April 1972
I run into handsome guitarist Rob DuPrey in the showers. He says, “Hey, are you the guy who plays that punk music?”
“I dunno—what’s punk music?”
“You know, the Stooges. I can hear it through the door. It’s okay— I love the Stooges.”
Now he is trying to teach me to sing so we can form a band. Our set list:
“Schoolgirl,” Argent
“Little Doll,” “Real Cool Time,” Stooges
“Curly,” “Tonight,” “Omnibus,” Move
“Nellie Takes Her Bow,” “Whisper in the Night,” ELO
“Call Me Animal,” MC5
After a week of dedicated alcohol consumption, I’m run down. I have ravished myself out of my senses. I can’t remember Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday nights at all. I got the feeling of impending doom. My fingernails are ragged. My drowned heart feels funny, like it’s got a knife in it. I’m not right. I is sick. Depraved. Deranged. Paranoid. I can’t sleep cuz I’ll die. I got restless tension. Bad circulation. No oxygen in my brain. Never-ending shakes. I’m weak. Hallucinations. Can this be DTs? Aren’t I too young for DTs? I’m so goddam young! There’s a shadow looming over me. I lie on my single bed and look up at the creepy portrait of Fu Manchu that I finished, (acrylic on canvas) dressed in the height of aristocratic Chinese crime-boss fashion. A plume of opium smoke drifts up to his cat’s eyes. Why am I obsessed by Fu Manchu? Thinking about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There’s been a lot of Mr. Hyde lately. I grit my teeth and tough it out.
I had a dream of living in a Chinese junk in the foghorn darkness…a bunk bed lit by a Chinese lamp. Smell of opium. A coppery quilt. A boyish girl. Oval mouth. Wide, dark, heavy-lidded eyes. Long-fingered. My freckled feline imp arches, coaxes, slips, churns, seethes, nuzzles, boils, beats, softly crashes into me over and over. Whew. My subconscious is starved for eros. It’s been a while. I’ve almost forgotten that there’s a little creature that lives between every pair of female legs. I wanna get on my camel and ride.
I learn painting is about painting. We paint for ourselves and other painters. It’s not just what you put in but also what you leave out. I dig Marca-Relli lately. He’s got a great feel for shapes.
April 21, 1972. Woke up this morning with a bird’s nest in my head. Those Seconals weren’t too good for me, cardiac-wise. Went to the bar last night with Paul Morrissey, who had just shown Chelsea Girls at the campus screening room. We told jokes for four hours. Another barroom drama was when I found poet Fielding Dawson (great name) on a stool nursing a hangover at around noon. I heard him read the night before. We split a pitcher of beer and he told me about his pals the abstract expressionists. Pretty funny stories about the Cedar Tavern, involving belligerent beatniks and especially Franz Kline, who I like a lot. I got up to pee, and suddenly he was in the can too, mauling me. “Knock it off, man!” I yelled, pushing him off. He was persistent, so I kneed him in the ghoulies, and took off out of the joint, very disappointed that our dipsomaniac communion should’ve had to end this way.
Saw Satyricon. Loved Ascilto (Hiram Keller), the brawling, lusty demigod, grinning with self-assurance. Many pretty boys abound. Stupendous sets used only for a minute or so.
I get a letter from Angie. She writes “I am making two new dresses especially for you. One is hubba-hubba and the other is whisper me sweet nothins. They are the kind that when you see me in them, you’ll want to see me out of them, you old rooster.”
Bard is like a country club with no golf course. Baghdad-on-the-Hudson. Sunbathing on the Blithewood roof, slathered in Coppertone, the comforting smell that takes me back to Miami Beach in the 1950s. I can hear the hushed drone of the waterfall through the trees, I can hear the birds singing, hear my pen scritching. Somewhere, someone is playing “Opportunity” by Eddie Cochran.
Boys’-night-out dept: Rob DuPrey, the libertine, and I fulfilled our orgy fantasies last night, scrambling round on naked classmates. Social climber Mallory and her pal, a girl called Andy, drove us home from the bar in her Alfa Romeo and we went in Rob’s empty room, threw on some Soft Machine, lit a joint, and we got down to it. Sex for sex’s sake and the sheer whee of women. Mallory’s taller than me, short hair and hard brown nubbin nipples, pubic hair trimmed like a small hedge. Huge vagina. She seemed no stranger to this kind of scene, Rob and Andy next to us, copulating away. I catch Rob’s eye; a twinkle of amusement passes between us. I think the girls found us a little too nutty. They were trying to be sophisticated. But it was hard to take seriously. Hard to be cool.
May 5, 1972. DuPrey and I hit NYC to see the Jeff Beck Group at Carnegie Hall, featuring his fabulous drummer Cozy Powell. First we load up on Pernod till we got a nice buzz going. Beck is ripping it up in his bad-boy way, one of the best guitarists ever, a real connoisseur of sounds, from dirty to lyrical. He’s got that great shag haircut (that I made my mother try to replicate when she cut my hair), dark eye sockets, played Stratocaster over his head, sounding like the dragsters he loves, laughing at the mayhem he conjures up. Some hippies bounce a balloon up to the stage, and he stomps it flat immediately with his Cuban heels. No Summer of Love here, son, this is a crack team of professionals. “Going Down.” “Ice Cream Cakes,” and the gorgeous “Raynes Park Blues.” It is loud and it feels good! What a fucking band!
After the show DuPrey and I run down Fifth Avenue in drunken high spirits, a myriad of lights and fountains and yellow cabs, with a clear black New York City sky above us. We accost a couple of girls we never saw before and one says, “Wait, is your name Duncan Hannah?” and I say, “Yah!” and we run off because it was too perfect. Who’s she? Streets, you better get outta the way! Howling at the moon! We got the devil in us.
The next day, however, I got the DTs again, while standing in the Met. I started to fade away. My vision was going. I thought, “This is too melodramatic, I can’t die in the Met, right in front of Sargent’s Madame X!” I sat down on a bench. I didn’t think I’d make it and almost didn’t.
My dad’s been writing me man-to-man letters in his open, loopy handwriting. We were so close up until age fourteen or so. I was the child of his dreams back then. I remember eating scrambled eggs in the sunroom of the Plaza, dressed in my little Brooks Brothers getup, complete with a gray leather Eton cap. He brimmed over with pride. Now he wonders what hath God wrought. But I’m a logical extension of that other Duncan. I’m not sure he sees it that way.
Jake Grossberg (my drawing teacher) is exasperated with us students. We don’t work hard enough. He blew up. He ripped up Elliot Caplan’s homework drawing into small pieces and threw it in his face. Said he wasn’t here to babysit us. “In my day the kids were exciting and the teachers were dull. Now it’s the other way around!” He storms out of the studio, slamming the door behind him. Elliot is in tears. We look around at each other…now what? We are guilty as charged. Bard is an odd reality.
Zabo Stanislav is a beautiful blond theater major, the acknowleged stunner of the campus. One night in the coffee shop, someone runs in and says,“Quick, get down to the arts building, Zabo is modeling for life class!” Who could have hoped for anything more glorious? I grab my pad and charcoals and sprint down there, into the hush of the studio. There she stands in her altogether, frozen in a dance position, like an Ingres odalisque or a Playboy Playmate. Perfect. I hurriedly set up at an easel, and let my eyes feast over her supple dancer’s body. She watched me out of her mysterious gray eyes, the hint of a smile at her lip. How her maize-colored hair frames her gorgeous face, the long neck settles into the chest, the swell of the upturned breasts with nipples at attention, the ribcage, the navel, the southern slope down to the furred sex, the hip meeting the thigh, faster now south to the long legs and feet! How could one do justice to this vision of beauty? It’s all made of creams and blushes, the poetry of her dips and hollows. She’s not made out of lines. Lines don’t exist here. At the break, she stretches, slowly puts on her kimono, and comes over to look at my lousy drawing. I apologize for not rising to the level of her loveliness. She’s amused at the power she has, not just over me but over the entire room. She’s casually flirtatious. Toys with me. Somehow the fact that she’s naked under her silk wrapper flusters me even more. Says she enjoys modeling. Makes a little pocket money. The teacher says it’s time to resume, and she leaves me to go back to her altar, to be our goddess again. She adopts a reclining pose, with her legs slightly parted. Her quim is aimed right at me. Winks at me. I’m staring hard, trying to memorize every detail for future reference. At the end of the session I have not captured the apparition before me at all. My drawings lack grace. I watched as she climbed back into her baggy blue jeans, worn cowboy boots, flannel shirt, and brown leather airman’s jacket. She gave me a lift in her old Volvo down to Adolph’s, where a night of heavy drinking took place.
I got up with no memory of pissing off the landing onto the stairs, so alcoholized that my teeth were chattering. Trudge over to my painting class. Jim Sullivan says, “In the beginning you tried to paint compelling paintings that forced us to look at them, but held our attention for a minimal time, because you used so many gimmicks. Now they’re toned down, and much more compelling.” I play nursemaid to my paintings, trying to give them what they need rather than what I want.
The school year is drawing to a close. I stock up on Pernod in the liquor shop in nearby Red Hook for the parties to come. A big confusing blur of bad behavior. Freshman year is over.
Summer of 1972, Minneapolis
My dad is shocked at my appearance. He says I am a disgrace to Fred Astaire. Says to Mom, “He’s really flipped this time.” They’re worried about drunk driving (rightly so). No more car keys. “We want to be proud of you but we can’t. When you were a little boy we had such high hopes for you, but each year we lower our expectations.” Talking about alcohol with Dad over three Scotch-and-waters in the backyard, abuzz with mosquitoes. “We’re trying to put the brakes on you because you are too fun-loving, it’s abnormal.” He hires me to paint the house, which is covered in cedar shakes, but lots of trim, and screen and storm windows. Then I can go to London in August to infiltrate the underground. Make the club circuit in my flash fineries.
Clockwise: DH, Mary Kay (Steve’s girlfriend), Eric Li, Steve Kramer Credit 2
June sky is dark and threatening, now raining on the lush woods. I’m alone in my room, listening to Tyrannosaurus Rex (1967–68), One Year by Colin Blunstone (exquisitely romantic), and “Rawlinson End” by the Bonzo Dog Band. I feel like I haven’t been alone in ages. I leaf through picture books and paint a little. Calm for the first time in a long time. Here I am in a backwater of Hopkins, once the juvenile-delinquent capital of Minnesota. The hoods still bomb down the main drag in hopped-up pink Camaros. On the local scene, Kramer and I ride a bicycle built for two and crash gleefully into trees, small children, and walls. No one is hospitalized.
Calm disrupted by David Bowie’s new album, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. He outdoes T. Rex. This is the next big step. Can’t stop listening to it. Makes me freak out in a moonage daydream!
June 17. The nice thing about having a lover is that it makes you think about everything anew; the rest of your life becomes a kind of movie, flat and rather funny. “Inspirations have I none / Just a touch of flaming love…” sings Bowie. My mom notices my shredded back, which came from Lainie Powell’s fingernails. How I got my stripes goes like this. Lainie (Kramer’s ex) called me in the afternoon and said, “Wait until you see my new haircut, you’re going to love it, we’d make a perfect pair.” Okay. She said she’d meet me later at a party in an empty house in Hopkins. There she is, busty Lainie in lederhosen, with her new Ziggy Stardust haircut. She looks like a super-sexy Swiss tomboy. We have instant chemistry after the icebreaking flirtatious phone call this afternoon. It is on! Go into the dark basement away from the noise, and I slide my fingers up under her knit top and fondle the glory of her tits. Soul kissing. Look deep into her glittering eyes. She said, “Let’s take a shower,” which we did. Good idea. Which led to soaping, and drying, and then to bed, which was delicious, her long legs locked around mine, as we gently rocked. Lainie’s a carnal girl, a sensualist, a favorite with the summer boys in Excelsior. It’s what she’s best at, and she knows it. Takes pride in her amorous physicality, which is nice. Exhilarating, in fact.
My parents left for a party at six, so, since I’m grounded, my pals came to me, with lots of rum. Makeout party ensued, parents came home early at ten, joint was hoppin’. Trouble. I started bowing and “om”-ing like the Mystic Magic Mullah Maji. Mom is pretty blotto herself, and holds her head in her hands. “Dunc’s got a lot of problems, and you don’t help him any. Please get out of this house, pronto!” They left.
In the morning I got up, little sergeant at salute, head pounding, heart doing fills and paradiddles, skin too tight, took a shower, made an omelette. Mom comes in, shit hitting the fan, and says, “I’ve lost faith in you. You’re a worthless, no-good, homosexual choirboy.” I laughed at that one, and countered with, “Well, I don’t like you or your ding-a-ling friends either.”
“You’re driving me to an early grave!” she yelled. Just to wind her up a bit more, I told her how I really got out of the draft. She went wiggy over that one. She ridicules what she don’t understand.
Home alone on a gloomy summer’s day. Lainie calls to say she’s been thinking about that party. Could she come over to see me? Take the bus? Sure.
Bing-bong! She shows up at the doorstep looking a bit shy and sheepish. My heart fluttered. She looks fabulous in pleated pants and a little Fair Isle top. Very Bowie. My Puss-in-Boots. I make drinks and lead her into my room to listen to records. We kiss, more sober than last time, and we take off our clothes in stages. She’s just seventeen years old. She’s my height, flat stomach with a row of taut muscles that run down to where our pubic hairs meet. She tells me she’s sterile so don’t worry about birth control. We make love three times that afternoon. She’s more comfortable in the throes of passion than she is making conversation. Lovely lying next to her, still messy with fairy dust. “I don’t feel dirty or slutty going to bed with you,” she says. “You’re so pretty and appreciative. It’s really nice.”
I felt like a regular rogue running her home in Dad’s low-slung convertible sports car, dropping her off at the house of her fat mom, who’s in the driveway wearing a flowered apron. She throws her pudgy arms around her daughter as I squeal off, saying, “Bye bye, ducks.”
My dad looks at my attire and says, “Wouldn’t you rather be Humphrey Bogart than Lauren Bacall?”
I’m talking to a Jehovah’s Witness at the front door and “Sympathy for the Devil” comes on the living-room stereo. Nice timing.
Memorable night with the wild boys and girls of our extended pack. Wound up at cousin Swanny’s house on Lake Minnetonka. Full house, so Lainie and I were given the sleeping porch, enclosed with screens, which has a large bed suspended by chains to the ceiling. That night there was a crazy thunderstorm, so we fucked our way through it with primitive passion. Sacred fucking in a second-story porch as the heavens exploded! Then we took a bath, facing each other, such cuteness to behold. Made it again in the bath, while a David Bowie record played from downstairs. Back to our swinging bed for a snuggle, which led to bout three. Lainie loves it, which is such a turn-on. Desire is the ultimate aphrodisiac. I like being wanted. I like being part of someone else’s hunger.
Jimmy and I were summoned up to an island on Rainy Lake in Winnipeg by Gail Bennett (she’s an heiress) and her friend Sybil, part of the girls’ school clique. We were flown in the two-engine, five-seat company plane. Just the two of us and the pilot. We ran into an ultra-heavy storm a mile up. We were pitched upside-down, our Cokes on the ceiling, and the plane began twitching and clanking and dropped altitude like a loose elevator. The pilot was scared shitless, our knuckles were white, and Jimmy and I (friends since 1959) said our solemn goodbyes to each other. Strangely enough, my heart was beating calmly for the first time since Easter. The plane that had lost its bearings suddenly righted itself, and we came out of the storm. We made it. When we touched down we kissed the tarmac. Alive!
We spent five days with the girls in this rustic compound, a main lodge and some cabins, sailing on a Sunfish, canoeing, drinking rye whiskey, skinny-dipping. We told ghost stories on the double-sided white sand beach one night, spooking the girls. Electrical storms broke out, lightning flashes zapping the aluminum lawn chairs at ten-second intervals. Bzzzzt! It was something to see. Our eyes were popping out at the extreme violence of nature.
That night Jimmy snuck out of our cabin to join Gail, and Sybil came a-knockin’ at my door. I like Sybil, but I wasn’t about to get into this. She had a mass of kinky hair, webbed toes, a forehead like the Rock of Gibraltar, saggy tits, and breath that smelled like buckskin scraps. I did not comply. But I was diplomatic about it.
Back in suburbia, Lainie comes over to meet with my parents. She’s sitting in the beamed living room, nursing a Scotch-and-soda and smoking a Parliament 100, dressed in pleated Busby Berkeley pants and no underwear. The dinner conversation is about the various merits of a high-school education, and the pointlessness of memorization. Meanwhile my dad is ogling her, his eyes all atwinkle. They tell me in the kitchen that this is the nicest girl I’ve ever brought home. If they knew the half of it!
I feel like a teenage werewolf. Free love abounds! This is a time of great urgency! We have no free will! We are controlled by our chemistry and electricity!
What a weird summer! Been through the ringer of all the emotions. This summer I rode a roller coaster, had a troublesome heart condition, went to Canada and almost died, painted the house, held grudges, got in a car accident, played drums with the Hurricane Boys, made the scene at the country club, saw Todd Rundgren in concert, learned the funky penguin, saw an Egon Schiele show, drank a lot, screwed a pretty girl named Kit in the cabin of a sailboat, adored David Bowie, all in sixty days.
Night of Absinthe
Party at cousin Swanny’s lakeshore house in Deephaven, and we have a bottle of real 1915 absinthe with the dreaded wormwood-root ingredient that drives you insane, which got it banned worldwide. Steve Brooks (who looks like Thor Heyerdahl) has an older brother, Conley Jr. He was safekeeping the contraband stuff for his uncle, who brought it back from World War I. Kramer stole it while rummaging around during a cacophonous party at the Brookses’. So we were taking hits off it. It was so strong, that when you forced a little sip down, it turned around halfway and tried to come back up. We were standing by the shore of the lake, taking it methodically, being connoisseurs of substance abuse. Waiting for the click. I take a piss. There’s a thunderstorm brewing. Two pale figures are coming up out of the dark, cold and naked; it’s Calvin Perry and Lainie. She starts to cry when she sees me, scared of what I must think. But I don’t think anything. I’m just drinking absinthe and taking a piss. I help her with her clothes. Her mascara is running down her face. Kramer is playing Parisian street songs on his accordion. We work on the absinthe a bit more. Going down easier now. Calvin has entered the party house naked, bellowing some drivel about his godlike status. We decide this hippie scene is dead, time to move.
We pile into Kramer’s mother’s station wagon. We don’t know it, but we’re nuts! (absinthe doing what absinthe does best). Kramer peels out. Partygoers are screaming “No! Don’t let those guys drive…they’re crazy!” Kramer is going 50 mph through residential Deephaven’s windy, wooded roads. Kurt and I are grumbling about the complacent dullards at the party. We gotta go, man! There’s a hellhound on our trail! Kramer’s taking swipes at the steering wheel without actually touching it. We careen around a corner and slam into a tree. Wham! No brakes, nothin’. Just wham!
The tree broke. The car broke. Bent in two. Totaled. Car horn screaming. Smoke rising to obscure the moon. We are untouched. Blessed be the drunks. Only perturbed that now we have no means of transportation. Yelling at Kramer for being a crap driver.
The party sent a pursuit car after us, knowing we wouldn’t make it far. Kurt and I pile in, take off to his house. Kramer decides he better stay with the car—but realizes he better be scarce when the cops show up, so he creeps down into the swamp, up to his neck, like he saw in war movies. Police search for owner of abandoned station wagon, to no avail. He’s breathing through a reed underwater.
Meanwhile, Lainie is in the car that picked us up. She wants to explain her behavior. I don’t care. I’m numb to jealousy tonight. She’s feeling bawdy. Sexually compulsive. When we get to Kurt’s we lock ourselves in the bathroom and fuck like nymphomaniacs on the floor. We had orgasms at the same time. What a rush! Absinthe did as advertised!