Bachelorama, Twentieth-Century Boy

We have the new German variety of cockroach that eats machinery. Another breed of Eskimo cockroaches that are cooling it for the summer in the icebox, sipping iced tea.

“And you’re a prima ballerina on a spring afternoon,” sings David Jo from the speakers. A new establishment opened up on our block. Down a few steps to a cellar. It’s painted in red enamel, with ominous black stencil lettering that says VENUS SOCIAL CLUB. MEMBERS ONLY. What could that mean? What goes on in there? The mind boggles. Is it like a Robbe-Grillet thing? La Maison de rendez-vous? Can I join? Seems terribly sinister. One night, stumbling home from some serious drinking, I decided to chance it. I stepped down and opened the door, looked in to see a half-dozen fat old Italian guys smoking cigars and drinking espressos. They looked up and stared at me. “Get outta here, kid!” said one.

“Yes, sir,” I replied and beat a hasty exit. They must be mob bosses. So that’s what they do with their ill-gotten gains? Sit around in a crummy basement drinking coffee? Where’s the fun in that, I’d like to know. Hardly seems worth it. Use your imagination, guys! You’re gangsters! Live large!

An extremely pretty girl in a pale-yellow summer dress orders a lemonade from me at Sutter’s. Annette. She’s a dead ringer for young Claire Bloom. She never takes her wide eyes and Mona Lisa smile off me. Like she’s in a trance. I give her the lemonade “on the house,” and she asks for my phone number. She says she speaks five languages.

A couple nights later, Eric and I are drinking Pernod, and he’s panicked at being broke, not having found a summer job. So I started singing “53rd and 3rd” to him, the Ramones song we hear at CBGB’s. “Fifty-third and Third, I’m tryna’ turn a trick…Fifty-third and Third, don’t it make you feel sick?”

“You know those young dudes who hang out under those arcades at Fifty-third and Third? They’re male hustlers. That’s what Dee Dee does,” I explained. Eric and I often passed those tricks on our way to the cinemas up there.

Eric was shocked. “That’s what those guys are doing there? But Dee Dee has a girlfriend!”

“Probably closeted businessmen who want a blow job before they go home to their wives at night. They pull up in their car, boy goes over, negotiates price, and they drive off to a dark street.”

“Ick!” said Eric, who was pretty homophobic, despite his androgynous looks. He even finds my camp shenanigans a little beyond the pale.

Then the pretty girl I gave the lemonade to calls, wants to come over, and I’m ridiculously drunk. I figure it’ll be a test, will she still like me in my Mr. Hyde mode? If she does, she’s got some mettle to her. She arrives at the silver door that leads into the steamy kitchen, I introduce her to DuPrey and lead her back to my leopard-print bedroom. All the while her big peepers are trained on me in a crazy way. I take her dress off and lay her down. A dark triangle on snow-white skin. Very beautiful. Very acquiescent. Lovemaking ensued. Then we collapse in the Burmese heat. I lit a cigarette. Eventually she began talking.

“We knew each other before. Remember? We were together in Hampton [?], exchanging secrets behind the curtains. We were just children. Remember?”

“Why do you refuse to remember? Remember how cold it was? Our thin arms holding each other tightly for warmth? The excitement in our eyes at the thought of being caught?”

“As much as I might enjoy your flight of fancy, I do not remember any of this at all. You’re talking about past lives, yah?”

So this continued into the night. At about three a.m. she said, “You’re very close to DuPrey, aren’t you. I can tell.”

She left and I went back to sleep. An hour later she returned. Stared at me like a wide-eyed loony. She told me to touch her. I lit a cigarette and peered out the window into the dark tenement airshaft by the head of my bed. I looked at the clotheslines, the alley cat down below, and a nurse getting dressed for work behind wicker blinds. I listened to the sound of wind and arguments. I felt claustrophobic.

“Have I broken something?” she softly asked. Brother. I am out of my psycho cosmic depth.

Then, right on cue, who should come bounding in but Eric, drunk as a lord. I got up to see. He spilled his rent money onto the kitchen table. “Where have you been? What did you do?” I said, aghast.

“I did what you told me to. And on the way home I stopped at a real whorehouse, it had a red light on outside and everything, and I fucked a black girl! As a test! It was a real adventure! I gotta go to bed now, I’m exhausted.”

He seemed quite happy. Unmarred by his first taste of male prostitution. Meanwhile, I still had a naked astral traveler in my bed. Vive la vie bohème.

“She tiptoed in and started to give me a backrub, then I turned over, I realized she was naked, and the rest is history. She said you were cool with it…you are, aren’t you?”

I often go to the Carnegie Hall Cinema, where foreign double features are $1.50 with a student discount. Great programming, and a faux-French café in the lobby. I saw a pretty young girl standing in line for a Fellini program. She was dressed in a black kimono with white dragons on it, and carried a well-worn black journal. Art-school girl. We exchanged phone numbers, and then she called a couple nights later. “This is Gretchen from San Francisco…I met you at the cinema,” she said nervously. We agreed to rendezvous at a local gay piano bar, Marie’s Crisis. She told me she loved me. Hmmm, a bit premature, but I know how crushes are, having had hundreds myself.

I learned over many, many drinks that she’s sixteen(!), from arty parents, was in Claire’s Knee just for a moment (her dad lives in France and is pals with Eric Rohmer), she was painted by Elaine de Kooning, wears a plastic ocean liner hanging from one ear, and never had a boyfriend until me (she said). We went back to her rich uncle’s mid-century-modern apartment on West Ninth Street. Super-cool, like a Playboy bachelor pad. We listened to the Velvet Underground, and I drank a bottle of Scotch from her uncle’s fully stocked bar, and talked and talked, expounding on life and love. We wound up naked in bed, but by that time I had alcoholic psychosis, and thought she was a boy, in spite of her ample breasts. My demons were out in force. Poor Gretchen, she finds the man of her dreams…and he’s crazy.

In the morning, which was blessedly rainy and cool, I had some hair of the dog, then some more, trying to piece the night back together. But found I still had a beautiful, adoring, and cultured teenager making goo-goo eyes at me. We went to Fanelli’s for lunch and Bloody Marys, shuffling our feet on the sawdust floor. She was so happy and young and brave that I felt like the disreputable character in Donleavy’s The Ginger Man, plying myself with drink. Night was falling, so we went back to Thompson Street to show her my sketchbooks and take a bath. I stuck my toe in her and pretended I couldn’t get it out. All pink and pretty in the tub. I kept playing Robert Wyatt’s “Sea Song” over and over: “You look different every time / You come from the foam-crested brine…” We go to Arturo’s on the corner for beer and pizza, I lost my keys, so had to climb five flights up the fire escape and crawl in the window, avoiding detection from my hostile Italian neighbors. Finally she rebelled.

“Yes,” I said drunkenly, trying to dissuade her from a dissolute burden like myself.

The next morning I’ve got the shakes bad. Filled with remorse at what a creep I’d been to a nice, innocent girl. I had to go to work. I spilled some tuna fish on my leg, and Wayne Hooper shrieks, “Ooh, now you smell like a woman!” Then he screams over at one of the baker ladies, “Hey, Dolores, how’s your twat?” Each day is Valentine’s Day.

After I sobered up a little, Gretchen and I finally consummated our unholy union. She immediately called her mother long-distance in San Francisco, telling her she’d just lost her virginity, and then put me on the line!!! Her mother told me what a special girl she was, and to treat her right. Anyhow, she has reserves of energy that astound me. I’m six years older than her, and I’ll tell you, I’ve never felt my maturity quite so keenly. A man of my age needs his sleep! She’ll drive me to an early grave! She’s eager for her sexual-education sessions. She wants me to instruct her in the fine art of fellatio. Such a zealous student. She pulls my drowsy head down to the pillow again. Presents her precious twin pink-and-mauve discs to me, the points of her breasts and their areolas. Delicately sniffing me, the way they do.

I turned twenty-two. Eric gave me some leopard-skin-print briefs. Velvet came over and gave me a red rose, a red jewel, a postcard of Naples, started to give me a backrub, then took me up on the roof and gave me the nicest present of all, a blow job, amidst the water towers and TV antennas. Lying on the tar looking at the purple sky.

Fly to Minneapolis after New York overkill. Jet-age juxtaposition. On the plane I had a couple of Bloody Marys and read an article about the cholera and hepatitis epidemics in Naples. Back to the smell of cedar shakes and sound of crickets. My dad took a look at me and asked if I was supposed to be Gatsby (because I slick my hair back now). “No, the Thin Man,” I said. He nodded wearily. My mother asked me why my love affairs don’t last very long. She asked if I was an egoist. She said the life of an artist must be lonely. (Hah!)

Welcome-home party for me at Kramer’s. He’s got a large cylindrical cage containing about ten black and white rats, big ones, with names like Dr. Zhivago, Vice and Versa, David Bowie, and Kojak (“Which one’s he?” “The bald one”). I could hear Eden screaming, “Steven, get that rat out of your mouth!” Someone bought me a bottle of Pernod. All my old pals were dressed like Guys and Dolls. It was fun until I toppled off the desk I was sitting on, and, without breaking my fall, landed face-first on the hard, rough concrete floor, slicing half my face to ribbons. They all laughed at what they presumed must be a calculated pratfall. But it wasn’t. They watched my astonished face as blood began to pour down. Eden put me to bed. I blurted out a slurred “Two more gin-and-tonics and a Band-Aid.”

I awoke next to Kurt in the morning. One eye sealed shut, the skin yellow and purple, large dried scabs and abrasions lacing my tender skin like a gory web, a fat lip, and of course, the puffiness and tremors that come from drinking a quart of Pernod. I didn’t dare go home to face my parents, so I stayed put where I was.

Twenty-four hours later my parents pick me up in their ice-blue convertible. They hunted me down. I dutifully got in and explained that I got beat up in a bar. Then the fun began.

Mom said, “What kind of monster are you? You’ve ruined your father’s life! We were worried sick. What really happened in there, with those seedy criminals you insist on seeing? Were you having a gang bang?”

I found these questions too ridiculous to answer. She gave me an ultimatum, asked me to choose between my friends and finishing up school.

I said, “Look…Who’s the bad guy? I’m the bad guy! It’s my fuckin’ eye! I’m the guy who drinks so much! No one makes me do anything! I do it myself, for better or worse! My will is my own, and I’ll take my own consequences. Thanks!”

Then she told me that I look like a queer. So I told her she was a hypocritical, superficial egomaniac. Then she started crying and said she’d failed as a mother.

Still, I’m only just twenty-two. There’s more ahead than behind—unless an early death awaits. Dean, Schiele, Hendrix, Modigliani, Beardsley, Morrison, etc. Dad told Mom, “Well, we’ll probably outlive Duncan.” I am persona non grata around here.

Before I left town I did manage to sneak out to the Minnesota State Fair, where the Dolls were performing in a tent on the midway. They didn’t go over big with the farm crowd, plus Thunders looked junk-sick. But David Jo is ever the showman, and it was kind of a gas to see them at this surreal venue, right near the butter-sculpture contest. He spotted me after their set, and said, “Hey, Dunc, nice to see a familiar face—though it looks like someone gave you a going-over. How’s the other guy?” Ha ha ha.

Mary Jane is back from Cleveland. I ask her if she can read my face like a book.

We’re having a sweet romance after the summer separation. She wasn’t faithful, I wasn’t faithful, so it’s a draw. We skulk against the backdrop of this glistening, squalid, futuristic megapolis, rubbing shoulders with the sodium lights. She purrs in abandon, this kitty kat of mine. There’s a current passing between us. As we pass Washington Square Arch, I say it was built in honor of our love. “You’re a charmer,” she says. She’s dressed like a nurse, in a white seersucker dress, rosy cheeks and big green eyes. I need a nurse.

We were invited to hear the Dolls rehearse in a recording studio off Times Square. They were plugged into Twin Reverbs instead of their Marshall stacks. Dressed in their street clothes, Beatle boots, and French Ts, doing little staccato dance steps, rolling steel ball bearings between their stained fingers. So sharp. They were working on a real tough Boston Blackie detective blues, called “Downtown”: “Down…down…downtown.” We sat behind the glass and watched them in their own element, proud of New York’s finest.

Lance has got his third bout of hepatitis. But he still comes out with me ’n’ DuPrey to see the much-publicized underground double bill at that deca mecca Max’s, Patti Smith and Television. Television had some great new songs, an extended rave-up called “Marquee Moon” and “I Don’t Care,” then their classic “Prove It” (“This case is closed”), and “Little Johnny Jewel,” of course. Patti did a rendition of “Paint It Black” which included some shamanistic speaking in tongues about fallen pop stars. Plus her ode to love triangles, “We Three” (“Baby please, why can’t we go on as three…don’t take my hope away from me”).

We goof around in Union Square after the show. It’s empty and dark. We smoke some boo and climb on the statuary making monkey noises.

School is back in session. I got a paint box filled with Shiva oil colors. They smell so good. I painted a Gitanes packet on a small canvas, in a nod to Larry Rivers’s Tareyton painting. I grab my sketchbooks, and off to school. Into the darkroom to develop summer snaps of pretty boys on rooftops, Robin Flinn lolling on Riis Park beach, me and DuPrey on the Coney Island boardwalk, nudes of Mary Jane sweeping the floor, Eric Li laughing after he shaved his eyebrows off, etc. Went downstairs to Cinemabilia to show ’em to Hell and Ork. Hell said Mary Jane was hot. “Who’s she belong to?” he asks, not entirely innocently.

Then a crit from pretty illustration teacher, Lorraine Fox. She holds up my sketchbook to the class and shows it page by page, saying, “I’ve arrived at a personal state in my work after twenty years, and here Duncan has found his own private world already. There’s no rush, everybody works at their own speed, but you see, he’s really obsessed—not that I really know Duncan, maybe he’s really weird, but he’s on top of things. I see a very unique point of view, like a misplaced European.” Maybe there’s hope for me yet. An encouraging word goes a long way. Gimme five more years and I’ll really show you something.

I painted a red-and-white checker tile pattern on the kitchen wall. Take down old pictures, put up new ones. A London hotel receptionist (Alan Jones, not the artist) came over last night and told me gossipy stories about Maria Schneider, Uschi, Hockney, the leading lights of the seventies, including one juicy tale of Alain Delon.

Kristian and I go uptown to the French bookshop in Rockefeller Center to pick up more foreign pop tunes (Michel Polnareff) in their flimsy, glossy covers and a copy of Ciné Revue, which has great color photos of my favorite Euro movie stars, fodder for my art. Then we dropped in on Norman Fischer, the elegant drug dealer on Madison Avenue, and received the snowy-white fruits of Norman’s generosity on a round blue mirror. I sniffed up a lonesome trail of cocaine, then seconds and even thirds. Feeling so tingly. Too much, or not enough? That’s the nature of cocaine. He serves vintage 1969 red wine and tells us how much each piece in his art collection costs, with a wild gleam in his eye.

Customers came, so K and I split for Lincoln Center, the NY Film Festival premiere of the David Hockney movie, A Bigger Splash. In the lobby were all the faces in Interview you never quite recognize. There’s costar Peter Schlesinger, Steve Paul, Hiram Keller, etc. The film was beautiful, honest, cool, funny. I love the way Hockney documents his life through his art. Just uses his friends. Theatrical domestic scenes. Making his privacy semi-public. Always working. An inspiration. He saw a headline that said “Two Boys Cling to Cliff All Night,” and what crossed his mind was two boys clinging to pretty pop star Cliff Richard. This led to his painting We Two Boys Together Clinging, which comes from Walt Whitman.

On the way home we watched a car burning up in front of the Waverly Theater. We left before the gas tank exploded and laced us with shrapnel.

I bought a used light box for twenty-five bucks. Now I can trace with style. Kristian says, “Cheat, cheat, never beat.” He is a fairly steady boarder, a good houseguest to have. Very tidy. None of us have ever seen him in his birthday suit. Mary Jane says, “Kristian doesn’t have a naked.” Once I tried to grab his bath towel away from him and he exploded with rage. I learned my lesson. He says, “Most of my friends are conceptually homosexual.” He complains of being a spectator rather than a participator. DuPrey says he’s like Big Bird from Sesame Street.

I’m happy. Nothing is required of me that I wouldn’t want to do anyhow. I’m rich in my poverty. In the prime of life. And I know it. I can hold it, and scold it, and squeeze it, and please it. Mary Jane sleeps over about half the week. She giggles her way into bed. Moonlight playing tricks on her smooth, pale body. Tweety Pie is circling her head, chirping up a storm. “When you’re slipping into sleep…that’s the time of no time / When you’re slipping into sleep,” sang the Small Faces. Feeling complete.

I’ve been making collages. I synthesize what I’ve chewed up and regurgitate it, hoping some of “the real me” will rub off with it. How will I ever get some rich person to pay two hundred dollars for one? Once you get them to believe you, it should be a breeze. I’ll just play it by ear until I get my wings. I suffer from the anxiety of influence. Will I ever transcend my idolatry? Patti Smith talks about “the image of an image, not the image itself.” The look of a look. I yearn for authenticity in all things. I strive for timelessness, yet I’m a trendy kid. I’m in a quandary.

“All the things they said were wrong / Are what I want to be,” sing the Yardbirds from the next room. Next platter is “Cathy’s Clown” by the Everly Brothers, another pinnacle of lowbrow artistry. “Here she comes…”

I watch the present unfold. Nothing has value except the moment we are living. It’s difficult to grasp. I loved Alan Watts’s book This Is It, which was about just that. The sheer mystery of being here at all. The universal.

Eric is boiling potatoes and singing a Bad Company song in that falsetto of his. We hustled up to the Playboy Theater to see Delon’s new film, The Widow Coudere, from a Simenon novel. Delon is forty now. He never quite gives himself away. Restrained, underplayed. He’s a murderer on the run. “No one could understand, no one ever does,” he says. Brandishing his perfect teeth, his glittery gray eyes darting from side to side, he leads a young girl to a hayloft and has his way. In the finale he is shot, forty machine guns typing “The End” through his heart.

Eric and I go up to gorgeous Radio City Music Hall to see skinny Todd Rundgren, decked out in last year’s space suit. Playing Clapton’s old hand-painted psychedelic Gibson SG from the Cream days. I’ve heard that guitar twice before. He plays the Move’s anthemic “Do Ya.” Eric and I laugh with glee. Todd’s a fan like us. He’s windmilling to his heart’s content, full of swagger.

Fall Movies

Purple Noon

The 400 Blows

Darling

The Night Porter

Lacombe, Lucien

The Widow Coudere

Kiss Me Deadly

Screaming Mimi