CRIMES OF PASSION - CRIMES OF MIRTH, aug. '67

277. CRIMES OF PASSION - CRIMES OF MIRTH (aug. 1967):

Two things I learned from living home : Rubberdog and Gloriani and that was long ago : Rubberdog was a little black puppy eventually run over by a car and left dead on the side of the road and Gloriani was the sound of unfounded praise that comes from doing something that you would have done anyway and none of it really made sense which is one of the reasons I left that hell-hole as quickly and easily as I could : points anywhere by any means : and the next thing I knew there I was just roving like a rover and settled like a settler at Tompkins Square Park just holding the bag - and it was my own filled with a few shirts and nothing much else and I said slowly and deliberately to myself : 'you will be what you will be and the points to be reckoned with when constructing your own character are first to remember not to overplay the necessities and secondly not to forget the optionals' - items like timeline storyline emphasis where-you-been and where-you-going and all that because that's the only sort of thing that people care about - linear stuff of which they can make sense otherwise their obliterated little minds go scatter-shot crazy over who you might be and what you're doing right there in front of them : my first few nights were quite alone in that very park one hundred degrees for sure and blistering crazy too August 7 '67 the Puerto Rican girl I came to know I called her just for fun 'Gloriana' too and for that she laughed and kissed me hard which I soon learned to like and then this total suave cool guy comes slinkering around taking names and numbers and that all went away 'my name is Andy Bonamo and I can stay with you if you want 'and the first few nights after that were spent on the floor of some big room above the old vaudeville house on First Avenue where they let us sleep for free and stay as long as we'd like and the big old window - really huge - looked out over the old marque and squared out over the blistering street in the blistering heat - a new city heat a heat that never ended a hundred degrees at night heat which Gloriana of course only added to - great white heaves of fiery love on bundled dirty clothing on the ancient wooden floor tons and tons of that stuff everywhere and down below on the open-wide street all the local landlords (seemed like every Long Island Jew that ever existed) came each week or so to check their holdings see their renters get their money for all the tiny little shit-hole shops and laundries and furniture stores and junk heaps and sundries and paper shops piled high along the street and it seemed really did seem they owned everything from their big black cars parked along the curb left running and sure to charm the neighborhood boys 'so as to know who's Boss' they'd chime in while marking their papers and books - little black ledgers and wads of cash was pretty much what they ever carried and I never knew and Andy never knew and for Goddamn sure Gloriana never knew why someone never just killed these guys dead - her brothers or their friends or somebody - and make off with the money and probably the car too but that was never answered she'd smirk instead and say 'de bastards'll git theirs yet you see' and we'd laugh and figure she knew what she meant and probably probably I'd mention to no one in particular if I had the gumption I'd do the job myself 'cept I'd have nowhere to go because THIS was it THIS place was the place to which I'd already gone and there wasn't nothing left : 'SEE! SEE!' : I'd cry to myself and wander the streets - stealing food and money where I could hanging with my little stories in Greenwich Village cellars where no one knew the difference between what I'd say and what was true - 'wide-open world engulfed long ago my father was killed when I was 7 gunned down by a mobster in Cleveland and my mother never took me back in much after that I stayed with Granma or Uncle Nieto the crazy fucking bastard that he was - all rummied up and horny all the time all he ever did was clamor for more and I lit out early me and Huck Finn me and whomever I fucking chose and wished to be with and accompany : crimes of passion and crimes of mirth too : and I probably knew your mother before she knew you' (that never made any sense but they always loved that line - coming as it was from a dip-shit hot-ass 17-year old kid just a month away from 18 and and and well fame or something!) and I played the music they wanted to hear and these all were nothing anyway but steps baby steps for a very first boy moving first time forward and then I broke one day into a record store I'd gotten access to through a friend and stole a bunch of records a bunch and from a rag on the ground on St. Mark's Place they sold like fucking hotcakes for seventy-five cents each and no one knew no better then me how obvious all that was but nothing ever happened and I let it be - the record business I'd determined was not for me.