Your New Bohemia sounds a little disturbing, and it might well disturb the shopkeepers of the Village if the tourists get the buzz. I remember when I was in the Village so long long ago, 25 years ago?, I happened to read in the paper that O. Henry hung out in this certain place and did his writing on the table down there. so I went on in, down the steps and looked around. red tables. nobody there. I thought, O. Henry must have been a fool. I walked up to the bar and ordered a drink and the bartender said, “Sorry, sir, I can’t serve you.” I didn’t ask him why. I was sober. but it made me feel filth as if he smelled some inner stink in me, and I had been feeling mad, thinking suicide, maybe I looked too ugly, too vile. anyhow, I did not like the place, drink or no drink. then down in New Orleans a month or so ago I am walking along with the editor and he takes me through this kind of sidewalk cafe place and he said Hemingway and Faulkner and Tennessee Williams used to hang out here at one time or another. a real commercial hole it was, and I thought, these guys must have been crazy. jammed with tourists and conceited waiters. I told the editor that those writers must have been nuts. and he said, well, they were drunk.

that still didn’t help too much.

there’s a lot I don’t understand but this is standard. when I wipe my ass I guess I understand that this is something that should be done. and I understand that I should not go out on the streets naked there might be lions out there. Vietnam, hitler, caesar, the falling of boards from roofs I do not understand.

do you know something? I am getting sleepy. maybe I ought to go to sleep?

there are days of too much of the same and in the whole human mass not an eye or a face or a voice or a sound. Only a frog under a bush. only a cat crossing a street. a street without tits. graveyards. books on mathematics. chalk for lunch. madhouses. farmers. fish. meatballs. manure. sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.

[To Douglas Blazek]

May 20, 1965

[* * *] the woman is standing here beating a big spoon around inside of a water jug, now she’s ripping cardboard, banging refrigerator, sniffling, snuffling, now she’s making coffee, now the kid suddenly screams, more bangs, these walls are so close, refrigerator again, now she lifts a wet rag and carries it across the room like a sleepwalker…they are pouring it to me BLAZ!!!

30 minutes to go before work and I am trying to get this letter off to you

DO YOU WANT ANOTHER COOKIE? I hear her voice say.

fuck it. we march on. an angel will give me a hand-job in the year 1986. it doesn’t matter. [* * *]