I hope that you are still alive, I hope that I am not now speaking to the top of a coffin lid. there was a bar I once sat in for 5 years. maybe I told you. the early barkeep, Jim, used to let me in 5 a.m., 2 hours early and I’d watch him mop and clean up and we’d talk quiet and easy and drink free, and then they’d swing in at 7 a.m. and I’d watch them come and go, the lesbians, the whores, the dim-minds, the canned-heat drinkers, the office-workers, but nobody to STAY, I was the only one who stayed and it worked into my mind that if I could just get onto that stool each 5 a.m. somewhere somehow there, I wouldn’t be too much touched by the asshole war of the world, and it was a strange and necessary time: many hours of not-talking, staring at the barwood, watching the sun come up and go down, of listening to them laugh and fight, and knowing that I, myself, would never have the strength to go anywhere, do anything want anything, just another beer, and watching somebody’s head turn on a neck, watching the wrinkles in the neck, watching the head turn in the collar, maybe thinking, idly, DOESN’T HE FEEL THE HELL OFEVERYTHING? ARE THEY ALL BRAVER THAN I AM? ALL OF THEM??? there was nothing to do but manage to get drunk every night without money. this was due mainly to the fact that I could drink enormous quantities of all types of drinks for hours hours hours without becoming intoxicated—at least not in their sense. I could feel things running up and down inside myself but I needed it so badly, so much more of it, that even all they gave me was sad, it didn’t work, and this goaded them on and the drinks came and I slugged them down blank-faced and waved a thanks each time, never forgetting to do this. since I never ate, I needed the nourishment. I went down from 190 to 131. I was the joke, the discard, the madman. the night bartender used to fight me at his leisure when he needed a scarecrow to slap around and wanted to impress the ladies. I took him one night; after 50 beatings I had finally had enough; what happened, I don’t know, except I stayed out of the bar that day and drank muscatel and ate boiled potatoes and rye bread, and they pulled me off of him and broads sat round him and said “o, poor, tommy, poor poor, tommy…” and he fucked them all later but then he just sat there holding his head and the broads wiped him with their hankies and I sat there and I hollered out, HEY: WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS: I WANT A DRINK! and the relief bartender came down and leaned close and said, “I’m sorry, sir, we can’t serve you.” and I walked out.