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By Root 592 0

chilly. Whenever that happened I’d just go downstairs and play records. “Albatross” by PiL was the theme song of my entire trip. I also listened to Jimmy Reed and the first Velvet Underground album, and of course the latter sounded like the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard and made me incredibly homesick. I only stayed there two days, which was fortunate, because if I’d hung around any longer I might have developed another kind of illness I certainly didn’t need: their house was on a hillside overlooking the bay, which meant I guess that some kinda fog or sea wind or whatever came in at night, making the room I slept in horribly cold and damp. I woke up two days in a row feeling feverish, shivering; I’d get out of bed and put on my underclothes, shirt, pants, socks, shoes, two sweaters, and a jacket, and walk out into the living room still shivering. Look out the window and it's a beautiful day. Then I’d walk out the front door and immediately begin to sweat buckets because it was damn warm under that California sun. There must have been a twenty- or thirty-degree difference at least between the temperatures inside and outside that house. So of course I’d have to immediately peel off the jacket, sweaters, maybe even the shirt. I considered myself lucky to escape from the damn place without getting pneumonia.

I’d decided to use up my five-hour plane ride back reading Fools Die. The newsstand at the San Diego airport didn’t have it. It apparently wasn’t popular enough. The only book they had that I imagined I might remotely be able to relate to was The Matarese Circle. So I bought it, and later discovered that half the people on the plane were reading it. It was terrible. When I got back to New York and was riding the cab into Midtown, I thought of something Bob Quine said to me once in 1977. I don’t remember the context, but with great emphasis and a totally straight face he stated: “I’m spiritually dead.” I laughed out loud at the memory. It was people like that, I realized more than ever, that I wanted to be around. And though some of them have emigrated to California, they’re bitter about it, which takes all the fun out of the anomie, of course.

Previously Unpublished, circa late 1979/early 1980

12At the time, Edward Koch was mayor of New York City.

Admit It, You Like to

Kick Cripples, Too

(Especially if You Are One)

Ejventually one finds oneself in a perpetual state of institutionalized walking sleep, this diagnosed—however erroneously—by the patient as not disease, but no less than a lifestyle. But all life-forms need food. Hence heavy metal.

I saw the sun come out and blanched in sorrow at its incredible gall. I had made a journey to the middle if not the end of the night, and had accustomed myself to the conceit that I was in fact living through death on the installment plan. Didn’t the Velvets say it way back in 1970, just when heavy metal was peaking: “Who Loves the Sun?” Damn right, i.e., nobody Jack, and that's why Black Sabbath.

In the fall and early winter of 1971-72 I lived in the living room of a wretched farm in Walled Lake, Michigan. Walled Lake, if you care—and you shouldn’t—is kinda like Dogpatch without the charm. It's the sticks, and when you’re in the sticks in Michigan there is no romance attached, brother. I got laid exactly once that whole winter and for that I had to import a Canadian veritable infant who had her life changed by reading The Sensuous Woman. The rest of the time I masturbated and pursued numbness. I was just starting at a rock ‘n’ roll magazine called Creem at the time, and it being 1971 and the mag being at least ostensibly poor we all lived communally, i.e., I slept on my publisher's couch. Well I don’t wanna put your collarbone outa joint crying on your shoulder, but I will say that one night I fell asleep quite drunk listening to Nico's The Marble Index through headphones, and when I woke up seven or so hours later not only was it still playing but I was all wound up bondage-style in the headphone cords. Plus which we were so goddamn communal that I couldn’t