ALWAYS SEARCHING OUT THE IDEAL SITUATION

112. ALWAYS SEARCHING OUT THE IDEAL SITUATION (NYC, 1967):

That which is a no-no in itself should serve as a fair warning for others not to do - I once saw a man so covered with hair that it was almost unnecessary for him to wear clothes and made no sense anyway caught as he was between two states for the clothes covered nothing which needed covering and the hair all over his body made the weight and covering of the clothes uncomfortable irritating and not needed but there was really no place for this man to be (except perhaps Barnum's old barn down by City Hall Park) and he was forever caught between two worlds - both actually filled with misunderstanding and hatred and anxiety as no one would leave him alone and no one liked him anyway : where could he go ? how could he work ? what was there to do for him except loll around vagrant and unwanted ? and even in New York City at Collect Pond Park where the bums hung out and which was surrounded by all the big stately buildings of governmental agencies and welfare and aid departments HE couldn't find a damned thing to get - there were no services open nor aid in any way for 'confused hairy men' which is how the stupid socialist governmental paperwork seemed to want to describe him SO as you see there really often isn't an IDEAL STATE anywhere in every meaning of the word and some other guy once says to me "as long as you can say 'I believe in women' you're OK and the world's not lost" and I said back - in this very spot - "that sounds like a fair proposition to me for they often have all the sizzle and grace of something wild you just have to taste" and he laughed and said I should write that down and be sure to become famous and then of course he asked for some money - but he had no stories attached so I gave him fifty cents and he was glad for that and I said "you know how come monkeys don't talk ? it's because they know that if they uttered a word some man would come and put them to work" which as I think back now was my elliptical way of saying I suppose 'why don't you get a job?' which is what most people used to say to bums and which he and they had probably already heard a million other times and far be it from me to pound another nail into that coffin and the short road from niggardly to abstemious isn't that difficult to traverse and anyway THAT particular winter was very cold (or as they used to say in WWII 'there was a little nip in the air') and I almost always was able to find something I liked for a while there - a good stretch of time was taking place even in my indigence - and I thought a lot also about that backstage job I'd been doing - unlike today all of that work as I said was then manual and not automatic and computerized and hands-off with micro-switch settings and auto-timers and stuff as it is now and at that time it was still all winches pulleys levers and ropes and most of the lighting controls and curtain stuff was real work and in a difficult way it was precise too : and I sometimes thought it was a lot like running an old sailing ship with graduated controls for the moonlight and the sunlight as if on the wide-open sea but when that job was over I wasn't ready to just take another one like it right away - there were opportunities because that sort of backstage lunacy is always available and always needs people but one thing that kept me away was all the stage-union stuff demands for membership and money meetings and joinings all in order to get references for other jobs and placements on job lists and all that commie/socialist bullshit which I couldn't stand - and every time I heard some bastard singing or dancing about 'Freedom' or any of that stuff on a stage or anywhere even the damned coffee-houses I'd start stewing again about all the Jew-bastard lies they peddle about social justice and equality and the ideal state and all that crap for really it was nothing except closed-shop power tactics run by fatcats who'd skim off the top the union dues and payoffs and mob connections and the entire entertainment bullcrap industry anyway was all Jew-laden fantasy just taking advantage of other people and fleecing audiences to with their sappy showtime crap and I really deep down wanted nothing to do with it.