by Ed Bullins
One can easily find me. I am on the streets of the cities. I walk and wait on streets with names like Broadway, Market, Central and Main. I stand huddled in stupor in the doorways of transient hotels, occasionally freeing myself from the shadows and pleading for pennies from pedestrians. I am found asleep in the early mornings, in the waiting rooms of bus stations, last night’s newspapers my sheets, the black-booted policemen tapping upon the soles of my shoes with nightsticks, awakening me to arrest or sending me on my unknown way. I am seen peering for minutes at the billboards under the marquees of four-bit, all-night movie houses; my fingers in my last holeless pants pocket, rubbing my last two quarters together. Sometimes I look like a man, sometimes a boy, sometimes a woman, sometimes a girl. Sometimes I am none of these.
And at times I can be discovered inside, inside green and grey painted jails, pacing off the days and years in my dirt-colored cell. I sleep fitfully and wake screaming with nose bleeding, trembling, in drunk-tanks, until hauled desperately out and straitjacketed by annoyed guards in tan and grey uniforms. I lie awake inside of one-dollar-a-night flophouses, dreaming of old loves and clean smells. I sit up all night scratching bedbug bites and stalking juicy roaches in lonely rooms on skid row. I hear the bump bump de bump of the strip joints under my tenderloin window, the visions of the aging showgirls grinding and rolling up to my window like the din. From across the tracks the whistle of no longer scheduled trains reaches me, and the DIN din of the life buoy in the harbor and the bellow of ships shoving off to sea and the shrill work whistle at the plant that does not shriek for me, all this comes to where I sit, inside my deserted soul.
The Excursion
The wind was blowing that day. Not in high puffing breaths but steady, snatching at the woman’s taut skirt as she sauntered along the street, stopping occasionally to straighten her stockings or to look back over her shoulder at a passing car, then begin walking again when the auto did not slow.
In the length of a block, several would draw up to the curb and the drivers would signal or honk their horns.
Sometimes she would walk over and whisper with them and shake her head and step back upon the curb and begin her slow walk once more. Finally, she chose one and stepped inside as the car pulled away from the curb and spun around the first corner like a quick rodent. She sat huddled against the door, far from the driver who spoke to her with curt jerks of his head.
The car headed east driving through the sunny afternoon streets and turned onto an on-ramp of a freeway and moved into the flow of traffic. It speeded up and wheeled to the outside lane and speeded to the limit and took the bridge turnoff.
At the tollgate the cashier took the quarter and the car passed through. The driver headed over the pass with the mist spewing down from the crest like phantoms diving from the heights of the peak to the crystal bay at the base of the landscape.
Within an hour the car reached the park at the summit; a gate of huge redwoods welcomed them with twin signs carved from living wood. Deep into the six-foot signs were cut elongated NO’s, standing vertically to the left, and smaller words lined up on the right side: smoking, fires, necking, spitting, feeding the animals, drinking, molesting visitors, cutting vegetation …
After parking, the couple followed a footpath leading into the interior of the park. Sounds of cheering and play came from behind a grove of trees and when the two circled the woods a ball park was found filled by people with bats and balls and gloves.
Hefty, crew-cut fathers, their bellies hanging across their belts, directed their sons and stepped forward when the young ones failed to perform superbly and took the bats away, smashing the small balls to sing across the field, with the young boys in sulking pursuit.
The man and woman sat in a cleared area and watched, but before an hour were made to move on by the stampeding lunges of the heavier ball players. The two walked down a wider path above a gully that had a large pool carved into it; signs were posted above the pool’s fence. ALL THE FISH YOU CAN CATCH—NO LIMIT!—$1.00 AN HOUR WITH FREE EQUIPMENT. WE RE-STOCK OUR POOL HOURLY WITH LIVE GAME FISH! The woman looked down over the fenced pool, seeing the tee-shirted fishermen waiting patiently for a nibble. She and the man continued on up the hill to the pony ride.
The small animals were tethered to a wheel that turned as they dragged their hooves about the small rink. Small children were tied upon the saddles, after parents bought tickets, and the ponies were whipped to canter slightly faster at the beginning of each ride.
On the way back to the car the woman saw one of the fishermen pull a bright silvery thing from the pool; a crowd surrounded him and several hands patted him upon the back.
Dropping down through the redwood country the mist thinned and warmth broke the day’s greyness.
It didn’t take the auto long to reach the city. The Sunday traffic allowed the driver to reach the woman’s street quickly. The machine swung to the curb and she stepped clear.
“Next Sunday?” the driver asked as she looked back.
She shook her head and started away.
“But we’ll have longer,” the driver called after her.
“And the sun might shine all day.”
She stopped and looked back. She shook her head again. The man stared and seemed about to speak.
“I just feel so filthy afterwards,” she said. “Don’t you understand?”
He pulled away from the curb; the big car was gone. She sauntered along the street, stopping occasionally to straighten her stockings or to look back over her shoulder at a passing car, then begin walking when the auto did not slow.
An Ancient One
Under a grey sky the ancient woman feels like an insect along the cement walk in front of the cream and green building. The building wears a green tiled roof and green trims the windows and the maple door, and the old woman searches at its base with her slender brown cane, feeling forward with head bent low from her humped spine, hovering over her feeler, a grey spider.
She passes the house’s grey speckled steps, the black specks contrasting with her long dark grey coat almost sweeping the ground. A matching colored hat—a brimless grey straw hat—with a black felt ribbon pushes over her white head, and no green curtain or shade in the house flutters, shakes or raises as she passes.
It is an olive-green building she creeps up to, stopping briefly to peck her stick at a tumbling brown paper blowing by. Then she continues up the incline to the stoop of the olive-green building with its twelve marble stairs, and crawls secretly up each, clasping her cane under right armpit and strangling the rusted iron guide rail to claw her way up.
Her house is trimmed in white; white curtains wait at each window like poor relatives. She stoops at the top landing, peers into the mailbox, and feebly inserts her dark brass key and flutters through the nest’s opening.
The Reason of Why
My coffee is cool. I sip at my cup and carry my plate into the kitchen, placing it in the newly scrubbed sink. With lukewarm coffee filling my cup, I walk from the kitchen, cross the living room, back into my tiny sleeping area, and pull the covers across my mattress. I grab up my loose socks, towel and other garments lying about the edges of the mattress, and stuff them into a partially filled pillow case in a corner at the head of my pillow. A frown is fought back as I return to the front room.
I sit at the old, borrowed Underwood. The paper waits blank in the carriage. To the right of the machine lies a clipboard, empty, ready for the day. Above the clipboard is a clothbound dictionary, closed, also ready, grimed and frayed. Beside the dictionary, a pocket thesaurus. To the left of the machine are an eraser, a typecleaning brush, a beer can opener, an ashtray that I never use, seven assorted books—one The Canterbury Tales—and the cold cup of coffee which I shall drink within the hour.
It is secure here. Today is my day; perhaps, I might do something worthwhile today. But how many mornings and nights have I sat eating breakfast, dinner, sandwiches and coffee, drinking beer, wine, whiskey and cola, sc
ribbling letters to nearly forgotten friends, relatives and loved ones, reading envied favorites, regretting, despairing, waiting to begin? How many have I spent? Straining back the sloth and fatigue, getting back to the string of ideas let go the night before or cursing, scolding, crying secretly to snatch it up again.
There is but one question and that is why I await each morning to try to write or watch it pass with bitterness, with hate, without making a mark upon paper, passing as a signal that the death of one added sun and moon nears my work to its final completion, though there is little upon paper as testimony of the passing. Why do I eagerly, but with dread, await these mornings, cursing the evenings my fingers are clumsied by doubt, my mind fogged by drink, drugs or the lust for a woman who is late? Each day without working is surrender to death. Sixty I see myself, sixty with nothing upon the paper, the pages all blank, as empty as a life without smudges. What will I have for it then? Blank pages? A life spent in searching for that unknown something that is seldom found. Things better found between the lines upon blank pages?
And what if I write volumes, what then? At sixty, what if I can accept death with libraries of song, score upon score of verse, left in my wake, spreading their ripples across the consciousness of the race. Will it be worth it then? Worth it to who? Will these mornings have been well-spent? Will the dream evenings matter which preface my days, the lonely nights away from light and laughter? Away from a woman who cannot reason why one must lock himself in dim rooms, hosting books, cold coffee, typewriter and thousands of blank sheets of paper. A desert, a void representing nothing. Empty blank pages. A woman who sees only the filled pages, pages filled in the darkness, the sadness, as nothing but paper. A woman who never understands how I feel about the pages, all the pages I can never fill. Is it worth it to be? Is it worth the living to continue … worth even the thinking that there is anything to continue …
The Real Me
Well, yeah, the name is Jess Brown, but don’t print that—I don’t dig it. Just call me Jaye Bourvier III. So, you want to interview me ’cause I’m an authority on the “New Breed.” Well, ya know, bein’ a member doesn’t immediately make me an expert—ya know—I mean it does sort’a put me on the inside, if ya know what I mean. But, anyway, I’ve made some scenes, ya know, and … what? Well, ya know, bein’ one of those cats. Gettin’ sucked into the group and bein’ for real … yeah, I was serious about it. God! … was I serious. But I became hip; see? I saw it was to my advantage. No, man … it’s like this. I am a professional Negro. Well, no, I don’t mean I’m like a doctor or teacher or any of that bourgeois noise. To put it frankly: I make my problem pay—yeah—I’m in it for what I can get. Wait, man, I’m not puttin’ you on. Don’t you get it? There’s all kinds of benefits in bein’ a member of a minority these days. I mean, with all things considered, the field is opening up more and more … ya know—bein’ black and meanin’ it. We’re in vogue these days, and think of it; realistic, I mean, it isn’t so hard as it seems to qualify, and besides we’re likeable … I even dig some Negroes myself—my mother’s one.
Okay … well, this is how I got in this groove. What? No, I don’t feel guilty or anything for takin’ advantage of the situation. For a while I was square—ya know—sincere, I mean, and really honest about the whole thing. Like, I used to ask myself, “Is this what I really want?” No, man, not bein’ born black; not bein’ a Negro even; bein’ in the group, I mean.
Before—ya know—I remembered how, when I was a kid, how I felt bad, at times, for bein’ born black; not exactly resentin’ it—ya know—but wondering: “Why does it have to be me?”
Well, I started searchin’ for my identity … “Yeah” … I said … “that’s what I’ll do—find myself.” So, these past two years, I’ve made the whole trip and I know what all this “New Negro” jazz is about. I really know the scene ’cause I’ve really made the break from the group and become an individual, see? I can look at the real picture objectively. I’m really me now. Yeah, you can say I’m a bit opportunistic now; but, hell, we individualists are like that.
Before, I had to be something—ya know—you had to be on the in to be in the group, see? But you had to be more hip to what was in to really be in, see? Everything was a front—ya know—everything a shuck. Man, you had to dress continental when continental was in style and drive a “Bird” or imported make … and well, I can go on and on … but you have to give some of those people credit. They’re sick … wow! … but are they serious, and I can’t stand sincerity. After all the phoneys I’ve met … whew … I’m glad to be myself again; I’m in my groove now. I’m proud of my heritage; I’m completely adjusted. Er … yeah, you spell Bourvier with an r.
The Drive
After a Friday night shift, he had gotten off work on a hot August morning, eaten a greasy breakfast in the employee’s cafeteria, and decided to take a drive. He headed back through town by freeway, from East L.A., and then took the off-ramp at San Pedro Street and headed south. As the sun rose and the whiffs of smog and exhaust fumes fanned over the streets, the road’s slick surface shot up heat waves bouncing before him, inviting him to follow them to the ocean. The drive to Long Beach was grueling without the sea breezes he searched after. A swing through the main carnival-like street, crowded before noon by sailors at hot dog stands, gave him nothing to park for, so he drove farther south, out along the beach, looking on houses painted pastel, opening their orchid, scarlet and blue doors on blazing beaches.
In early afternoon he turned back to Los Angeles and chanced on a freeway and zoomed for miles not knowing where he’d end up, but reached center city after finding out he had been on the Harbor Freeway. He still didn’t want to go home, so got off far past his exit at Civic Center and headed west again, then south. Farther on, he turned on Adams Boulevard and pointed his old Ford toward the ocean on the western border of the city. He passed Western Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard, and the neighborhood became more Negro. He lived close to Vermont, below Adams, in a large rooming house, and the western side of L.A. was almost unknown to him, as was most of the southern. He drove on, changing direction, heading north and then west and then north and again west, driving along Venice Boulevard and finally Santa Monica. He continued until he reached the ocean.
He had been to Santa Monica once before, on a chill and deserted autumn afternoon when he took an old girlfriend and her kid down there, nearly a year before. But this time instead of stopping the car in the huge, empty public parking lot and looking for hours out to sea with rock ’n roll drumming from the radio and salt spray pecking at the windows and gulls veering above and out seaward into the cold gusts, while he sipped beer and caressed a girl’s breasts and thighs as her kid snored in the backseat, he got out of the car after parking it and walked down the beach front, down past Pacific Ocean Park (POP), scorching, loud and raucous, not shut and waiting for spring and weekends like before.
He walked, seeing the beach front change from the gaudy show of amusement park to dilapidated tenements, aged hotels and store fronts for osteopaths, faith healers, Jewish recreation centers and bars. The crowd changed like the neighborhood. Old European-style Jews appeared on the benches and crept along the walk ahead of him or crowded around the open-air fruit stalls, feeling the tomatoes.
They looked as if they had been lifted from an East Side New York street and set down blocks south of Santa Monica to wait for eternity in the California sun, beside a picture postcard sea.
Close to Venice West he stopped in a beer bar, the pounding jukebox guiding him. It was a gay joint, but he was thirsty, so he stayed and ordered a pitcher of beer. Two male couples sat at different ends of the bar, their made-up eyes roving and suspicious at first, until turning back to their matters. Behind the bar lounged a bull dike, wearing Levi’s and button-down sports shirt, her hair in a duck-tail; she gabbed casually with him and didn’t treat him as an intruder.
“You new in Venice?”
“Nawh … just drove down to try and get
some air.”
“Yeah … it’s pretty hot … ’specially this time of year … I asked if you were new ’cause a lot of the Negro fellahs are movin’ down here from the city and they make good customers. They’re not square … ya know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I guess I do.”
“The way I see it … a guy should do what he wants, ya know what I mean?”
“Yeah … yeah.”
“Yeah … I keep a cool place. Everybody minds his business. That’s the way it should always be … nice and cool.”
They talked as he drank and the fags played the jukebox, and the bartender and he learned that they had both visited the same out-of-the-way place in Spain, and by the time he went off into the unbearable afternoon, he admitted secretly that queers and dikes weren’t so bad, if they knew where you stood.
Driving back to Los Angeles from the beach he stopped at a bar on Washington Boulevard. It had just opened for the day and the big owner, formerly a heavyweight fighter, was talking to his slim bartender. There was only one other customer when he arrived.
He ordered gin and lemon, for the heat was bothering him on his trip back, and he had drunk three or four when two girls walked in. Both had nice builds. The darker one had a perfect behind flaring under her skirt, but her brown talkative partner had the sleek, streamlined build that works out so well, sometimes.
The girls ordered rounds and talked to the bartender a while, and when ordering drinks again, sent one down to him. He was sitting two seats away, and after the next drinks which he paid for, the girls asked him over, and believing that he might be especially appealing that one day, he moved between them. The brown girl kept up a rapid dialogue of nonsense and he could see she was hitting on him, as much as his fogged gaze could see, but it was the black one with big soft eyes he wanted to make time with. But she let her partner do all the chattering which she did for three drinks or more; then she offered to sleep with him for fifteen bucks, her buddy thrown in for twenty-five, or twenty-five for either of them the entire day. (“You can keep time on your watch, ho-ney.”)
