Visions of Cody Read online

  * * *

  WELL, MASTURBATION. There’s absolutely no sense whatever in lettin your pants down à la shittin and then, cause you’re too lazy to get up, or make other shifts, simply milk the cow (with appropriate thoughts) and let the milk at its sweet keen pitch spurt downward, between thighs, when the urge at that moment is upward, onward, out, straining, to make everything come out as though gathering it from all corners of the loins to purse it out the shivering push bone—No, with the thing flapping and milking below, not only that the seat cover restricting the natural quiver-bow jump of the cock—at the great moment there is a sudden sorrow ’cause you can’t push in, out, over, onward, at it—but just sit dumbly (like a man sits down to piss) oozing below for miserable hygiene and convenience’s sake in an awkward woebegone, in fact castrated with legs-tangled-in-pants position and dumb shirt tails hanging à la shit—and barely missing the real draining kick and ending up having done nothing but clean out the loins as if you’d stuck a dry rag in there and pull-mopped out your life’s desire. Well, Cody got to know that soon enough.

  * * *

  I WANDERED IN THE STREETS OF NEW YORK and dreamed of crossing the country again. I followed Victor, he was wearing a really strange expensive coat like camel’s hair, three-quarter length, with great rich dark designs and yet strangely Christlike as a coat—walking in immense long strides along Second Avenue—pretty sure Victor though I didn’t know he was so tall unless it was all those tremendously short Italian mothers he was passing at his end of the sidewalk as I followed made him so grand—long prophet strides—carrying some package wrapped in brown paper—headed east towards First Avenue—seemed to be going slow but I had a hard time keeping up—and I thinking “Good thing I have my Proust—in case I should ever follow him all the way which is apparently Paradise Alley over on the river they’d see not only how beat my copy is but that I seriously carry it around because I’m really reading it, really bemused in the streets with it like they’d be”—really a scholar, a hip mystic—though they’d question my red October shirt yet they wouldn’t—I’d say “Where’s this Nory?” and he’d say “She’s my sister” and then I’d meet them and there’d be silence and I guess they’d wonder why I came, unless peeking at the subterraneans ain’t never enough reason for them because I’m—It would have to be joining them in their own kind of sullen, if not sullen silently martyred almost dull, calm, or reticence, or bourgeois stupidity, or probably great serious saintly peace as in Victor’s floating passage sweeping up the street as he goes without even looking right or left and there goes a little kid following him half in jest, or accidentally but mainly I think in awe and maybe even love as if Victor reminded him of Jesus too and being a kid he makes no bones about wanting to crowd-up to the source of warmth and light—A strange thing for an American to be doing in his adventure across these years and specifically right now 1951—What’ll they say about his “career”—what he’s doing this moment—fifty years from now when he shall have grown old and sepulchral in a new rest home somewhere where interests are so far from Christlike subterranean Rimbaud motorcycle Provincetown kicks that I can’t even estimate—and his hallway has worst possible martyring smell: the mash of apple wine—he climbed his stairs, I heard doors close, thought maybe JC himself took shits, pisses (and of course) but mainly could it be possible Victor takes a lonely homecoming crap in a raw toilet of tenements and has the same feelings I have as he sits looking at the pocked walls, smells same raw danks, hears the same noises, has similar feet feelings and perhaps “engourdissement” when he sits too long, and returns to his room (as I do) with mind on kicks he brought home in package and desk things and poor solitary shifts of time and consciousness just like everybody else?

  * * *

  SO I SIT IN JAMAICA, LONG ISLAND in the night, thinking of Cody and the road—happens to be a fog—distant low of a klaxon moaning horn—sudden swash of locomotive steam, either that or crash of steel rods—a car washing by with the sound we all know from city dawns—reminds me of Cambridge, Mass. at dawn and I didn’t go to Harvard—Far far away a nameless purling or yowling of some kind done either by (raised, vibroned) a train on a steel curve or skidding car—grumble of a truck coming—small truck, but has whistle tires in the mist—a double “bop bop” or “beep beep” from railyards, maybe soft application of big Diesel whistle by engineer to acknowledge hiball-on-the-air from brake-man or car knocker—the sound of the whole thing in general when there are no specific near-sounds is of course sea-like but also almost like the sound of the living structure, so as you look at a house you imagine it is adding its breathing to the general loud hush—(ever so far, in the hush, you can hear a tiny SQUEE of something, the nameless asthmas of the throat of Time)—now a man, probably a truckdriver, is yelling far away and sounds like an adventurous young fellow playing in the darkness—the harmonies of air brakes stopping on two intervals, first application, the sound of it melting and echoing the second application and harmonizing—A cluster of yellow November leaves in an otherwise bare and sheepish castrated tree send up a little meek PLICK as they rub together preparing to die. When I see a leaf fall, I always say goodbye—And that has a sound which is lost unless there is country stillness at which time I’m sure it really rattles the earth, like ants in orchestras—Moan, the terrible sound now of the Public Address system in the Milk Factory, the voice like it’s coming out of a stovepipe full of screens and amplified—a voice like night—a big steelrim cricket—(it’s stopped)—I heard it once so loud “Please turn off the water,” a woman, a rainy night, I was shocked—A car door slamming, the click, the velvet modern hinge-click before the soft slam—the soft cushioned new-car slam, flump—some man in hat and coat up to something pompous, secret, sheepish—The area breathes; it seems to want to tell something intelligible to me—

  * * *

  I WENT TO HECTOR’S, the glorious cafeteria of Cody’s first New York vision when he arrived in late 1946 all excited with his first wife; it made me sad to realize. A glittering counter—decorative walls—but nobody notices noble old ceiling of ancient decorated in fact almost baroque (Louis XV?) plaster now browned a smoky rich tan color—where chandeliers hung (obviously was old restaurant) now electric bulbs within metal casings or shades—But general effect is of shiny food on counter—walls are therefore not too noticeable—sections of ceiling-length mirrors, and mirror pillars, give spacious strange feeling—brown wood panels with coathooks and sections of rose-tint walls decorated with images, engraved—But ah the counter! as brilliant as B-way outside! Great rows of it—one vast L-shaped counter—great rows of diced mint jellos in glasses; diced strawberry jellos gleaming red, jellos mixed with peaches and cherries, cherry jellos top’t with whipcream, vanilla custards top’t with cream; great strawberry shortcakes already sliced in twelve sections, illuminating the center of the L—Huge salads, cottage cheese, pineapple, plums, egg salad, prunes, everything—vast baked apples—tumbling dishes of grapes, pale green and brown—immense pans of cheesecake, of raspberry cream cake, of flaky rich Napoleons, of simple Boston cake, armies of eclairs, of enormously dark chocolate cake (gleaming scatological brown)—of deepdish strudel, of time and the river—of freshly baked powdered cookies—of glazed strawberry-banana desserts—wild glazed orange cakes—pyramiding glazed desserts made of raspberries, whipcream, lady fingers sticking up—vast sections reserved for the splendors of coffee cakes and Danish crullers—All interspersed with white bottles of rich mad milk—Then the bread bun mountain—Then the serious business, the wild steaming fragrant hot-plate counter—Roast lamb, roast loin of pork, roast sirloin of beef, baked breast of lamb, stuff’d pepper, boiled chicken, stuff d spring chicken, things to make the poor penniless mouth water—big sections of meat fresh from ovens, and a great knife sitting alongside and the server who daintily lays out portions as thin as paper. The coffee counter, the urns, the cream jet, the steam—But most of all it’s that shining glazed sweet counter—showering like heaven—an al
l-out promise of joy in the great city of kicks.

  But I haven’t even mentioned the best of all—the cold cuts and sandwich and salad counter—with pans of mountainous spreads of all kinds that have cream cheese coverings sprinkled with chives and other bright spices, the pink lovely looking lox—cold ham—Swiss cheese—the whole counter gleaming with icy joy which is salty and nourishing—cold fish, herrings, onions—great loaves of rye bread sliced—so on—spreads of all kinds, egg salads big enough for a giant decorated and sprigged on a pan—in great sensuous shapes—salmon salads—(Poor Cody, in front of this in his scuffled-up beat Denver shoes, his literary “imitation” suit he had wanted to wear to be acceptable in New York cafeterias which he thought would be brown and plain like Denver cafeterias, with ordinary food)—

  * * *

  THAT SENSE OF SPRING comes over us in the Indian Summer subway station because of something warm (the sun upstairs) and yet dank like leftover oozes of winter—like the wet boughs shining at three o’clock in a March afternoon—like G Street in Washington when I was young and so ambled in imitation of Big Slim with short steps, erect and open-minded and Howdy Pard, walked like that in the sun outside marquees and shooting galleries and among orange peels of honkytonk life and suddenly a dark cool feeling comes from an open cellar or maybe a river breeze from Potomac, and it’s Spring.

  The subway lady is sitting on side bench holding Journal American up with two blackgloved hands—a funny Elly-like but aged (fifty-five) face with glasses, looking oddly French-Canadian, like an aunt of mine who pursed her lips the same way among the woodpiles of West Massachusetts or North Maine on gray exhalation days of piney mist as her sons stood arms akimbo in the yard—Actually she wears low-cut green sexy dress under red coat with big girlish buttons (like a little Pawtucketville girl at afternoon novenas)—her green dress has ribbon collar then opens below to reveal bosom breastbone which is no longer milkwhite but weather red. Fact is, further, she wears high-heeled black velvet pumps and looking close at my old aunt I see she has American peps in her and her face when lowered over paper has same heartbreaking little chagrined pout Elly had when I’d find her sometimes sitting doing nothing in a slant of afternoon sun in our bedroom (Apt. 62) as perhaps she foresaw herself as something like this woman in her days of less-grace—there is however something schoolteacherly closed and grave in her face reading. Ah life.

  * * *

  OH ROAD! IN AN ATTEMPT TO IMITATE the taste of a pork dish I ate in Hartford 1941 when I was passing through on the back of the truck (with my dog), the truck carrying my family’s furniture back to Lowell, and by strange coincidence we stopped at Hartford to eat lunch in a diner right next door to the Atlantic White Flash where I worked with Mike and Stanfield and Irv Morgan the first thing I hit town—but now this morning, still remembering the wonderful taste of what I guess was roast pork steamed and kept warm, going on a blueplate dinner with mashed potatoes, hundreds of great truckdrivers and even some of the boys from my station devouring it—so me (and movers) tried it and because it was a crisp day in December and we were on the road it just was inexpressibly good to me, thinking then, ignorantly “The best pork-chop” I ever ate—and in fact Mike was next door at the station and I talked to him after eating this meal that I haven’t forgotten after eleven years and he said “What the hell you doing here boy?” and I said “See that truck out there? we’re moving back to Lowell, my family, don’t believe me?” and “Hyah hyah!” Mike just laughed and in fact came out and played with my little pup Wacky (Purp—he always called pups) for awhile and then the truck rolled on, bearing me sadly back to the scenes of my boyhood as I sat watching the more and more familiar road unwind from the back of the truck—so I wake up this morning, find cold roast pork in the icebox, a double chop, and steam it in a pot placed in a bigger pot that has water (two inches) that I boil with a cover over the whole works, trying to keep that precious flavor of the pork without frying or any kind of fat situation like that and all because I remember that pork-chop Hartford ’41. All you do is head straight for the grave, a face just covers a skull awhile. Stretch that skull-cover and smile.

  * * *

  TOM CAME TO GET ME in my brightly lit Friday night house with Ma watching TV, Mrs. Blackstone chatting in and out, the lights along from bathroom to bedroom as I ablute weekendishly Esquire-ly and whistle and sing—Tom and I in high spirits—First complication is Rose wanting us to visit her at Richmond Hill bar which we do zooming through the night in big Buick (and she just called with her father the watchmaker from Russia born sitting right next to the phone in dumbmouth sad easy chair trance as sexy smallcunt dotter calls boys)—We find the bar, rolling through October climaxes of leaves falling and Halloween soon and I got red October shirt ah me so sad that every year we have to lose our October!—poor little Rose with her Thirties style short dress, pretty legs, high click heels, pinched face, perennial cigarette, drinksad eyes at the bar on stool with little pimple this night on chin where you might kiss her and it would break and I hated to look at it though on her smooth face now in retrospect (and it’s gone) it memories sexily like a beauty spot kind I used to see on chins of old movie queens in photos front of theater—wondering if it was photo ink—We squeeze into phonebooth two of us to call Ed and she tells Tom come in and as he does he has to push folding panel into her cuntbox and she looks him straight in the eye as he pushes harder and harder so he can slip in and she says “Come on, push, push—” and laugh, and air no more air in small booth soon—She has other baby responsibilities so we go on to New York after exciting preliminary Friday night beers standing (just like in Denver bars of Cody) at stools freshly laughing and recounting (never I dreamed it was first night of a five-day binge)—for Friday night to drinking weekenders is like Monday morning for ambitious clerks. In the ever more exciting big-traffic-all-of-it-pouring-into-New-York night we zoom down Queens Boulevard for the hundredth time in our friendship (and as Cody used to do in Hudson) and talking excited, listening radio Al Collins Purple Grotto (Al is playing talk-record slow speed so creates terrible monster but interviews it casually as if nothing) and other things and so bemused I didn’t notice my usual mad notice of New York glittering skyline and we’re in town Tom dropping me off at Wilson’s so we won’t miss Mac due to meet me there ten sharp (time also of first round Louis-Marciano fight) and I’m worried Wilson (the meeting place) will be downstairs watching fight which is exactly what he was doing (with Marian) and where Mac just arriving from upstate in his car (parked on Park at 57th) comes accidentally, just to catch first round and brew before going up to meet me and therefore doesn’t see sign Wilson left for me and anyway Wilson is leaving bar because beer too expensive just for fight so they go upstairs and Marian is sulking because she half wants to go to Westchester on train but now to solve probably her indecision has perfect opportunity to blame it on my unasked making a meet with Mac in her house, so that when at 10:101 come running up the stairs like mad all vibrant with the Friday night excitement that has been buzzing all the way from the Island and in fact of course from Tom’s garage way out in the sticks in Lynbrook where his Buick shiny nose waited, in the driveway downstairs reflecting his shaving lights upstairs as he too sang and dressed and his mother and family in their richer way were enlivened among all the room lights of Going Out Friday Night—as I ran up the stairs exuding all this joy which perhaps comes only from living on the Island, on the LAND, and buzzing in—and as Tom wheeled away to pick up Ed at Columbus Circle who was subwaying down from Columbia himself laden with a thousand dreams of zest because his schoolwork is over and he loves Maria Tom’s sister and has youthful joys and generally buzzing these days—I run up stairs smack into Marian sulking in her bathrobe on the sofa (while deciding to give up idea of trains because “now it’s too late of course”), the grim sullen look of the New York-tied maybe and her general recent retirement from all enthusiasms except martyrism—and Wilson himself sitting all slicked up (as never) in suit and collar wit
h a patient martyred look of his own (both of them tight-jawed) because Marian bugs him and anyway he’s bushed from week of drinking—and McCarthy drinking beer, the least surprising one there and now I know why because he burgeoned enough for ten men within two hours as soon as he met Josephine—and JOHN MACY of all inappropriate, complicated inopportune people to be there (having called, and being a great popular witty entertainer of the Wilsons now as Wyndham once was in his less swish and more boyish way)—all four, stolidly sitting, radio much too loud piping out irritating excited voice of Bill Corum blow by blow fight—I run in, “Marian! Tom’s coming too!” and am met by such a stonewall of already prepared antagonism and indifference, in fact so much that Marian made an attempt to grimace her message with eyes and Wilson didn’t help, so much that I in my unpreparedness stood like I was shot in the middle of the room, teetering and quivering as my mind registered the psychological atmosphere and also I hadn’t said hello to Mac yet who drove from Poke just for me. Yes, I wanted to go to California and find my buddy Cody again—and myself too.