4 am in Times Square. Bums, crazies, and the poor camp on the sidewalk. I step over them, as if they were the dead. One wino rises his head and burbles from a flaky rotting mouth, “Gimme some change.”
I drop some quarters in his hand.
Enough for two cruellers at Disco Donut on East 14th Street
I resist asking for the coins back and pick up my pace. I still have $7 in my pocket. Enough for breakfast at Leskos for Alice and me.
Eric Mitchell, A B-movie star, said at Max’s with this strange Apache-French accent, “The bums are colorful.”
“And he was right.
Red Tate lived in a aluminum septic tank at the town dump.
Every afternoon he traipsed through the woods to the corner store across from the church. His life was simple. He bought beer for underage kids and drank Thunderbird wine. Three bottles got him drunk. My Uncle Jack, once a Marine officer at Chosin Reservoir said he had been a hero in Korea and always gave him a buck.
Some people said bad for him.
Never us. He bought us beer.
Red Tate lies on the pavement
Helpless, flat on his back
If his mother saw him
Tears and asking, “Why?”
Red Tate drink Ripple
Sometimes he has Thunderbird
The fortified wine drowns out Korea
Soothes the shattered nerves.
Not a bum
Just someone trying to forget
AUGUST 6, 2021 NYU HOSPITAL
Joseph Cotton steals CITIZEN KANE with his performance on the New York hospital’s solarium. Jed Leland is an elegant ne’er-do-well living out his last days basking in the winter sun. Even at death’s door he wants a little something.
The Ultra-sound and MRI have revealed the seriousness of my condition; Hep C, Cirrohsis, growths in my liver. The attending physician entered the room with two younger doctors, who I figured for interns. The main MD explained that my body was still functioning, albeit not at top form. He put his hand on my knee and said, “Everything should be okay.”
The other two said nothing and I suspeceted that the attending physician had brought them along to teach how to break bad news to a patient. I almost wanted to ask one, “What do you think?”
Not that I cared.
At least I wasn’t going to die tomorrow, but I never again have a drink. Sixty years of alcohol has wasted my body and soul. I admitted depression to another doctor.
My first drink was in 1960. I was eight. My uncle-in-law, the head of the Boston Homicide Squad, offered a cold beer. We were at his beach cottage on Marshfield’s Rexhame Beach. After a sip I put the can on the table. “I don’t like it.”
All the detectives laughed and one shouted, “You will, boyo, you will.”
He was right.
I liked beer, wine, vodka, and gin-ginger throughout the Covid binge.
I was not wearing a silk dressing coat and foulard like Joseph Cotton in CITIZEN KANE. My ass was hanging out of a ‘johnny’. I hadn’t seen the sun in days and asked the nurse, if I could walk to to the solarium. It was on the same floor. She asked, “Sure, but I’ll come with you to make sure you don’t fall.”
There was no arguing with the nurses. They were relentlessly right. I took my time and turned left before the elevators. A helicopter lifted into sight from the riverside landing pads. I sat down and pulled out Cookie Mueller’s WALKING THROUGH CLEAR WATER IN A POOL PAINTED BLACK. She was three years older than me, but started the life in the early 60s with the books’s first line, “I had two lovers and I wasn’t ashamed.”
I never saw Cookie ashamed.
They grew them tough in Baltimore.
Foto by Anthony Scibelli.
