Just Kids [64]
One night after a terminally long rehearsal for Island, I bumped into Jim, who was hanging outside the Chelsea eating a water ice. I asked him if he wanted to come along and go for a bad coffee at the doughnut shop. He said sure. I told him I liked to write there. On the next night he took me for bad coffee at Bickford’s on Forty-second Street. Jim told me that Jack Kerouac liked to write there.
It wasn’t clear where Jim lived, but he spent a lot of time at the Chelsea Hotel. The following night he came home with me, and wound up staying in my side of the loft. It had been a long time since I really felt something for someone other than Robert.
Robert felt a part of the equation, because he had been instrumental in introducing me to Jim. They got along really well and happily nothing seemed unnatural about us staying next door to Robert. Often Robert stayed at David’s, and he seemed happy that I was not alone.
In my own way, I devoted myself to Jim. I laid a blanket over him as he slept. In the mornings I got him his doughnuts and coffee. He didn’t have much money and he was unapologetic that he had a modest heroin habit. Sometimes I would go with him when he scored. I didn’t know anything about these kinds of drugs except from reading Cain’s Book, Alexander Trocchi’s account of a junkie writing on a barge plying the rivers of New York while junk plies the river of his soul. Jim shot stuff in his freckled hand, like the darker side of Huckleberry Finn. I looked away, and then asked him if it hurt. He said no, not to worry about him. Then I would sit by him as he recited Walt Whitman, kind of falling asleep sitting up.
While I was working during the day, Robert and Jim would take walks up to Times Square. They both shared an affection for Forty-second Street’s netherworld and found in their wanderings they also shared an affinity for hustling, Jim for drug money and Robert for rent money. Even at this point Robert was still asking questions about himself and his drives. He wasn’t comfortable being identified in terms of his sexuality, and questioned whether he was hustling for money or pleasure. He could talk about these things with Jim because Jim wasn’t judgmental. They both took money from men, but Jim had no problem with it. For him, it was just business.
“How do you know you’re not gay?” Robert would ask him.
Jim said he was sure. “Because I always ask for money.”
Toward the middle of July, I made my last payment on my first guitar. Held in layaway in a pawnshop on Eighth Avenue, it was a little Martin acoustic, a parlor model. It had a tiny bluebird decal on its top, and a strap made of multicolored braid. I bought a Bob Dylan songbook and learned a few simple chords. At first they didn’t sound too bad, but the more I played, the worse it sounded. I didn’t realize you had to tune a guitar. I took it over to Matthew, and he tuned it. Then it occurred to me that whenever it got out of tune, I could find a musician and ask them if they wanted to play it. There were plenty of musicians at the Chelsea.
I had written “Fire of Unknown Origin” as a poem, but after I met Bobby, I turned it into my first song. I struggled to find some chords to accompany it on guitar, and sang it for Robert and Sandy. She was especially elated. The dress sweeping down the hallway was hers.
Death comes sweeping down the hallway in a lady’s dress
Death comes riding up the highway in its Sunday best
Death comes I can’t do nothing
Death goes there must be something that remains
A fire of unknown origin took my baby away
Being in Island gave me the notion that I had a knack for performing. I had no stage fright and liked to elicit a response from the audience. But I made a mental