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"No it doesn't. You know, Ray, Cacoethes says you drink too much."
can go to the lecture by yourself. I'll wait at Coughlin's cottage."
"But you'll miss all that, just for some old wine."
"There's wisdom in wine, goddam it!" I yelled. "Have a shot!"
"No I won't!"
"Well then I'll drink it!" and I drained the bottle and we went back on Sixth Street
where I immediately jumped back into the same store and bought another poorboy. I was
feeling fine now.
Japhy was sad and disappointed. "How do you expect to become a good bhikku or even a
Bodhisattva Mahasattva always getting drunk like that?"
"Have you forgotten the last of the Bulls, where he gets drunk with the butchers?"
"Ah so what, how can you understand your own mind essence with your head all
muddled and your teeth all stained and your belly all sick?"
"I'm not sick, I'm fine. I could just float up into that gray fog and fly around San
Francisco like a seagull. D'l ever tell you about Skid Row here, I used to live here "
"I lived on Skid Road in Seattle myself, I know all about all that."
The neons of stores and bars were glowing in the gray gloom of rainy afternoon, I felt
great. After we had our haircuts we went into a Goodwill store and fished around bins,
pulling out socks and undershirts and various belts and junk that we bought for a few
pennies. I kept taking surreptitious
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slugs of wine out of my bottle which I had wedged in my belt.
Japhy was disgusted. Then we got in the jalopy and drove to Berkeley, across the
rainy bridge, to the cottages of Oakland and then downtown Oakland, where Japhy
wanted to find a pair of jeans that fitted me. We'd been looking all day for used jeans
that would fit me. I kept giving him wine and finally he relented a little and drank some
and showed me the poem he had written while I was getting my haircut in Skid Row:
"Modern barber college, Smith eyes closed suffers a haircut fearing its ugliness 50
cents, a barber student olive-skinned 'Garcia' on his coat, two blond small boys one with
feared face and big ears watching from seats, tell him 'You're ugly little boy & you've
got big ears' he'd weep and suffer and it wouldn't even be true, the other
thinfaced conscious concentrated patched bluejeans and scuffed shoes who watches
me delicate, suffering child that grows hard and greedy with puberty, Ray and I with
poorboy of ruby port in us rainy May day no used levis in this town, our size, and old
barber college t and g crappers skidrow haircuts middleage barber careers start out
now flowering."
"See," I said, "you wouldn't have even written that poem if it wasn't for the wine
made you feel good!"
"Ah I would have written it anyway. You're just drinking too much all the time, I
don't see how you're even going to gain enlightenment and manage to stay out in the
mountains, you'll always be coming down the hill spending your bean money on wine
and finally you'll end up lying in the street in the rain, dead drunk, and then they'll take
you away and you'll have to be reborn a teetotalin bartender to atone for your
karma." He was really sad about it, and worried about me, but I just went on drinking.
"Okay," said Japhy, looking at me darkly. "It's your life." He was gone for two hours. I
felt sad and drank too much and was dizzy. But I was determined not to pass out and
stick it out and prove something to Japhy. Suddenly, at dusk, he came running back
into the cottage drunk as a hoot owl yelling "You know what happened Smith? I went
to the Buddhist lecture and they were all drinking white raw saki out of teacups and
everybody got drunk. All those crazy Japanese saints! You were right! It doesn't make
any difference! We all got drunk and discussed prajna! It was great!" And after that
Japhy and I never had an argument again.
28
The night of the big party came. I could practically hear the hubbubs of
preparation going on down the hill and felt depressed. "Oh my God, sociability is just a
big smile and a big smile is nothing but teeth, I wish I could just stay up here and rest
and be kind." But somebody brought up some wine and that started me off.
That night the wine flowed down the hill like a river. Sean had put together a lot of
big logs for an immense bonfire in
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the yard. It was a clear starry night, warm and pleasant, in May. Everybody came. The
party soon became clearly divided into three parts again. I spent most of my time in the
living room where we had Cal Tjader records on the hi-fi and a lot of girls were dancing as
Bud and I and Sean and sometimes Alvah and his new buddy George played bongo
drums on inverted cans.
Out in the yard it was a quieter scene, with the glow of the fire and lots of people
sitting on the long logs Sean had placed around the fire, and on the board a spread fit for
a king and his hungry retinue. Here, by the fire, far from the freneticism of the
bongo-ing living room, Cacoethes held forth discussing poetry with the local wits, in
tones about like this: "Marshall Dashiell is too busy cultivating his beard and driving his
Mercedes Benz around cocktail parties in Chevy Chase and up Cleopatra's needle, O.
O. Dowler is being carried around Long Island in limousines and spending his summers
shrieking on St. Mark's Place, and Tough Shit Short alas successfully manages to be a
Savile Row fop with bowler and waistcoat, and as for Manuel Drubbing he just flips
quarters to see who'll flop in the little reviews, and Omar Tott I got nothing to say.
Albert Law Livingston is busy signing autograph copies of his novels and sending
Christmas cards to Sarah Vaughan; Ariadne Jones is importuned by the Ford Company;
Leontine McGee says she's old, and who does that leave?"
"Ronald Firbank," said Coughlin.
"I guess the only real poets in the country, outside the orbit of this little backyard,
are Doctor Musial, who's probably muttering behind his living-room curtains right now,
and Dee Sampson, who's too rich. That leaves us dear old Japhy here who's going
away to Japan, and our wailing friend Gold-
time.")
Henry Morley also came that night, only for a short while, and acted very strange
sitting in the background reading Mad comic books and the new magazine called Hip, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]