Barry Hannah - Geronimo Rex

“Listen,” I said. This was hard to put. “I don’t think I want to beg any-body to let me into his college. Don’t ask me to do that.”

“Not beg . Tell about yourself. Tell about your music,” says the old man. “Use your style. You have a style. You’re my son, aren’t you?” He grins, and blushes.

I suppose he meant I would woo that dean at Columbia as if I were Jack Paar of New York and the dean were a horny old maid. I didn’t have that kind of confidence. It surprised me that the old man had this much trust in any “style” I had. I’d never heard anything about this. Could the old man be thinking of me as a seventeen-year-old version of himself, making a smash in New York on his first visit? Yes.

What a shame it was he never got closer than a Gray Line tour to the city. He saw it, all right, a couple of years back, gorged his eyes on the skyline — all those frightening gray clusters of turrets, banked against one another like fingernails growing from the hands of corpses — and on the harbor, and on the brick caverns everywhere. It hurt him in his soul to be seeing the city only as a tourist, though; he felt awfully left out and inadequate and went into a six-month gloom back in Dream of Pines. When I was in college, my mother sent me letters about her trying to coax him out of it. He would have loved to be invited to New York, like me. I’m sure he thought New York was calling me to its marble palaces of Art. I lied and told him I’d drop by on the dean of Columbia.

New York. Perrino taught us trumpet men in a basement room overlooking Washington Square. There was a huge green lawn out back with a wide brick walkway running down it. There were adult people walking by barefooted out there, and lots of beards and pipes, books, but most memorable, queer lovely girls with heavy eye make-up, jeans and tee shirts, and pagan-seeming sandals. No fool could deny New York its women. I’m the type that can pick out obscure graces in a crippled hag, but I know the kind of beauty that burns your eyes, too. First night I was in New York, I bought myself some tennis shoes and wore them without socks, like I’d seem some of the milder beatniks do, and walked around the fountain at Washington Square thinking to pick up some romance. And I did.

This group of four girls came up to the edge of the fountain where I was sitting all tired out with trying to attract a lover, which is hard to do when you’re too shy to make the first move. I merely said hello, and they got very friendly. They wanted to know where I was.from. Eventually they invited me over to their place for a Wine Party. They giggled and implied that this was an event that was going to tear the rafters out of the house.

“Sounds good. Am I going to have a girlfriend?” I said.

“Oh. We’re all engaged to be married ,” says the brunette.

But the red-haired girl in the back that I hadn’t noticed much came up and slipped her arm in mine coyly.

“I’ll be your girlfriend tonight,” she lisped in a voice of antic falsity, playing that game of pretend-lover that certain kinds of girls like to play with unthreatening men. I didn’t much like this, but I was taking anything New York would give me, and so we paraded over to their place. She put her pale hand in mine.

On the walk we ran into a crowd having a hassle with a big cop. The trouble was he was running two colored musician beggars off the square and the crowd didn’t like it. But someone in one of the brownstone houses had complained of the noise. I looked over at the musicians, expecting to see a trombone or something like that around somewhere, but what I saw was an utterly destroyed little man who seemed made out of brown wires slumping beside the cop with a scratched bass ukulele in his hand; the ukulele had the back completely out of it; he had his hand full of small change. His partner was on the other side of the cop, looking sullen and paying no mind to any of us. He held a comb covered with wet tissue paper. On his head was a sea cap of dirty white with crossed captain’s anchors insignia above the bill.

“Officer, who are they hurting? We had to get up close to even hear them!” pleaded an older bohemian sort of woman who had a pigtail plait which whipped back and forth. Everybody in the crowd looked anguished. “They were lifting the spirits of this fucking slumpy swamp!” cried a bald-headed fellow in an army jacket. I looked around at the terrain of the square, which was very green and solid. I really expected the cop to come out with his billy club soon, with the crowd pressing in and shrieking at him. There must’ve been a dozen of them. He was huge and thick, in his double-breasted blue, and he bit his lip reflectively as if deciding who to bash first. “Don’t be a tool !” somebody yelled. “Why don’t you arrest the goddam square that complained?!” “I’m not arresting anybody,” the cop says finally. “You go around telling people to get off of free turf, though, man.” “… by what philosophy was these two a crime?” moaned this one guy shaking his head and spreading his hands; I think this was the first real Brooklyn voice I ever heard.

The cop answered him, “ This is your philosophy: you want New York to turn into a town wit’ streets full of beggars, like D.C.? You want to get hustled for a quarter every time you put your foot in the street? We’re cleaning up the beggars.”

“What you mean is you’re sending these men back to Harlem. I’ll bet you’ll give a free ride back, courtesy of the Police Department, huh?”

“Everybody shut their goddam mouth!” said the man in the army jacket. “Let these men do their number and you see if they’re not earning their money. O.K.? All right, everybody step back and let’s hear them.” The cop frowned but dropped back a couple of feet from the musicians. The crowd eased back too, falling in like a jury gallery around the girls and me. The bald-headed fellow stayed in front and got up on his toes with raised hands like a conductor. He thrashed downward. “Hit it, cats, like never before!” The Negroes didn’t stir immediately. But they did play, with the little morose man stomping on the ground and strumming and fingering the bass uke for all he was worth, while the taller fellow in the sea cap waved back and forth with the comb and tissue paper. I couldn’t hear a damned thing. I attempted to get in closer, stretching the arm of the redhead, who didn’t want to move but held my hand. I heard some low thrumming, a foot hitting the ground, and an occasional buzz off the comb. No song, exactly, got through to where I was, only a scratching beat and a low hum. It was like hearing rock-and-roll from somewhere far, far away. Even so, I got caught up in it, danced around a little, and attempted to draw up the redhead in an embrace. My mind lifted and I became rather careless hearing this scratchy music coming off the pavement. The girl didn’t find it agreeable. “Stop it, stop it,” she whispered. “There isn’t anything to dance to.” “I’ll kiss you. I’ll try to do other things. Right now we’ve got to dance!” I found myself saying. God, I felt torn-away and reckless off this scratchy music. I never even looked to see how she was taking it. My feet and hips went out every way. The musicians quit.

“Well, I believe that settles it,” says the cop. “Nobody’d call that music.”

“I’d call it music, you deaf shit!” yells the man in the army jacket, who was still dancing solitary. “These men earn their way. I think that settles it!” cries the Brooklynite, who had been bumping and snapping fingers while they played. “Let’s pay these men for the entertainment.” He thrusts down in the pocket of his big gray pants, and every-body in the crowd is opening purses and going down in pants for change. The cop steps between the musicians again to prohibit talk any further. His hands are up. But behind him the subtle darkie on uke has his backless instrument turned over, and wiggles it, inviting donations. Silver flies past the cop and strikes the wood, sometimes getting and sometimes glancing off into the grass or on the pavement. A hinging music of falling coins sets up around the musicians and the cop. The cop holds up the billy club at last, and this grim stick is standing on his hand about nine feet in the air. I myself have a handful of quarters, dimes, and nickels ready to loft over him to the musicians and am just waiting for a decent chance. I see the man who played the comb sprawling on the pavement behind the cop; his sea cap is off, he is grabbing everywhere for coins. Somebody’s legs spread and I get a view of this, and also the gun and bullet belt of the cop moving toward us more. “Come on, honey!” says the redhead. She pulls on me and tells me there’s going to be some trouble if we don’t get away. I see her light face is drawn thin in terror, and her mouth is all pretty and wet. I get an instant lust pang; her face is parallel to the ground while she tugs at me; the other girls are retreating, and I notice an incidental panty under a flaring dress. But I raise my fist filled with coins.