if they wanted, he would fix them up. Like a social secretary, he kept mental dates when he’d meet certain people. If he still didnt have someone for the score, they would walk around Times Square until the man spotted someone he wanted. Pete would make the introductions—as he had that night with me and the black-dressed Al—and would get a few bucks for it... There was one problem, Pete explained: As the score got to know more and more people, he’d dispense with Pete’s services.
Occasionally, we sat in the automat, talking for a long time, Bragging, exaggerating last night’s Big Score. Soon it would turn bitter cold, he warned me (and, already, the wind raked the streets savagely), and the hustling would become more difficult; the competition on the streets keener. “You can shack up with someone permanent, though,” he told me, looking at me curiously as if he were trying to find out something about me; “but me,” he added hurriedly, “I dont dig that scene—I guess Im too Restless.”
He made it, instead, from place to place, week to week, night to night. Or, he told me, he’d stay in one of the all-night movies. Sometimes he would rent a room off Seventh Avenue where they knew him. “And if you aint got a pad any time, spote,” he said, “you can pad there too.” Then he changed the subject quickly. “I dig feeling Free all the time,” he said suddenly, stretching his arms.
And I could understand those feelings. Alone, I, too, felt that Enormous freedom. Yet... there was always a persistent sensation of guilt: a strong compulsion to spend immediately whatever money I had scored.
I still lived in that building on 34th Street, its mirrored lobby a ghost of its former elegance.
I paid $8.50 a week for the room. Opposite my window, in another wing of the same building, lived an old man who coughed all night. Sometimes he kept me awake. Sometimes it was the old, old woman who staggered up and down the hallway whistling, checking to see that no one had left the water running in the bathrooms or the gas burning in the community kitchen. At times it was Gene de Lancey—the woman with the demented eyes I had met the first day in the hallway—who kept me up. Once she had been Beautiful—she had sighingly shown me pictures of herself, then! —now she was sadly faded, and her eyes burned with the knowledge. She seldom went out, although I did see her on the street one late afternoon, shielding her face with her hand. She’d knock on my door sometimes early in the morning, often as I had just walked in: I would wonder if she listened for me to come in. I would open the door, and shes standing there in a Japanese kimono. “Lambie-pie,” she’d say in a childish whimper, “I just couldnt sleep, I just gotta have a cigarette and talk—Steve’s asleep—” That was her present husband. “—and I knew you wouldnt mind, sweetie.” She would sit and talk into the morning, with such passion, such lonesomeness, that I couldnt bring myself to ask her to leave. She would tell me about how everyone she had ever loved had left her: her mother, dead—her father, constantly sending her to boarding schools as a girl—her two previous husbands, Gone—her son, disappeared. “Theres no love in this harsh world,” she lamented. “Everybody’s hunting for Something—but what?” When, finally, she would get up, she would Kiss me on the cheek and leave quickly....
I mentioned her to Pete, and he says: “Great, man, she sounds like a swinging nympho—lets make it with her together sometime!”
Like the rest of us on that street—who played the male role with other men—Pete was touchy about one subject: his masculinity. In Bickford’s one afternoon, a goodlooking masculine youngman walked in, looked at us, walked out again hurriedly. “That cat’s
Occasionally, we sat in the automat, talking for a long time, Bragging, exaggerating last night’s Big Score. Soon it would turn bitter cold, he warned me (and, already, the wind raked the streets savagely), and the hustling would become more difficult; the competition on the streets keener. “You can shack up with someone permanent, though,” he told me, looking at me curiously as if he were trying to find out something about me; “but me,” he added hurriedly, “I dont dig that scene—I guess Im too Restless.”
He made it, instead, from place to place, week to week, night to night. Or, he told me, he’d stay in one of the all-night movies. Sometimes he would rent a room off Seventh Avenue where they knew him. “And if you aint got a pad any time, spote,” he said, “you can pad there too.” Then he changed the subject quickly. “I dig feeling Free all the time,” he said suddenly, stretching his arms.
And I could understand those feelings. Alone, I, too, felt that Enormous freedom. Yet... there was always a persistent sensation of guilt: a strong compulsion to spend immediately whatever money I had scored.
I still lived in that building on 34th Street, its mirrored lobby a ghost of its former elegance.
I paid $8.50 a week for the room. Opposite my window, in another wing of the same building, lived an old man who coughed all night. Sometimes he kept me awake. Sometimes it was the old, old woman who staggered up and down the hallway whistling, checking to see that no one had left the water running in the bathrooms or the gas burning in the community kitchen. At times it was Gene de Lancey—the woman with the demented eyes I had met the first day in the hallway—who kept me up. Once she had been Beautiful—she had sighingly shown me pictures of herself, then! —now she was sadly faded, and her eyes burned with the knowledge. She seldom went out, although I did see her on the street one late afternoon, shielding her face with her hand. She’d knock on my door sometimes early in the morning, often as I had just walked in: I would wonder if she listened for me to come in. I would open the door, and shes standing there in a Japanese kimono. “Lambie-pie,” she’d say in a childish whimper, “I just couldnt sleep, I just gotta have a cigarette and talk—Steve’s asleep—” That was her present husband. “—and I knew you wouldnt mind, sweetie.” She would sit and talk into the morning, with such passion, such lonesomeness, that I couldnt bring myself to ask her to leave. She would tell me about how everyone she had ever loved had left her: her mother, dead—her father, constantly sending her to boarding schools as a girl—her two previous husbands, Gone—her son, disappeared. “Theres no love in this harsh world,” she lamented. “Everybody’s hunting for Something—but what?” When, finally, she would get up, she would Kiss me on the cheek and leave quickly....
I mentioned her to Pete, and he says: “Great, man, she sounds like a swinging nympho—lets make it with her together sometime!”
Like the rest of us on that street—who played the male role with other men—Pete was touchy about one subject: his masculinity. In Bickford’s one afternoon, a goodlooking masculine youngman walked in, looked at us, walked out again hurriedly. “That cat’s
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