The Cool School (11 page)

At the time the streets of New York teemed with soldiers and sailors—lonely and bewildered—and many found their way to the pad—where for a little while at least life took on some meaning. Often they gave love and always found it. Some discovered God and hardly knew of their discovery. There many heard the great Bird and felt sadness as Lady Day cried out her anguished heart.

Others came also—42nd Street hustlers—poets—simple dreamers, thieves, prostitutes (both male and female), and pimps and wise guys and junkies and pot heads and just people—seeking sanctuary in a Blue Glade away from the merciless neon glare.

There were young boys who came and swaggered and talked wise and then spoke of their dreams and plans and went away refreshed and aware of themselves as having an identity.

Spencer accepted them all and gave of himself freely to each. The pad was his home and in it he could accept any confession, any seemingly strange behavior, idea, thought, belief and mannerism as part of one, without outward show of censure. Within the confines of his home one could be oneself.

Spencer lost his pad partly because the people in the building in which it was located resented his show of freedom and partly through a situation which developed out of a relationship with a young man.

Vernon was a young man who came to New York in search of a meaning to life. He wanted to write, he wanted to act, he wanted to be loved, he wanted to love, he wanted anything and everything. His background was somewhat more interesting because of having been raised by a father who was a minister of the Baptist church in his
home town but who apparently was too busy preaching the gospel to give his own son other than scant attention. His mother had made an effort to make up the difference but her main interest remained with her husband.

Vernon had been in the war and had accomplished nothing except the nickname Angel among his friends because he was always talking about God and because he would listen to anyone’s problems. Also he learned to smoke pot.

His appearance was rather striking and upon reaching New York he had no trouble making contacts. Just how he eventually met Spencer I don’t know but meet they did and became good friends.

One night they had both been out drinking—Vernon smoking pot and both taking nembutals—and had returned to the pad to get some sleep. Both stripped naked and fell on to the bed and into a deep sleep. When they awakened they were in Bellevue.

It seems one or the other must have accidentally brushed against the gas plate opening a valve and that the neighbors, smelling gas in the hallway, upon investigating traced it to Spencer’s and being unable to arouse anyone called the police who broke in and finding them both out cold had them rushed to Bellevue, where after reviving them decided they be held for observation. Spencer has since told me, it was a harrowing experience.

Meanwhile the people in the building all got together and signed a petition requesting that Spencer be evicted. As one old queen—who had the apartment next to Spencer’s—told me—“My dear—it was really too much. It was a regular black and tan fantasy. Both stark naked—and who knows what they had been doing—Spencer so dark and Vernon pale white. It would have been bad enough if both were the same color. Really, if Spencer wants to end it all he shouldn’t try and take one of his lovers with him.”

I saw Spencer not long ago and once again he has a charming little place of his own but it isn’t quite the 47th Street pad.

The Evening Sun Turned Crimson
, 1980

Some hip cats were so fractured by intellect, temperament, and experience that they could never fit into straight society. Carl Solomon was a Marine at sixteen and after his service he traveled in Europe encountering the Surrealists, especially the visionary Antonin Artaud, who seemed to propose madness as a viable pursuit. Returning to the U.S., Solomon promptly committed himself in 1949 to the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where he met Allen Ginsberg (who would dedicate
Howl
to him). Solomon described his institutionalization and shock treatments in
Mishaps, Perhaps
from which the following piece is taken.

P
ERVERSITY
IN
all forms appeals to those who desire a new reality. The quintessence of evil suddenly seems desirable because you are bored with “What’s new?” and “How do you do?” Of all poets, the perverts seem most interesting.

Turn off the ball game. Do something odd. Run a bath and stay in for three hours, or talk to an odd-looking man you meet on the street. Then you are on the path of what certain writers call the marvelous. The end is dementia praecox. What you have been seeking is absolutely dementia, a seclusion room by yourself or a straitjacket all your own. This because you desired to turn things around to make the ugly beautiful. Such alchemy is not a pretense and is not limited to one writer. It is domain on which any daring individual may trespass. It has existed for many centuries. And the unusual says Lautréamont is to be found in the banal. The extraordinary is to be found where you sit. I cannot break the fascination with this view of life, call it the bright orange view as opposed to the gray view.

This is better than a hobby; it is almost the equivalent of a religion.

I shall make up a dream I never dreamed and you may explore it for significance. I was sitting on a beach; a dog came up to me and licked my leg; a fat boy came by; he wanted to play ball. It seems that we played ball for years. Then the dream ended. What a silly dream!

Sometimes the diabolist regrets his sins against nature and dreams of gods or reality. But reality persists in being boring.

Who can understand my odd nature. My passion for the absurd or the prank. I live for these things. I have traveled and travel is a flop so far as I am concerned. Wherever you go you are a tourist, that is to say some sucker to the odd denizens of the place. Give me my home, my imagination and my dreams.

It is almost as though the “real” world were an asylum and the unreal world is a super-asylum . . . for those who have gone insane in the outer madhouse and been placed in this outer void. It is a place where those who don’t know they are insane are placed. Those who know they are ill are outside consulting psychiatrists. Pilgrim is the sort of place you leave by asserting that the correct date is actually the date and the correct man is actually the president. There is a definite letdown in being released . . . you feel upon leaving the Insane Asylum as though you are entering the Sane Asylum.

This all is a task too difficult to describe once you have attained this dimension. It is like hearing the inaudible . . . seeing the invisible.

Mishaps, Perhaps
, 1966

A juvenile car thief and reform-school graduate, a con man, and bigamist, Neal Cassady inhabited the road that Kerouac celebrated. He served time, lived with Ginsberg, and drove Ken Kesey’s magic Merry Pranksters bus through Tom Wolfe’s
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
and into legend. Cassady was Dean Moriarty in
On the Road,
and Cody Pomeray in other Kerouac novels. His hundreds of letters to Kerouac inspired and fed the fire of what Ginsberg called “spontaneous bop prosody.” Cassady died at forty-two under mysterious circumstances and his own autobiographical novel
The First Third
was published posthumously.

D
EAR
JACK
:

I am sitting in a bar on Market St. I’m drunk, well, not quite, but I soon will be. I am here for 2 reasons; I must wait
5
hours for the bus to Denver & lastly but, most importantly, I’m here (drinking) because, of course, because of a woman & 
what
a
woman!
To be chronological about it:

I was sitting on the bus when it took on more passengers at Indianapolis, Indiana—a perfectly proportioned beautiful, intellectual, passionate, personification of Venus De Milo asked me if the seat beside me was taken!!! I gulped, (I’m drunk) gargled & stammered NO! (Paradox of expression, after all, how can one stammer No!!?) She sat—I sweated—She started to speak, I knew it would be generalities, so to tempt her I remained silent.

She (her name Patricia) got on the bus at 8 pm (Dark!) I didn’t
speak until 10 pm—in the intervening 2 hours I not only of course, determined to make her, but, how to
DO IT.

I naturally can’t quote the conversation verbally, however, I shall attempt to give you the gist of it from 10 pm to 2 am.

Without the slightest preliminaries of objective remarks (what’s your name? where are you going? etc.) I plunged into a completely knowing, completely subjective, personal & so to speak “penetrating her core” way of speech; to be shorter, (since I’m getting unable to write) by 2 am I had her swearing eternal love, complete subjectivity to me & immediate satisfaction. I, anticipating even more pleasure, wouldn’t allow her to blow me on the bus, instead we played, as they say, with each other.

Knowing her supremely perfect being was completely mine (when I’m more coherent, I’ll tell you her complete history & psychological reason for loving me) I could conceive of no obstacle to my satisfaction, well, “the best laid plans of mice & men go astray” and my nemesis was her sister, the bitch.

Pat had told me her reason for going to St. Louis was to see her sister; she had wired her to meet her at the depot. So, to get rid of the sister, we peeked around the depot when we arrived at St. Louis at 4 am to see if she (her sister) was present. If not, Pat would claim her suitcase, change clothes in the rest room & she and I proceed to a hotel room for a night (years?) of perfect bliss. The sister was not in sight, so She (note the capital) claimed her bag & retired to the toilet to change
^______
long dash
^______

This next paragraph must, of necessity, be written completely objectively
^____

Edith (her sister) & Patricia (my love) walked out of the pisshouse hand in hand (I shan’t describe my emotions). It seems Edith (bah) arrived at the bus depot early & while waiting for Patricia, feeling sleepy, retired to the head to sleep on a sofa. That’s why Pat & I didn’t see her.

My desperate efforts to free Pat from Edith failed, even Pat’s terror & slave-like feeling toward her rebelled enough to state she must see
“someone” & would meet Edith later,
all
failed. Edith was wise; she saw what was happening between Pat & I.

Well, to summarize: Pat & I stood in the depot (in plain sight of the sister) & pushing up to one another, vowed to never love again & then I took the bus for Kansas City & Pat went home, meekly, with her dominating sister. Alas, alas
^______

In complete (try & share my feeling) dejection, I sat, as the bus progressed toward Kansas City. At Columbia, Mo. a young (19) completely passive (my meat)
virgin
got on & shared my seat . . . In my dejection over losing Pat, the perfect, I decided to sit on the bus (behind the driver) in broad daylight & seduce her, from 10:30 am to 2:30 pm I talked. When I was done, she (confused, her entire life upset, metaphysically amazed at me, passionate in her immaturity) called her folks in Kansas City, & went with me to a park (it was just getting dark) & I banged her; I screwed as never before; all my pent up emotion finding release in this young virgin (& she was) who is, by the by, a
school teacher
! Imagine, she’s had 2 years of Mo. St. Teacher’s College & now teaches Jr. High School. (I’m beyond thinking straightly).

I’m going to stop writing. Oh, yes, to free myself for a moment from my emotions, you must read “Dead Souls” parts of it (in which Gogol shows his insight) are quite like you.

I’ll elaborate further later (probably?) but at the moment I’m drunk & happy (after all, I’m free of Patricia already, due to the young virgin. I have no name for her. At the happy note of Les Young’s “jumping at Mesners” (which I’m hearing) I close till later.

To my Brother

Carry On!

N. L. Cassady

1947;
The First Third and Other Writings
, revised edition, 1981

Norman Mailer defined the hipster as white Negro Anatole Broyard was the flip side, the Negro white. He served as a white in the segregated U.S. Army in World War II and continued to pass thereafter. After studying at the New School Broyard became dean of postwar Greenwich Village intellectuals, as recounted in his posthumous memoir
Kafka Was the Rage,
serving as regular book critic of
The New York Times
and informal arbiter of what was hip. Here he coolly dissects the hip prototype as perceived in 1948.

A
S
HE
was the illegitimate son of the Lost Generation, the hipster was really
nowhere.
And, just as amputees often seem to localize their strongest sensations in the
missing
limb, so the hipster longed, from the very beginning, to be
somewhere.
He was like a beetle on its back; his life was a struggle to get
straight.
But the law of human gravity kept him overthrown, because he was always of the minority—opposed in race or feeling to those who owned the machinery of recognition.

The hipster began his inevitable quest for self-definition by sulking in a kind of inchoate delinquency. But this delinquency was merely a negative expression of his needs, and, since it led only into the waiting arms of the ubiquitous law, he was finally forced to
formalize
his resentment and express it
symbolically.
This was the birth of a philosophy—a philosophy of
somewhereness
called
jive,
from
jibe:
to agree, or harmonize. By discharging his would-be aggressions
symbolically,
the hipster harmonized or reconciled himself with his society.