Lost in the Funhouse by Bill Zehme Page B

times between the ages of twelve and fourteen—and that was just with me. Who knows how often he went alone. But Andy would drag me along to show off his friends [at Hubert’s]. He’d obviously been going there for a while because he had already made friends with some of these freak people. We would stay there for a long time and the snake lady let us touch her snakes and we’d see all the acts and look at the embryo in a bottle that was supposedly a lamb with three heads. We’d also go down to this record shop in the Times Square subway where you could listen to records on headphones. He liked to play the song ‘Louie Louie’ over and over to listen for the secret dirty words, which I always thought was funny. Or else he’d listen to a lot of Elvis Presley. That was my earliest recollection of him getting infatuated with Elvis. Then we would go down to Greenwich Village and walk around and look at the oddities—bikers, girls holding hands, beatniks, that sort of thing. We went to all these coffeehouses where the beatniks read their poetry, the most important of which was Cafe Wha? He would listen to this poetry that would give me a headache. I think we had our first espressos there, too. They sometimes beat bongos when they recited the poetry, which really interested him. He liked those hipsters.”
    (6) Oct. 26, 1963
    HE GETS ILLUSIONS THAT HIS FLY IS ALWAYS OPEN
    He gets illusions that his fly is always open.
    When he goes to work.
    When he goes to school.
    To him, people will notice.
    To him, people will always be looking at him.
    He gets illusions that his fly is always open.
    When he walks down the street.
    When he goes to a dance.
    He gets illusions that his fly is always open.
    Who gives a damn.
    (7) Oct. 27, 1963
    WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF
    What will happen if I tell my teacher that I hate her?
    She will send me to the office. That is all.
    And what will happen if I get bad marks in school?
    And do not go to college? And do not get a job? And die in my twenties?
    Nothing. I will not feel pain.
    What will happen if I
get
good marks in school?
    And get praised by my father? And go to a good college?
    And make a billion dollars?
    I will be part of the camouflaged unhappy competition.
    And what will happen if I get bad marks in school?
    And get beaten by my father? And don’t go to college?
    And move down to the Village?
And be happy?
    What will happen if?——What will happen if?——Ask yourself:
    What will happen?
    It was a godly time when words were god. Such godwords—those he heard, those he composed—were cadenced in stacatto thuds, hung on grim ellipses, and were best punctuated with drumskin slaps or fingersnaps or
dig-can-you-digs;
he dug but madly, oh yes. He began to dutifully wear black, like all good Beats; at very least, usually had the little black faux-turtle dickie under his oxford collar. He made the scene, brought the words he had written (often during lunch in the Great Neck North High School cafeteria or during classes that bored him extra madly, a freshmanGinsberg/Ferlinghetti, mind pointedly pointed elsewhere), brought the bongos, too (not a conga scene), brought the existential questioning therein, brought all to the underground world (down more dark steps) of Cafe Wha? (MacDougal near Bleecker, heart of Village cool), where he insinuated himself onto the afternoon stage—fourteen years of age!—or, more conveniently, to the nearby MacDougal East coffeehouse on Plandome Road in Manhasset, Long Island (suburban scene, not quite as cool but workable).
    He was a tall gangly cat with a mouthful of braces a-gleam.
    The voice was croaking now, puberty stirring and all.
    He needed to spill with a little profundity, since the birthday gigs did not afford such freedom. He needed to deal with the outcast stuff, the loner stuff, the why-can’t-the-man-(father)-let-up-on-me stuff. Stanley sometimes drove him to the coffeehouses, picked him up later, sometimes even stayed and listened to the son’s