’s off duty, gone, and the management is suspicious of me. “You’ve got a shortchange artist working in your store—I dont wanta put the finger on anybody but I want my money back—I’m hungry!” But I never got the money back and I shoulda stuck the finger up my ass. I went on typing on just coffee. Later I called Irwin and he told me to call Raphael’s uptown girl because maybe I could live with her as she was already sick of Raphael.

  “Why’s she sick of Raphael?”

  “Because he keeps laying around on the couch saying ‘Feed Raphael’! Really! I think she’d like you. Just be cool nice Jack and call her.” I called her, Alyce Newman by name, and told her I was starving and would she meet me in Howard Johnson’s on 6th Avenue and buy me two frankfurts? She told me okay, she was a short blonde in a red coat. At 8 P.M. I saw her walk in.

  She bought me the hotdogs and I gobbled them up. I’d already looked at her and said “Why dont you let me stay at your apartment, I’ve got a lot of typing to do and they cheated me out of my money in a drugstore today.”

  “If you wish.”

  46

  But it was the beginning of perhaps the best love affair I ever had because Alyce was an interesting young person, a Jewess, elegant middleclass sad and looking for something—She looked Polish as hell, with the peasant’s legs, the bare low bottom, the torque of hair (blond) and the sad understanding eyes. In fact she sorta fell in love with me. But that was only because I really didnt impose on her. When I asked her for bacon and eggs and applesauce at two in the morning she did it gladly, because I asked it sincerely. Sincerely? What’s insincere about “Feed Raphael”? Old Alyce (22) however said:

  “I s’pose you’re going to be a big literary god and everybody’s going to eat you up, so you should let me protect you.”

  “How do they go about eating lit’ry gods?”

  “By bothering them. They gnaw and gnaw till there’s nothing left of you.”

  “How do you know about all this?”

  “I’ve read books—I’ve met authors—I’m writing a novel myself—I think I’ll call it Fly Now, Pay Later but the publishers think they’d get trouble from the airlines.”

 
“Call it Pay Me The Penny After.”

  “That’s nice—Shall I read you a chapter?” All of a sudden I was in a quiet home by lamplight with a quiet girl who would turn out to be passionate in bed, as I saw, but my God—I dont like blondes.

  “I dont like blondes,” I said.

  “Maybe you’ll like me. Would you like me to dye my hair?”

  “Blondes have soft personalities—I’ve got whole future lifetimes left to deal with that softness—”

  “Now you want hardness? Ruth Heaper actually isnt so great as you think, she’s only after all a big awkward girl who doesnt know what to do.”

  I had me a companion there, and more so I saw it the night I got drunk in the White Horse (Norman Mailer sitting in the back talking anarchy with a beer mug in his hand, my God will they give us beer in the Revolution? or Gall?)—Drunk, and in walks Ruth Heaper walking Erickson’s dog and starts to talk to me persuading me to go home with her for the night.

  “But I’m living with Alyce now—”

  “But dont you still love me?”

  “You said your doctor said—”

  “Come on!” But Alyce somehow arrives at the White Horse and drags me out forcibly as if by the hair, to a cab to her home, from which I learn: Alyce Newman is not going to let anybody steal her man from her, no matter who he will be. And I was proud. I sang Sinatra’s “I’m a Fool” all the way home in the cab. The cab flashed by oceangoing vessels docked at the North River piers.

  47

  And actually Alyce and I were wonderful healthy lovers—She only wanted me to make her happy and she did everything in her power to make me happy too, which was enough—“You should know more Jewish girls! They not only love you they bring you pumpernickel bread and sweet butter with your morning coffee.”

  “What’s your father like?”

  “He’s a cigarsmoker—”

  “And your mother?”

  “Lace doilies in the livingroom—”

  “And you?”

  “I dont know.”

  “So you’re going to be a big novelist—Who are your models?” But all her models were wrong, yet I knew she could do it, be the first great woman writer of the world, but I guess, I think, she wanted babies anyhow anyway—She was sweet and I still love her tonight.

  We stayed together for an awful long time, too, years—Julien called her Ecstasy Pie—Her best friend, the dark haired Barbara Lipp, happened by circumstance to be in love with Irwin Garden—Irwin had steered me to a haven. In this haven I slept with her for lovemaking purposes but after we were done I’d go to the outer bedroom, where I kept the winter window constantly open and the radiator shut off, and slept there in my sleepingbag. Eventually that way I finally got rid of that tubercular Mexican cough—I’m not so dumb (as Ma always said).

  48

  So Irwin with that $225 in his pocket first takes me to Rockefeller Center for my passport before we wander downtown talking about everything like we used to do in our college days—“So now you’re going to Tangiers to see Hubbard.”

  “My mother says he’s going to destroy me.”

  “Oh he’ll probably try but he wont make it, like me,” putting his head against my cheek and laughing. That Irwin. “What about all the people who want to destroy me but I keep on leaning my head against the bridge?”

  “What bridge?”

  “The Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge over the Passaic River in Paterson. Even your bridge on the Merrimac full of mad laughter. Any kinda bridge. I’ll lean my head against any old bridge any time. A spade in the Seventh Avenue toilet leaning his head against toilets or something. I’m not fighting with God.”

  “Who is God?”

  “That big radar machine in the sky, I guess, or dead eyes see.” He was quoting one of his teenage poems, “Dead Eyes See.”

  “What do dead eyes see?”

  “Remember that big building we saw on 34th Street one morning when we were high, and we said there was a giant in it?”

  “Yeh—with his feet stuck out or something? That was a long time ago.”

  “Well dead eyes see that Giant, no less, unless the invisible ink is already invisible and even the Giant’s gone.”

  “D’you like Alyce?”

  “She’s okay.”

  “She tells me this Barbara is in love with you.”

  “Yes I guess so.” He couldnt be more bored. “I love Simon and I dont want no big Jewish wives yelling at me over the dishes—Look at that sickened face just went by.” I turned to see a lady’s back.

  “Sickened? How?”

  “Got the expression of sneers and hopelessness, gone forever, ugh.”

  “Doesnt God love her?”

  “Oh read Shakespeare again or something, you’re getting even almost maudlin.” But he wasn’t even interested in saying it. He looked about in the Rockefeller Building. “Look who’s there.” It was Barbara Lipp, who waved at us and came over.

  And after a brief talk, and after we got my passport, we walked downtown just talking and just as we crossed Fourth Avenue and 12th there was Barbara again waving at us, but just by accident, really, a most strange circumstance.

  “Yeh like it’s the second time I’ve run into you today,” says Barbara, who looks just like Irwin, black hairs, black eyes, same low voice.

  Irwin says: “We were looking for the giant shot.”

  “What’s the giant shot.” (Barbara)

  “Some big shit shot.” And all of a sudden they go into a big Yiddishe controversy about shit shot I cant even understand, laughing in the street in front of me, giggling in fact. These lazy ladies of Manhattan.…

  49

  So I get my boat ticket at a seedy Yugoslavian shipping office on 14th Street and my sailing date is Sunday—The ship is the S.S. Slovenia, it’s Friday.

  Saturday morning I appear at Julien’s apartment wearing dark glasses because of sore-eyed hangover and a scarf around my neck to kelp the cough—Alyce is with me, we’ve had our last taxi ride down the Hudson River piers seeing the huge thin shanked bows of Liberté’s and Queen Elizabeths ready for the Le Havre anchor shot—Julien looks at me and cries: “Fernando!”

  Fernando Lamas the Mexican actor he means. “Fernando the old international roué! Going to Tangiers to investigate Ay-rab girls, hey-y?” Nessa bundles up the kids, it’s Julien’s day off, and we all go to my pier in Brooklyn to have a farewell party in the cabin on my boat. I have a whole two-bed stateroom to myself since nobody ever sails with the Yugoslavian fleet except spies and conspirateurs. Alyce is delighted to see the masts of ships and the noonday sun on harbor water even tho she’d cast aside Wolfe for Trilling years ago. All Julien wants to do is climb around the housing with the kids. Meanwhile I’m mixing drinks in the stateroom which is already awry due to the fact they’re loading on the port side first and the whole deck keels over. Sweet Nessa has a going-away present for me, Danger à Tanger, a cheap French novel about Arabs dropping bricks on the heads of the British Consulate. The men of the crew dont even speak English, just Yugoslav, tho they look Nessa and Alyce over with authoritative glances as tho they could speak any language at all. Me and Julien take his boys to the flying bridge to watch the loading operations.

  Imagine having to travel thru time every day of your life carrying your own face and making it look like your own face! Fernando Lamas indeed! Poor Julien with his mustache doth carry his face grimly and interminably no matter what anybody say, philosopher or not. To weave that juice mask and let it look like yourself, while your liver gathers, your heart batters, t’would be enough to make God cry saying “All my children are martyrs and I want them back in perfect safety! Why did I emanate them in the first place, because I wanted to see a flesh movie?” Pregnant women who smile dont even dream about this. God Who is everything, the Already Thus, He Whom I saw on Desolation Peak, is also a smiling pregnant woman not even dreaming about this. And if I should complain about the way they manhandled Clark Gable in Shanghai or Gary Cooper in Hi
gh Noon Town, or how I’m driven mad by old lost college roads in the moon, aye, moonlight, moonlight, moonlight me that, moonlight—Moonlight me some moonshine, adamantine you mine. Julien keeps stressing his lips, plurk, and Nessa holds high cheekboned flesh in escrow, and Alyce goes “Hum” in long-haired sadness and even the children die. Old Fernando the Philosopher wishes he could tell Julien something to tell everybody over the Universal Wire. But the Yugoslav Red Star stevedores dont care as long as they got bread, wine, and woman—Tho they may glare along stonewalls at Tito as he passes, yair—It’s this business of holding your you-face to you every day, you might let it drop (like Irwin tries) but in the end an angelic question will fill you with surprise. Julien and I mix mad drinks, drink them, he and Nessa and the kids go off at dusk down the gangplank and Alyce and I lay passed out in my bunk, till eleven P.M., when the Yugoslav Steward knocks on my door, says “You stay on the ship? Okay?” and goes off into Brooklyn to get drunk with the crew—Alyce and I waking up, at one A.M., arm in arm in a dreadsome ship, agh—Only one watchman alone on the walk—Everybody drinking in bars of New York.

  “Alyce” I say “let’s get up and wash and take a subway to New York—We’ll go to the West End and have a gay beer.” But what’s in the West End but death anyway?

  Alyce only wants to sail to Africa with me. But we dress and go hand in hand down the gangplank, empty pier, and go crossing huge plazas of Brooklyn’s hoodlum gangs with me with a bottle of wine in my hand like a weapon.