THE BILLY GROSBARD STORY, PART 1

298. THE BILLY GROSBARD STORY, Part 1; (nyc, 1967):

'Let's face it - you can't understand me and that's good enough for me and I can't for sure figure you out' I had just said that to Billy Grosbard who was standing by the doorway along Second Avenue after he once again had tried telling me the story of how and why he was hiding out from the Colorado authorities - having thrown a wife from a car while driving at a good rate of speed around a mountain pass somewhere - the point being she was dead and he was the killer - but apparently that hadn't stopped him from any other pursuit of his personal life which at this point had brought him face to face with me in some lowball not much good ice cream dairy stall next to the Fillmore East where endless streams of joy-faced innocents came in nightly between bouts of their listening to the riotous sounds of rock and roll music from the likes of groups with names like Moby Grape to use one example and I always was on the lookout for the better names the ones with the crafted use of abstract language to catchers and the grabbers with names you'd never hear again 'Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys the Fallen Angels the Scarpeto Singles F U C and the K's the Larimor Tendons' - all those ribald concoctions of bands which most often turned out to be nothing more than a few neighborhood friends blasting away in a nearby garage who'd taken their chivalric pursuit of musical anarchy to the next level simply because no one ever really told them to shut up pipe down or - simply - slap them down and take their equipment away - but be that as it may this steady stream of indecorous flagellants would come stumbling into this little store-counter for food or drink ice cream hamburgers anything to feed their pot-smoked frenzy for taste and texture and we - or at least I - had to put up with their sluggishness and stupidity while Billy dealt with their closer matters - getting their orders taking their money and the rest - all I was was the background guy the hired hand to clean and keep order mostly after hours - it was an all-night late-night overnight if necessary gig for me a few night weekly as I was paid in cash at the end of a week pretty much no matter how much or how little I worked and the whole idea of this time was a sort of fluid irresponsibility a balloon of promise held aloft between kids and management and owners and workers just so that at least some money was made some pay was exchanged and some form of completion and order and satisfaction was meted out between hordes of loudly-musical in their own minds hippie kids and the establishment next door so that for theatrical purposes if nothing else the entire pilgrim-mass-movement-youth-force lower eastside anarchy love-power acid-daze factory-induced anarchic fantasy could be kept going - Newsweek and Time and all the rest loved it for sure and one or another cub reporter for some nasty article-baiting lower-than-life newspaper or magazine could always be found slinking around for a report on the hows and whys of all these kids whether runaways or exiles from their long-lawn shaded paradises in Long Island or New Jersey : it was this time of society when everyone was afraid and perplexed at the same time : draft-dodging kids pleading for freedom while others were slaughtered or maimed with their own enthusiastic participation in one or another military donnybrook in the fields of southeast Asia or the slime that was soon-to-be in Laos and Cambodia (only more in a long tired list of such travesties which churned up kids and youth at alarming rates thru the use of propaganda lies and deceit the likes of which still parade today as patriotism except that now with no draft the kids enjoin themselves by choice even more willingly into the sloporific stupor of military service in a machine-state of police and military tactical assault both physical AND mental AND never-ending) and any of these reporter-types with their stupid notebooks endlessly transcribing trite little passing interviews with kids would have (I knew) stopped DEAD in their tracks had I simply turned and said 'well yes in fact my friend here is a runaway murderer from the fine state of Colorado having killed his wife Miranda and come east to partake of the fine hippie lifestyle whilst working for small change at this nicely-established Rapaport (Cy Rapaport the owner by the way does really own at least half the businesses on this local area and lives himself in a fine splendor in Long Island - he can be found should you wish further information in his suite of business offices behind the Rapaport Coin Laundry down the street some - on the left - nice guy always happy to talk) establishment dispensing ice cream and snacks to the wandering groups of theater-goers from all points but Billy here my friend has other goals too - one of course being the continuation of his evasion of evidence and authority in this murder previously mentioned - having to do with maintaining the salacious satisfaction of all desires both monetarily and sexually by dispensing not just food and beverage but lodging sexual satisfaction drugs pot and all other forms of information to aid and abet the runaways and draft-dodgers here congregating and if any of you need more information why I'd be happy to dispense' but of course I knew no one would ever take this idea up as all they really wanted were the usual fluff stories and cuddly interviews by which they could inflate their own stupidities into tales of danger and damage to hordes and hordes of the nation's youth now being dumped dangerously and in despond into such cesspool hellholes as Haight Ashbury and the lower eastside San Francisco and New York City respectively but in reality none of it mattered because it would all pass away before long and besides it was all infantile and a daydream and I was having no part of it - I told Billy I'd maybe see him later and turned and left not really wanting to be around there any longer at that moment and I knew that behind it all there was some form of a Long Island Jewish mob that pretty much ran the block and they could dispense justice in their own way if and when they found it necessary - just as simply as Billy dispensed food they'd dispense a wicked from of justice if it meant they could trade him or information regarding him for the proper amounts of money and favor - I quickly found out it was all like that - Italian mob a few blocks away and Jewish mob here feeding off all those old and ancient indemnities of tribal curse and religious-infracted matter by which these Tompkins Square old-line immigrants mixed up their leftover lives while waiting to die - they could be seen dail sitting around like squash on all the broken benches within the park - talking and exchanging useless gossip and attitude about the world around them and all the people who passed - but I always thought WHO CARED for them or their weirdly out-of-date concerns and how'd they get here anyway ? and when they died they just died (I'd seen one or two over time dead just dead right there passing out keeling over collapsing dead-solid as an old fish in the park while walking or sitting) and I sometimes felt the entire place was the waiting room of a big outdoor morgue - a silent one with only a low and sentimental background buzz of people's hammered talking covered by a sound-absorbing cloth of guilt and doubt and despair which resulted in nothing more than tired and very-hushed and soft voices.