Bruce Bauman - Broken Sleep

Xtine babysat Alchemy. I donned a leopard-skin Sheena, Queen of the Jungle top, a sheer rust red skirt with a belly-dancer’s belt and bright red hot pants underneath, stilettos, and an orange scarf wrapped around each arm, and went to Blind Lemon Socrates’s reading at St. Mark’s on 10th and Second Avenue. I doubt old Pegleg Peter Stuyvesant, who is buried under the church, appreciated the moral turpitude of the Poetry Project’s congregation.

Socrates was already in midread when I fluttered into the courtyard. I nearly choked on the cigarette and pot fumes.

I’d arranged to meet Alexander Holencraft, a young sharpie who dubbed himself a “writer.” I’d been floozying around a bit again. Less spontaneously because of Alchemy, but asceticism was never me. Holencraft scribbled copy for the ad agency of Yorkin & Stunkle. We met briefly during a photo shoot with Xtine, and he’d asked to do my head shots. He had bigger plans for me and for himself; he was in the formative stage that would lead to his becoming a major tastemaker. He later invested in Manhattan real estate and started the celeb magazine I, Me, Mine , which he named after the Beatles song, but devoid of any irony. He claimed he’d written the famous poster phrase “The night the underground comes uptown” about Lou’s Alice Tully Hall show and coined the term “cool hunter.” I’m guessing he was in the room with the guy who really created them.

An SRO crowd jammed into the room, which was hotter than a Chinese laundry and about as well ventilated. I stood at the back. Sitting behind Socrates as he read was Anne Waldman, the poet who ran St. Mark’s, and the novelist Ally Sendar, who’d written the foreword to Socrates’s new novel, The Floating Prickhouse .

Socrates slumped over the podium, almost hidden in his oversize houndstooth jacket. Occasionally, he’d glare and take a puff from one of the three cigarettes he’d strategically placed — one in his right hand, one in an ashtray on the podium in front of him, and one hanging off the edge of a chair. The skin of his oblong face looked like mottled mercury and cooled lava. His thick-lensed glasses made his eyes look bulgy. His voice drizzled out with an Olympian sneer of superiority.

Crazed child Nub pulls his metal casquet over his loopy eyes. He munches on Chilean eyeball apples. Sucks skin-sap through his braced teeth. Comes up from behind and spits in my mouth. Mumbles “Protofacsists’ liquid dick sauce. Your favorite.” He pulls my harness and rams his Tin-Can-Do into the hard crack of my buttocks. Yvulva announces, “It’s the midmorning of mindfuck. The pubescent mind-melders are at the gate.”

Socrates didn’t acknowledge the applause and whistles. Leaning heavily on his ivory-handled black cane, his body teetered like a rickety wooden-and-barbed-wire fence. He disappeared through a side door and out of sight.

Holencraft shot me a flinty glance from the opposite end of the hall and waved me toward him. I smiled and waited for him to come to me. From behind, a hand tapped me on the shoulder. I swiveled around and was about to give this Mr. Blanding’s guy my icy-eye brush-off when — Nathaniel! I wanted to jump up and wrap my arms and legs around him. I knew better. He’d changed his wardrobe. No more outfits designed by Che & Fidel, Inc. Here stood Mr. Suntanned Middle America in navy blue chinos, a lime-green Lacoste polo shirt, and brown loafers. He looked so out of place among all the pallid faces and their ordained black garb. (Is “garb” short for Garbo or garbage?) His hair was shading gray, cut short and neat, his face clean shaven below new, black-framed glasses. He caught me staring at his nose, which stuck out like a half-blind plastic surgeon had pinned a pink rubber eraser on the end of it. “Yeah, I look like Cyrano but without his poetic gifts.”

His soulsmell, even after all the hiding and unjust charges, was imbued with the pristine and hopeful odors of a newly gessoed canvas. As I was about to give him a polite hug and verbal pinch, Holencraft clawed the knotted end of my bandana and leaned over to kiss me. I backed away.

“Alexander, this is uh, um …” Nathaniel interrupted me—

“Philip Noland, an old friend of Salome’s.”

“I need to talk to Philip. Alone.”

Holencraft gritted his perfect teeth in displeasure. “I thought we had a rendezvous.”

“We agreed on a potential meeting to talk of my modeling for you. Nothing more. Nat … um … Philip is an old friend.”

Holencraft eyed Nathaniel as if he were mentally photographing him. He looked perplexed — how could I choose to go with this doughnut-bodied big-nosed guy over a stud as handsome as him? “Okay, but I will hold on to my ticket to Salome’s back room.”

I lightly grazed his arm with my fingernails. “Alexander, I know exactly what you want. Don’t piss me off by acting like a proprietary male beast, or you have no chance of cashing that ticket. Behave like a good boy and you never know …” I grinned voluptuously and turned away.

I tucked my arm around Nathaniel’s waist. “I’m so happy, really, truly happy to see you.”

He removed my arm and backed away from me. “You must be very careful. Meet me at the Odessa in half an hour. Please, do not tell anyone where you are going or who you are meeting.”

I waded through the crowd doing my kissy-kissy come-hither-to-my-show. Then I headed to the Odessa, a favorite of Nathaniel’s but not of mine. The place oozed with the odor of foam rubber, or maybe fossilized blini, bulged from the torn, red plastic seats. In lieu of tablecloths, a thin film of syrup, sour cream, applesauce, french fry grease, and coffee covered each table. The waitresses, graduates of the Joseph Stalin Charm School, took pride in wiping the tables down so that any free crumbs landed on your lap. Flies performed kamikaze missions first on your meal, then on your face.

Nathaniel was seated at a back booth. “So, Mr. Philip Noland, what the hell have you been up to the last five years? Besides running from the outlaws who call themselves the ‘protectors of the people’ and having some defrocked doctor enhance your nose.”

“Mainly that. Being a nine-to-five blender. It’s been heavy times for me. I live in the Southwest. So-called enemy territory. It’s not. I’ve realized that Nixon’s ‘silent majority’ is ready for us, if we learn how to talk to them without sounding so snotty.”

“Being restrained must give you some major case of heartburn. Like this food.”

“Delectable.” He rolled a blini around his tongue. “Salome, for your own good, I can’t divulge too much. They are still running black bag ops on me. Even though we got rid of the Trickster, and the Congress is investigating the secret government, I don’t trust them to end it.”

We left the Odessa and strolled around Tompkins Square Park. Nathaniel’s once nervous energy now seemed just nervous. His eyes were fidgety and his gait furtive and unassured. The park was still seedy with the homeless living in cardboard boxes. The street kids blasted dump-truck-size boom boxes. Everyone seemed high on something, be it junk, glue, or spray paint fumes.

“Don’t worry, Nathaniel, this is a cop-free zone.”

“Yes, these are our Untouchables. No one gives a shit about them. Maybe I should move here and they’d get off my case.”

“Why’d you risk coming back? Because you needed to see me?”

“If you knew how often …” His eyes watered ever so slightly. “My mother has incurable liver cancer. My sister is taking care of her alone. I need to be with them.” He sighed. “My lawyers are close to swinging a deal with the Feds.”

“Oh, Nathaniel. I am so sorry.”

“Me, too. Only, after decades of imbibing any fluid containing alcohol, it’s not a surprise.”