Jack and I thought for sure they were gonna stop to get out to examine this perfect, perfect statue—amongst the entire ruins that were around it. I used to wonder if he were going to put that in the book, because we’d laughed over that, over Neal having the guts to stand up there like that. Because when the car first appeared, Neal really couldn’t make out who it was. It might have been the highway patrol just as easily. And they would have stopped you for traveling with no clothes on—you better believe it! We might have wound up in one of those small-town Texas cells.
We had some very good times on that trip, but then there were other times when I was scared to death. I thought for sure they were both gonna get killed someplace in Texas. Wherever they stopped, Neal was determined to find some pot. In one town, he got ahold of some Mexican kid, and in those days you used to hear a lot of stories about the Mexicans taking the tourists off and promising them a good deal, then robbing or maybe even killing them. Neal never had any fear of anything like that. He’d go into the darkest alley with the roughest-looking characters. But nothing bad ever happened to him. I don’t know if he ever thought about what might happen. Jack was a little more hesitant about following Neal. I mean, he would almost always go, but he would try to talk Neal out of it first—or see if they could arrange something a little safer. Jack would say, “Well, why don’t we meet him at a restaurant? Or some place with a little brighter lights?”
What a trip it was! One day we’d be hunting out Mexican drug dealers, and the next we’d be hanging out with wonderful artists. I’ll always remember our stopping to see the writer Alan Harrington in Arizona. Jack knew him from New York. He was living with an Indian girl—she might have been his wife—and they were living in this little sort of Indian house. It was not a wickiup exactly, but it was an adobe shack of the type a lot of Indians lived in. These were round adobe houses like the ones the Indians had built a long time ago. I can’t think of the proper name of them. But anyway, we stopped, and here he was, the writer Alan Harrington, sitting out there in front of his house, in the hot and dusty desert!
His mother-in-law was in the house cooking beans and frijoles and whatever. He was just sitting there at a little table with his typewriter, and it was hot, my God! I don’t know what the temperature would have been there in Arizona in February, but it was hot, and he was sitting out there in the middle of nowhere, banging away on the typewriter. There was just his house with a little shed next to it. I think they had a cow and maybe a few other animals—that’s what the shed was for. Those were the only things he owned.
It was still early when we arrived, and later in the day he took us over to a wealthy woman’s house—a woman who was in her early fifties. She had this big young man—a young kid, you know, with a beard—and she was supporting him while he wrote. Her house was a beautiful, beautiful hacienda. I mean, it was luxury from the word go. Neal and this would-be writer and everybody got loaded—very drunk—and the writer made a pass at me. Neal walked in just when he was kissing me. Then Neal and he got into a big argument; and while they were fighting, Jack and I started dancing. Of course, this patron of the arts had a stereo—at that time, not too many people had stereos—and she had all this fancy sound equipment, all built-in and everything. Jack and I ignored the whole jealousy situation—as Neal got angrier and angrier, we just played music and kept on dancing. We spent most of the time at her house Nijinsky-ing.
The guy stood up to Neal, and that’s when Neal hit the ceiling. Neal was so mad that he finally made us leave. So off we went, back over to Alan Harrington’s house; and we had to say good-bye, because he had no place for us to stay. Jack would have liked to have stayed for a couple of days, but there really was no place for us there.
Anyway, it wasn’t too much longer before we got to San Francisco. When Neal had something on his mind, he could be very abrupt and just push everything else aside. He was determined to go back to Carolyn. Of course, he was happy to be home, at that point. That happiness wouldn’t last very long, but at that point seeing Carolyn again was all he could think about. He just literally dropped Jack and I on the middle of the sidewalk, and said, “I’ll call you guys!” And off he went!
Jack and I just sort of looked at each other. And Jack was hurt—he really and truly was. I was used to it. I knew Neal, and I knew what to expect. I also knew he would be back—with as much enthusiasm as he had left with. But nonetheless, that was something Jack hadn’t expected because it was so sudden. I mean, there really were no preliminaries. There was no leading up to the subject—no hints that he was about to depart. He didn’t bother to say, “Don’t worry, I’ll call you tomorrow at ten o’clock,” or even just, “I’ll see you guys.” It really did hurt Jack badly.
We hadn’t really made any specific plans of what we were gonna do when we got back to San Francisco; nobody had any real plans. But of course Jack had assumed Neal was gonna spend some time with him. On the one hand, you might say it was kind of arranged by Neal—or something Neal expected—that Jack and I would spend time together. That was expected only on Neal’s part. Well, not only on Neal’s part—I shouldn’t say that. But it was expedient for Neal at that point for Jack and I to get together as a couple. That way he didn’t have to worry about either one of us. Of course, Neal had started suggesting this back in New York, started suggesting that we should get involved with each other. That was something Jack and I were already feeling on our own, anyway. Neal had talked to us already there, about how nice it would be if Jack and I had a little romance; but the fact is, nobody needed to push it. Jack was already heading in that direction himself; and the thing was, Neal was very much aware of it. And Neal could never, never bear something like that to occur unless he was the one who instigated it. You see what I mean?
Jack Kerouac, Carolyn Cassady, Al Hinkle, Al’s son Mark, and Carolyn’s children, Jami and Cathy, San Francisco, 1952. (Photo courtesy of Al Hinkle.)
Neal knew it was happening. He also knew that Jack, being the way he was, and me being the way I was, that it probably wouldn’t have come until Neal was ready to go back to Carolyn. And we knew we would have to wait—because once he went back to Carolyn, he could have no recriminations about Jack taking his girl or me not remaining faithful to him. Neal didn’t like us setting our own timetable, so he thought that he would start the ball rolling—which, like I said, was totally unnecessary. And neither one of us picked up the ball in New York, as Neal expected, because I think we—Jack and I—did care very much about Neal’s feelings, and how all this would look to people. But still, the attraction between Jack and I was growing, and it was something that had nothing to do with Neal. That bothered him badly.
Anyway, by the time we had gotten to San Francisco, it was just sort of expected by everyone that Jack and I were going to be together. But Jack still expected to be with Neal, regardless of where Neal ended up living. Neal had Carolyn in their house, and Jack might have me in some apartment across town, but nonetheless Jack expected that the two of them would still be hanging out together. That’s why Jack started out on this whole adventure.
In Jack’s mind, this whole trip was because of Neal, with Neal, for Neal—whatever. It was a big hurt for him to be abandoned like that. We spent the next couple of weeks sort of consoling one another. The sad thing is that, under different circumstances, I think the outcome might have been entirely different. Things might actually have worked out for Jack and I. But unfortunately we had no money; we had nowhere to go. I talked to a hotel manager at the place where I had lived before, and he let us move into the hotel, on the assumption that we’d be able to start paying the rent soon. It was the Blackstone Hotel on O’Farrell Street. And then I went with a girlfriend of mine over to her house, to get an iron to cook with. She was a singer in the Tenderloin, and I had stayed with her once before. She had taught me how to cook using the heat from a steam iron—which worked pretty well in place of a hot plate. In On the Road, Jack wrote about seeing me get in a car with this
girlfriend, and he made it seem as if we were working as prostitutes.
Before I had left San Francisco and gone back to Denver—which was several months before Neal came back to Denver and picked me up to make the trip to New York with Al Hinkle—I had started going with a seaman. We had become engaged in San Francisco. When I first moved back to Denver, I still had full intentions of marrying him. But gradually he started slipping from my mind. His ship was gone for a year, and it was due back now in a couple of weeks. But in the meantime, when Neal asked me to go to New York with him, the only reason I agreed was because Neal assured me he was coming back to San Francisco. He promised me he’d get me back in time to meet my fiancé’s ship. I said, “Okay, I’ll go with you, as long as you realize that I’m not getting involved with you again.” I really had a long talk with him, because when he came after me that night and banged on my door, he was still acting like we were married. As soon as I said, “Who is it?” he answers, “Your husband! Open up!” I mean, he still was going through that thing of acting like I belonged to him. But I told him, I said, “I’m going as a person, and not as your wife. I mean, it’s not gonna be the way it was. This time, I’m gonna have my own fun in New York.” And he said, “Yes”—he claimed he accepted that, which of course he didn’t.20
But then in the meantime, before we got back to San Francisco, Jack and I had become involved; and like I said, it had gotten to the point where I didn’t really know how I felt anymore concerning my fiancé or the marriage that was supposed to take place. I hadn’t seen him in almost a year by that time, and I was even having trouble remembering what he looked like. But I knew that Jack was needing and leaning on me, and I needed someone to lean on! But Jack didn’t have much comfort left to give. Because especially after Neal left, Jack felt lost. Well, he was lost—even more so than I, in a way, because he didn’t know anybody in San Francisco. And the way Neal had done it was cold and cruel. So we talked and talked and made plans to find an apartment where we could live together. We even talked about getting married.
The truth is, those two weeks really were kind of a nightmare for both of us—even though we were clinging together like we didn’t have anything or anyone else in the world. We were clinging together as the only way to keep going. We just sort of stayed in the room for three days and nights—not knowing what to do, where to go. And Jack, unfortunately, didn’t take any initiative. Jack wasn’t the kind of guy who’d say, “I’ll go get a job,” or “I’ll go do something!” I mean, he really was more lost—about the whole situation—than I was.
But anyway, after a few days, I went over to see some friends in order to borrow money from them. This is what Jack wrote about in On the Road—this was the scene he was apologizing to me about when Neal and I first looked at the book. Jack would always say, “I was mad at you when I wrote this,” and blah blah blah. What happened was, I went over to see some friends of the fella I had gotten engaged with. I saw them, and they lent me some money—that was all, nothing else. Jack wrote that they were sailors; actually, they were seamen. And then I ran into another girlfriend of mine, who was going with the fella that owned the bar on Turk Street where my other girlfriend sang. I did get a little upset with Jack about how he wrote that scene. I was gonna go out with her and this guy that owned the bar, hopefully to get a job, because I was still underage. But she was younger than I was, and she was working there. So I figured if she could work there, at least maybe she could help me get some kind of job. That’s where Jack wrote: “I stood in a doorway and watched her get into a Cadillac.” But he didn’t explain about how “she went out and tried to get a job to do something for us”; he didn’t say anything about my trying to help him. He was just mad at the whole situation.
Our desperate time together lasted about two weeks. Finally, by that time, Neal called us, and of course he came over like nothing had happened. And Neal took us out to a couple of places—it was just an insane situation. He was acting as though everything was hunky-dory. “It’s great, isn’t it?” he said. “You kids are over here, and I’ve got my place on Liberty Street—and we’re all just fine!” The truth was that Jack and I were just wallowing in self-pity and misery.
I don’t remember now whether Jack talked to Neal, or Neal talked to Jack, about Jack coming over to his house—because by this time I had gotten to the point of knowing that something had to be done soon, one of us had to do something, or we were going to end up out on the street. We could not sit in that room doing nothing any longer, with me trying to borrow money, and our hotel bill was going up. Neal wasn’t coming up with anything, any kind of solution. Of course, we only saw him twice. His visits were a boom-boom type of thing. So I told Jack that really the best thing would be for him to talk to Neal and see about arranging to stay at his house, and for me to try to go and stay with this girlfriend of mine—at least until we got situated.
For a while, Jack had been fairly serious about us getting married. We talked a lot about it. He felt it would be the best thing in the world for both of us—the only thing in the world for both of us. But of course, this is the type of talk you have laying in bed in the middle of the night, when you’re not thinking about what you’re gonna do tomorrow. Jack wasn’t thinking about anything except how needy he was at the moment. He was leaning on me. I don’t mean “leaning on me” in terms of putting pressure on me. He wasn’t trying to make me do anything—nothing like that. I mean, emotionally—he needed my emotional support. And at that moment, I needed someone to lean on as much as he did, and Jack wasn’t ready to be leaned on.
In realistic terms, Jack was not actually ready to take on the responsibility of marriage—at least not then—and I knew it. He wasn’t ready for any kind of responsibility. And I was confused, because I was thinking about my own obligations. Here I had accepted a ring, and said yes to a man who wanted to marry me. I told him I would wait for him to get back, and I had all intentions of doing so until this wild trip; and then I had gotten all involved back with Neal again. And now, on top of everything, I had really become deeply involved with Jack too. And I can say, had circumstances been different, or if we had had any kind of a thing we could have leaned on—a bundle of money, a place to stay—there might have been a different result in my relationship with Jack. We might actually have gotten married—who knows? God knows I don’t.
The only thing I can say for sure is that Jack and I needed something a great deal different than each other at that time. Like I say, I don’t remember whether it was Jack who gave the idea to Neal, or Neal who proposed it to Jack—or maybe I talked to Neal, because we were calling Neal a lot at that point—but Neal came over and picked up Jack. Of course, I still saw both of them after that. I saw them quite often, as a matter of fact.
A little bit later came the famous incident of Neal’s broken thumb.21 We got back together after I left the Blackstone Hotel. Neal came back to see me, and I decided, “Okay, we’ll try it again.” I admit, it was an insane thing to do. I don’t know what was happening with Neal and Carolyn. Carolyn always seems to think that I came looking for her Neal; “as always” is the way she puts it. Whether Neal told her this or not I have no idea. But the truth is, Neal wouldn’t let go. And unfortunately, I didn’t let go either—like there was this umbilical cord between us, so to speak. Jack had gone back to New York—this was early 1949. He was so hurt and so disgusted, I think, that he just wanted to get out. He wanted something familiar, the same as I did. We were both in exactly the same position. We were just lost. Somebody just took us and dumped us, and there we were. We were trying to lean on each other, and neither one was giving any support, really. We just weren’t able to give anything to each other.
Jack wrote in On the Road: “I lost faith in Neal that year.” Oh, it was a terrible, terrible period! Because, you know, half of it, like anything else, was just the disappointment when something great ends. You take a trip, and when you get home, there’s always a little letdown. And that, really, could hav
e been accepted. What was so terrible was the way that it was done—the way that Neal just sort of deserted us. And I know Neal well enough to know that he didn’t intend to hurt us. I know he didn’t even realize that he was hurting us, or what he was doing to us. Unfortunately, that was one of Neal’s worst traits. He could hurt so damn bad and not even be aware of it. It was unbelievable, sometimes, how he could be so totally unaware that any big emotional thing was even going on. And, of course, a lot of big things were going on inside us at that moment.
There were more than just the feelings between Jack and I, because Neal was mixed up in all of it—for both of us—and we didn’t have anywhere to turn except to each other, and we were of no help to each other at all. I’ve thought a lot about why I even made that trip back to New York with Neal. I certainly didn’t go with the expectation of getting married to him again. I went on that trip solely as an adventure. I remember talking to him half the night about it. Because he got to Denver about two o’clock in the morning; and when he came into the room and told me, “Pack your bags, we’re goin’ to New York!” I immediately said, “Of course.” I loved to go anyway; I was always ready. I was like Neal in that respect—it didn’t take very much to move me. And I wanted to go immediately, but I wanted him to know I wanted to go on my terms. I wanted to go as my own person, and I was not going to go back into the same trap again. He was not going to be the boss, going here and there, and treating me as his property. I wasn’t going to have it that way. Of course, that’s the way it turned out.
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