On the Road_ The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac [117]
seen anyone like them.” “I found them in the West.” Neal was having his kicks: he put on a jazz record, grabbed Louanne, held her tight, and bounced against her with the beat of the music. She bounced right back. It was simple as that, a real love dance. John Holmes came in with a huge gang. The New Year’s weekend began and lasted three days and three nights. Great gangs got in the Hudson and swerved in the snowy New York streets from party to party. I brought Pauline and her sister to the biggest party. When Pauline saw me with Neal and Louanne her face darkened…she sensed the madness they put in me. “I don’t like you when you’re with them.” “Ah it’s allright, it’s just kicks. We only live once. We’re having a good time.” “No, it’s sad and I don’t like it.” Then Louanne began making love to me; she said Neal was going to stay with Carolyn and she wanted me to go with her. “Come back to San Francisco with us. We’ll live together. I’ll be a good girl for you.” But I knew Neal loved Louanne, and I also knew Louanne was doing this to make Pauline jealous, and I wanted nothing of it. Still and all I licked my lips for the luscious blonde. Louanne and Pauline were a couple of firstclass beauties. When Pauline saw Louanne pushing me into the corners and giving me the word and forcing kisses on me she accepted Neal’s invitation to go out in the car; but they just talked and drank some of the Southern moonshine I left in the compartment. Everything was being mixed up and all was falling. I knew my affair with Pauline wouldn’t last much longer. She wanted me to be her way. She was married to a mechanic who treated her badly. I was willing to marry her and bring her baby daughter and all if she divorced the mechanic; but there wasn’t even enough money to get a divorce and the whole thing was hopeless, besides of which Pauline would never understand me because I like too many things and get all confused and hungup running from one thing to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion. The parties were enormous; there were at least a hundred people at Herb Benjamin’s basement apartment in the west nineties. People overflowed into the cellar compartments near the furnace. Something was going on in every corner, on every bed and couch, not an orgy, but just a New Year’s party with frantic screaming and wild radio music. There was even a Chinese girl. Neal ran like Groucho Marx from group to group digging everybody. Periodically we rushed out to the car to pick up more people. Lucien came. Lucien is the hero of my New York gang, as Neal is the chief hero of the Western. They immediately took a dislike for each other. Lucien’s girl suddenly socked Lucien on the jaw with a roundhouse right. He stood reeling. She carried him home. Some of our mad newspaper friends rushed in from the office with bottles. There was a tremendous and wonderful snowstorm going on outside. Al Hinkle made Pauline’s sister and disappeared with her; I forgot to say that Al Hinkle is a very smooth man with the women. He’s six foot four, mild, affable, agreeable, dumb and delightful. He helps women on with their coats. That’s the way to do things. At five o’clock in the morning we were all rushing through a backyard of a tenement and climbing in through a window of an apartment where a huge party was going on. At dawn we were back at Ed Stringham’s. People were drawing pictures and drinking stale beer. I slept with a girl called Rhoda---poor Rhoda---with all our clothes on, for no reason, just slept on the same couch. Great groups filed in from the old Columbia campus bar. Everything in life, all the faces of life, were piling into the same dank room. At John Holmes’ the party went on. John Holmes is a wonderful sweet fellow who wears glasses and peers out of them with delight. He began to learn “Yes!” to everything just like Neal at this time, and hasn’t stopped since. To the wild sounds of Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray blowing “The Hunt” Neal and I played catch with Louanne over the couch; she