While walking further west on either Fordham Road or Kingsbridge Road in the Bronx toward Upper Manhattan, on a pleasant summer weekday in mid-July 1971, I decided to sit down on a bench in the middle of either a small playground or some vest-pocket-size park of some trees near a sidewalk corner. Still not knowing where my rent for August 1971 was going to come from, I was in the middle of contemplating what survival options were still open to me—now that I had been denied welfare benefits and still seemed unable to earn any money as some kind of freelance writer for a muckraking left-wing publication like Ramparts magazine—when two young white working-class guys with short hair approached me in a cautious way. They both looked culturally straight and to be in their late teens or early 20s.
It turned out that the two young white working-class guys had both been drafted into the U.S. Army and had just deserted from the U.S. military while being subjected to basic training. And since I still looked like a bearded, long-haired, anti-war hippie in mid-July 1971, they correctly assumed that I would let them crash that night in my hippie pad.
Being fresh from escaping from a U.S. Army atmosphere which they felt to be totalitarian, the two deserters—both of whom were now dressed in civilian clothes—spent much of their time imitating the way the drill sergeant from whom they had recently escaped had barked bullying orders at them, as walked the few miles across either Fordham Road or Kingsbridge Road towards my Bronx slum apartment in the Belmont neighborhood.
“Lombardino! Clean the latrine! Lombardino! Remake your bed!, etc., etc.” the deserter who apparently went by that name repeated in a satirical mimicking way and an imitation Southern regional accent. Both the deserters laughed a lot, as we approached my apartment and they recounted to me their stories about the horrors and the absurdities of U.S. Army life, like two people who were overjoyed because they had finally been released from a prison.
Spending the evening drinking beer and conversing with each other in my apartment, we all seemed to agree that the militaristic set-up in U.S. society in the early 1970s was pretty much insane. And that, for the two deserters, going to Canada now seemed to make the most sense; rather then either returning to their army base and risk being either thrown into a stockade or eventually sent to the infantry front-line in “Nam by the super-authoritarian U.S. military brass whose military discipline each of them now rejected as absurd—especially now that they were out of their military uniforms and back among the real world of U.S. civilian life again.
So I gave them the address and phone number of one of the anti-war draft/GI counseling groups in Manhattan that I thought might provide them with some leads as to how to escape to Canada most easily. And when they left my apartment early the next morning they indicated that they would probably stop by at the anti-war GI/draft counseling group’s office before quickly heading back to their parents’ home, in order to visit their parents for a few days and gather up some more of their civilian clothes before the U.S. Army concluded that the two youths had gone AWOL and began hunting for them at their parents’ house. In addition, getting some money quickly from their parents was going to probably be necessary by the two deserters for them to be successful in escaping to Canada. Although I was nearly completely out of money myself by mid-July 1971, I gave the two deserters a $10 bill (in early 1970s money) so that they could at least buy a commuter train ticket which would move each of them closer to the white working-class suburban homes of their parents.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxxvii)
Not surprisingly, in early July 1971 an official letter came from the New York City Welfare Department stating that I was being denied home relief welfare benefits and food stamps for some technical reason. Although I had been laid off from my night clerical job at the Hunt’s Point Market fruit and vegetable wholesale firm in May 1971, after working there only a week, the right-wing white guy who had investigated me apparently justified his denial of welfare benefits to me on the following grounds: 1. Since I had been on home relief for a month the previous year before finding a job as a summer camp counselor in 1970, there was no valid reason why I couldn’t now find a job again as a summer camp counselor in 1971—even though in the Summer of 1970 there hadn’t been any economic recession like there now was in the Summer of 1971; and 2. Since I had quit my office boy job at the Writers Guild—East office nearly 4 months previously, to protest against the failure in 1971 of that middle-class “talent union” to fight against institutional racism and sexism in the radio-TV network world of CBS, NBC and ABC and against the endless U.S. war in Indochina, that somehow meant that I was not now really “entitled” to a home relief welfare check—especially since I had long hair and was a white hippie, not the “legitimate” type of poor person that New York City welfare checks were supposed to be “meant for.”
I was, obviously, enraged at the welfare department and the welfare department caseworker/investigator for denying me the home relief benefits I was legally entitled to. But, given the politics of New York City’s welfare department bureaucracy in 1971, I was skeptical that its denial of welfare benefits to me in July 1971 could really be overturned in some kind of bureaucratic appeal hearing. And since I was nearly penniless when the welfare department denied me home relief benefits, I also thought that by the time any appeal ruling which might overturn the welfare department’s denial of benefits to me would be made, I probably would have already been starved out of or evicted from my Bronx slum apartment for many months.
So I saw no point in even filing an appeal of my home relief denial and, instead, spent the first few weeks of July 1971 researching and writing an article for Ramparts magazine, from a New Left radical perspective, which indicated why the liberal Democratic Party presidential candidate for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination, George McGovern, didn’t really reflect the New Left’s historical anti-imperialist, anti-war and anti-racist radical democratic politics. But when the Ramparts magazine editor rejected the freelance article, I was pretty much at a loss in figuring out what to do to come up with the $57 I needed for my August 1971 rent and for some money to feed myself during the month of August 1971. And I began to feel that August 1971 would be the month that the 1965 to 1971 version of “bob feldman” would cease to exist.
In retrospect, what I probably should have done was to immediately apply for unemployment benefits, since I had been laid-off from my last job as a night clerk at the Hunt’s Point Market fruit and vegetable wholesale firm. But despite our college degrees, neither the welfare department caseworker/investigator who disqualified me from receiving home relief nor I was familiar with unemployment insurance regulations in 1971; and we both just assumed—apparently mistakenly—that an unemployed worker who was laid-off after only 1 week at a job who had quit a previous job of a much longer duration would not then be eligible to receive unemployment benefits.
Also in retrospect, my fear that not having any money to pay my rent in August 1971 meant that I would be quickly evicted by the landlord within 14 or 30 days of receiving a “notice to quit,” was also based on the fact that, despite having a college degree, I—like most U.S. college graduates—had never been taught by either the U.S. public school system or the U.S. higher education system what kind of legal rights rent-controlled tenants in New York City in 1971 and/or all tenants in the USA had under the then-current U.S. housing laws. In reality, a tenant who received a “notice to quit” eviction notice from a landlord for non-payment of rent in 1971—especially a rent-controlled tenant—actually could usually prolong his or her stay in the apartment for over 3 months by just staying put in the apartment, speaking to a tenant advocate at tenants rights groups like the Metropolitan Council on Housing in New York City and challenging the landlord’s eviction notices in housing court. Since only a judge—not a landlord—generally has the legal right to order a tenant out of his or her home in most cities of the United States.
I was, obviously, enraged at the welfare department and the welfare department caseworker/investigator for denying me the home relief benefits I was legally entitled to. But, given the politics of New York City’s welfare department bureaucracy in 1971, I was skeptical that its denial of welfare benefits to me in July 1971 could really be overturned in some kind of bureaucratic appeal hearing. And since I was nearly penniless when the welfare department denied me home relief benefits, I also thought that by the time any appeal ruling which might overturn the welfare department’s denial of benefits to me would be made, I probably would have already been starved out of or evicted from my Bronx slum apartment for many months.
So I saw no point in even filing an appeal of my home relief denial and, instead, spent the first few weeks of July 1971 researching and writing an article for Ramparts magazine, from a New Left radical perspective, which indicated why the liberal Democratic Party presidential candidate for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination, George McGovern, didn’t really reflect the New Left’s historical anti-imperialist, anti-war and anti-racist radical democratic politics. But when the Ramparts magazine editor rejected the freelance article, I was pretty much at a loss in figuring out what to do to come up with the $57 I needed for my August 1971 rent and for some money to feed myself during the month of August 1971. And I began to feel that August 1971 would be the month that the 1965 to 1971 version of “bob feldman” would cease to exist.
In retrospect, what I probably should have done was to immediately apply for unemployment benefits, since I had been laid-off from my last job as a night clerk at the Hunt’s Point Market fruit and vegetable wholesale firm. But despite our college degrees, neither the welfare department caseworker/investigator who disqualified me from receiving home relief nor I was familiar with unemployment insurance regulations in 1971; and we both just assumed—apparently mistakenly—that an unemployed worker who was laid-off after only 1 week at a job who had quit a previous job of a much longer duration would not then be eligible to receive unemployment benefits.
Also in retrospect, my fear that not having any money to pay my rent in August 1971 meant that I would be quickly evicted by the landlord within 14 or 30 days of receiving a “notice to quit,” was also based on the fact that, despite having a college degree, I—like most U.S. college graduates—had never been taught by either the U.S. public school system or the U.S. higher education system what kind of legal rights rent-controlled tenants in New York City in 1971 and/or all tenants in the USA had under the then-current U.S. housing laws. In reality, a tenant who received a “notice to quit” eviction notice from a landlord for non-payment of rent in 1971—especially a rent-controlled tenant—actually could usually prolong his or her stay in the apartment for over 3 months by just staying put in the apartment, speaking to a tenant advocate at tenants rights groups like the Metropolitan Council on Housing in New York City and challenging the landlord’s eviction notices in housing court. Since only a judge—not a landlord—generally has the legal right to order a tenant out of his or her home in most cities of the United States.
Friday, June 15, 2012
Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxxvi)
It was in June 1971 that my pet kitten, Kitty, became very sick. For over a year she had lived in the Bronx slum apartment with me or my Summer 1970 sublet tenants and been allowed to go outside and up and down on the fire escape near my kitchen window, when the weather was warm. But when I noticed that she was suddenly getting very thin and fragile-looking, I looked in the yellow pages phone book and found the address for a Bideawee animal clinic on Manhattan’s East Side.
After putting Kitty in a cat-carrying box I had, taking the subway down to the animal clinic and having to wait in the waiting room to see the vet for nearly an hour and a half, I finally was able to have Kitty examined by the vet in his office. After examining Kitty, the vet indicated that Kitty had caught some kind of cat disease and that there was only a slight chance that Kitty would be able to live if she received more medical care. And that this medical care for her would be very expensive to obtain.
Since I had no savings and expected income other than possibly being declared permanently eligible to start receiving regularly a monthly home relief welfare check in July 1971, both the vet and I agreed that the most merciful thing to do was to bring Kitty to the ASPCA and put her out of her misery.
I felt very sad after hearing the vet’s diagnosis. And I felt especially sad when I returned to my Bronx apartment with Kitty and then walked south from my neighborhood for many blocks until I reached the Bronx ASCPA-affiliated facility, said goodbye to Kitty, handed Kitty to the security guard-receptionist, and then walked back uptown to my apartment.
The experience of being too economically impoverished to even have the option of even attempting to save Kitty’s life by bringing her to a vet--who would only work to try saving her if given money up-front—provided me with yet another reason for wanting to transform radically a U.S. capitalist system in which impoverished working-class people were enslaved and trapped at the bottom of a classist U.S. society just because they were born into U.S. working-class families who were neither rich nor the recipients of inherited class economic, political and cultural privileges.
While waiting such a long time at the Bideawee clinic to see the vet, I had passed nearly three-quarters of the time conversing in an animated way with an African-American woman in her twenties who, with her older sister, had also come to see the vet in order to have her cat (who was older than Kitty) examined. Unlike Kitty, her pet cat was not ill in any serious way. But while talking with each other, both the African-American woman and I seemed to feel some initial love vibrations beginning to flow between us. And we seemed to be on the same wavelength, somewhat, philosophically—although she was more into health foods and new age stuff than was I.
So before I left the Bideawee animal clinic, she was not reluctant to give me her phone number and invite me to phone her later in the week at the Harlem apartment which she apparently shared with her older sister. But although she was still very friendly over the telephone when I called her at the end of the week, between the time I said goodbye to her at the Bideawee clinic waiting room and the time I telephoned her, she (or perhaps her sister) had developed second thoughts about her possibly getting involved emotionally or romantically with me. And after our friendly telephone conversation of about 15 minutes, my feeling was that it made no sense to ask her for some kind of a date to go down to the Village or hang out in Central Park—especially since I was beginning to suspect that the welfare department caseworker/investigator who had visited me in early June 1971 was going to deny me home relief benefits (because he apparently resented the fact that hip white youths who collected home relief seemed to feel more free and less personally frustrated than he felt working in his 9-to-5 welfare department caseworker/investigator straight job) and I then would be facing possible starvation or eviction within a month or two.
After putting Kitty in a cat-carrying box I had, taking the subway down to the animal clinic and having to wait in the waiting room to see the vet for nearly an hour and a half, I finally was able to have Kitty examined by the vet in his office. After examining Kitty, the vet indicated that Kitty had caught some kind of cat disease and that there was only a slight chance that Kitty would be able to live if she received more medical care. And that this medical care for her would be very expensive to obtain.
Since I had no savings and expected income other than possibly being declared permanently eligible to start receiving regularly a monthly home relief welfare check in July 1971, both the vet and I agreed that the most merciful thing to do was to bring Kitty to the ASPCA and put her out of her misery.
I felt very sad after hearing the vet’s diagnosis. And I felt especially sad when I returned to my Bronx apartment with Kitty and then walked south from my neighborhood for many blocks until I reached the Bronx ASCPA-affiliated facility, said goodbye to Kitty, handed Kitty to the security guard-receptionist, and then walked back uptown to my apartment.
The experience of being too economically impoverished to even have the option of even attempting to save Kitty’s life by bringing her to a vet--who would only work to try saving her if given money up-front—provided me with yet another reason for wanting to transform radically a U.S. capitalist system in which impoverished working-class people were enslaved and trapped at the bottom of a classist U.S. society just because they were born into U.S. working-class families who were neither rich nor the recipients of inherited class economic, political and cultural privileges.
While waiting such a long time at the Bideawee clinic to see the vet, I had passed nearly three-quarters of the time conversing in an animated way with an African-American woman in her twenties who, with her older sister, had also come to see the vet in order to have her cat (who was older than Kitty) examined. Unlike Kitty, her pet cat was not ill in any serious way. But while talking with each other, both the African-American woman and I seemed to feel some initial love vibrations beginning to flow between us. And we seemed to be on the same wavelength, somewhat, philosophically—although she was more into health foods and new age stuff than was I.
So before I left the Bideawee animal clinic, she was not reluctant to give me her phone number and invite me to phone her later in the week at the Harlem apartment which she apparently shared with her older sister. But although she was still very friendly over the telephone when I called her at the end of the week, between the time I said goodbye to her at the Bideawee clinic waiting room and the time I telephoned her, she (or perhaps her sister) had developed second thoughts about her possibly getting involved emotionally or romantically with me. And after our friendly telephone conversation of about 15 minutes, my feeling was that it made no sense to ask her for some kind of a date to go down to the Village or hang out in Central Park—especially since I was beginning to suspect that the welfare department caseworker/investigator who had visited me in early June 1971 was going to deny me home relief benefits (because he apparently resented the fact that hip white youths who collected home relief seemed to feel more free and less personally frustrated than he felt working in his 9-to-5 welfare department caseworker/investigator straight job) and I then would be facing possible starvation or eviction within a month or two.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxxv)
It was in either May or June 1971 that I finally got around to exploring the City Island neighborhood of the Bronx on one weekend day. I had read somewhere that some counter-cultural hippie freaks had set up some kind of commune whose living quarters was in a rented house on City Island. But when I walked along the main street of what felt somewhat like a fishing village to me, I didn’t see much evidence that the commune’s presence there had created much of a counter-cultural hippie atmosphere on City Island’s main street in the Spring of 1971. So I did not look any further into whether or not moving into a hippie commune on City Island might be a possible new lifestyle option for me during the remainder of the 1970s.
What I did do in June of 1971, though, was to explore the possibility of enrolling at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and studying some field related to farming and rural life, like agricultural economics. In the early 1970s, out-of-state tuition costs at certain state universities in the Southeast (like the University of Tennessee) were still less than $300 for either a semester (or perhaps an academic year). And after I wrote a folk song about the advantage and desire to escape the loveless and depressing urban rat race scene of early 1970s New York City working-class neighborhoods for some potentially more liberated, land-based country scene in the rural USA, I thought, for awhile, that one way I might be able to eventually escape to a country farming community and live again in some kind of campus youth ghetto—where I’d feel less culturally isolated than I then felt in the Bronx—might be to try to take advantage of the University of Tennessee’s low tuition costs; and attend school down there. But by the time I got around to actually applying for admissions there in late June 1971, I no longer had enough money to afford to even pay for an application for admissions there, let alone finance some kind of long-distance move from the Bronx to Knoxville.
Yet I had been so into the idea of possibly studying at the University of Tennessee in the Fall of 1971 that when I exchanged letters with Sue of New Jersey—whom I had met in the summer of 1970 when we both worked at Camp Summit in Pennsylvania—I even mentioned in one of my letters to her that I was hoping to “learn how to feed all the hungry people in the world better,” by studying agricultural economics at the University of Tennessee. But although Sue felt that my possible new goal was a worthwhile one and also seemed to understand a critique of how Camp Summit had been run the previous summer that I included in one of my letters to her, she—herself—had decided that her best economic option in the Summer of 1971 was still to just return to Camp Summit and work there again as a waitress/server, before then probably going off to some college that wasn’t as far from New Jersey as one in Tennessee might be—despite the University of Tennessee’s then low-cost for out-of-state residents.
What I did do in June of 1971, though, was to explore the possibility of enrolling at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and studying some field related to farming and rural life, like agricultural economics. In the early 1970s, out-of-state tuition costs at certain state universities in the Southeast (like the University of Tennessee) were still less than $300 for either a semester (or perhaps an academic year). And after I wrote a folk song about the advantage and desire to escape the loveless and depressing urban rat race scene of early 1970s New York City working-class neighborhoods for some potentially more liberated, land-based country scene in the rural USA, I thought, for awhile, that one way I might be able to eventually escape to a country farming community and live again in some kind of campus youth ghetto—where I’d feel less culturally isolated than I then felt in the Bronx—might be to try to take advantage of the University of Tennessee’s low tuition costs; and attend school down there. But by the time I got around to actually applying for admissions there in late June 1971, I no longer had enough money to afford to even pay for an application for admissions there, let alone finance some kind of long-distance move from the Bronx to Knoxville.
Yet I had been so into the idea of possibly studying at the University of Tennessee in the Fall of 1971 that when I exchanged letters with Sue of New Jersey—whom I had met in the summer of 1970 when we both worked at Camp Summit in Pennsylvania—I even mentioned in one of my letters to her that I was hoping to “learn how to feed all the hungry people in the world better,” by studying agricultural economics at the University of Tennessee. But although Sue felt that my possible new goal was a worthwhile one and also seemed to understand a critique of how Camp Summit had been run the previous summer that I included in one of my letters to her, she—herself—had decided that her best economic option in the Summer of 1971 was still to just return to Camp Summit and work there again as a waitress/server, before then probably going off to some college that wasn’t as far from New Jersey as one in Tennessee might be—despite the University of Tennessee’s then low-cost for out-of-state residents.
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxxiv)
It was during June 1971 that Mike—the only guy in the Belmont neighborhood in which I lived who seemed somewhat hip and who, despite still living in his mother’s apartment at around 30 years of age, also hung out in Greenwich Village—suddenly reappeared one evening at the door of my cheap slum apartment. He hadn’t visited me there in about three months, so I invited him to step inside.
After offering me a joint to share with him, Mike then said: “I was hanging out in the Village. And I met this fantastic-looking chick. But the chick doesn’t want to go out on a date with me and go see a movie together, unless I can also find a blind date for the chick’s girlfriend. So that this chick’s girlfriend and her blind date can come along with us to see the movie. Can you do me a big favor and be her girlfriend’s blind date?”
After inhaling on the joint, I laughed and asked: “What are they into? She and her friend.”
“The chick has a car and she and her girlfriend are trying to find a cheap pad together in the Village. And I told the chick I know about a cheap pad there that they can move into at the end of the month,” Mike answered.
“I don’t have much extra bread to spend on dates these days,” I replied.
“Don’t worry. I’ll pay for the movie tickets if you’re willing to be the blind date for the chick’s girlfriend.”
So, despite my growing financial worries, I agreed to do Mike a favor and be the required blind date for his date’s friend. Mike then used my telephone to call up the apartment-hunting woman whom he had met and to tell her he had found a blind date for her friend. And it was agreed that she and her friend would drive up to the Bronx a few evenings later to pick up Mike and me in my apartment. And then she would drive all four of us down to the Upper East Side Manhattan theater in which the movie that Mike wanted to see was playing.
A few evenings later, Mike arrived in my apartment dressed up in a suit and tie, and looking as if he was about to go out on a job interview. In contrast, I was just wearing jeans and a turtle-neck shirt, and was dressed in a more casual way. And about a half-hour after Mike arrived in my apartment, his date and my blind date knocked on my apartment door.
Mike’s date was a white woman in her 20s, who was dressed in a skirt and blouse, wore earrings, used lipstick and make-up, did not have long hair, and looked pretty culturally straight and somewhat plastic. But most men in the USA likely considered her to be physically attractive and sexually appealing, although not someone who possessed a beautiful face. And since she seemed both friendly and intelligent when we all talked in her car, as she drove us down to Manhattan from the Bronx, I could see why Mike felt she was an appealing woman to date—despite her not appearing to be that much of a bohemian, beatnik or hippie on a philosophical level.
My blind date was also a white women in her 20s who dressed in a skrit and blouse, wore make-up and lipstick and looked pretty straight and plastic on a cultural level. But unlike Mike’s date, she probably would not have been considered that physically attractive by most men in the USA; and she seemed less interesting and desirable to me than Mike’s date, with whom she was looking for a vacant Village apartment. And also, as we sat in the back seat of the car and Mike and her friend sat in the front seat, I think my blind date quickly concluded that I wasn’t the type of guy she was looking for to get involved with.
It turned out that the movie that Mike had selected for all of us to see was “The Boys In The Band” movie that reflected some of the special problems gay men had to confront within the homophobic U.S. society before the 1970s. And I’m not sure that the two women liked the movie as much as did Mike.
It turned out also that Mike apparently didn’t really know about any cheap Village apartment that would be available for the two women to rent at the end of the month. Because about a week after going to see “The Boys In The Band” with the two women and Mike, I received a telephone call from Mike’s date—to whom Mike had apparently previously given my phone number to call in case she had couldn’t find the building in which I lived when she picked us up for our date together. And in an angry voice, Mike’s date complained: “Your friend Mike keeps telephoning me to ask me for another date and keeps promising me that I’ll be able to rent the apartment he knows about the next day. But every day he telephones, he always gives me some excuse as to why I can’t go see the apartment yet. Do you know whether there really is a Village apartment that Mike can get me?
“If Mike still hasn’t shown you by now the apartment he says he found for you in the Village, it sounds like you probably shouldn’t count on Mike being able to get you an apartment,” I replied.
“Well, you can tell your friend Mike to go fuck himself!” Mike’s date snarled before hanging up the telephone receiver.
I did not speak with Mike again, however, until about a month later, in late July 1971, when he again knocked on my apartment door, entered the apartment and offered me a joint again. And, surprisingly, Mike now announced to me that he had decided that he was a gay man and was now going to come out and start hanging out in the Village gay bars. And he urged me to join him there if I ever recovered from my financial difficulties. But since--by August 1971--my financial difficulties had led me to move from the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx and I never returned there to hang out after August 1971, I never bumped into Mike again. And I never learned whether or not he enjoyed his life during the rest of the 1970s and whether or not he survived the 1980s or made it into the 21st-century.
After offering me a joint to share with him, Mike then said: “I was hanging out in the Village. And I met this fantastic-looking chick. But the chick doesn’t want to go out on a date with me and go see a movie together, unless I can also find a blind date for the chick’s girlfriend. So that this chick’s girlfriend and her blind date can come along with us to see the movie. Can you do me a big favor and be her girlfriend’s blind date?”
After inhaling on the joint, I laughed and asked: “What are they into? She and her friend.”
“The chick has a car and she and her girlfriend are trying to find a cheap pad together in the Village. And I told the chick I know about a cheap pad there that they can move into at the end of the month,” Mike answered.
“I don’t have much extra bread to spend on dates these days,” I replied.
“Don’t worry. I’ll pay for the movie tickets if you’re willing to be the blind date for the chick’s girlfriend.”
So, despite my growing financial worries, I agreed to do Mike a favor and be the required blind date for his date’s friend. Mike then used my telephone to call up the apartment-hunting woman whom he had met and to tell her he had found a blind date for her friend. And it was agreed that she and her friend would drive up to the Bronx a few evenings later to pick up Mike and me in my apartment. And then she would drive all four of us down to the Upper East Side Manhattan theater in which the movie that Mike wanted to see was playing.
A few evenings later, Mike arrived in my apartment dressed up in a suit and tie, and looking as if he was about to go out on a job interview. In contrast, I was just wearing jeans and a turtle-neck shirt, and was dressed in a more casual way. And about a half-hour after Mike arrived in my apartment, his date and my blind date knocked on my apartment door.
Mike’s date was a white woman in her 20s, who was dressed in a skirt and blouse, wore earrings, used lipstick and make-up, did not have long hair, and looked pretty culturally straight and somewhat plastic. But most men in the USA likely considered her to be physically attractive and sexually appealing, although not someone who possessed a beautiful face. And since she seemed both friendly and intelligent when we all talked in her car, as she drove us down to Manhattan from the Bronx, I could see why Mike felt she was an appealing woman to date—despite her not appearing to be that much of a bohemian, beatnik or hippie on a philosophical level.
My blind date was also a white women in her 20s who dressed in a skrit and blouse, wore make-up and lipstick and looked pretty straight and plastic on a cultural level. But unlike Mike’s date, she probably would not have been considered that physically attractive by most men in the USA; and she seemed less interesting and desirable to me than Mike’s date, with whom she was looking for a vacant Village apartment. And also, as we sat in the back seat of the car and Mike and her friend sat in the front seat, I think my blind date quickly concluded that I wasn’t the type of guy she was looking for to get involved with.
It turned out that the movie that Mike had selected for all of us to see was “The Boys In The Band” movie that reflected some of the special problems gay men had to confront within the homophobic U.S. society before the 1970s. And I’m not sure that the two women liked the movie as much as did Mike.
It turned out also that Mike apparently didn’t really know about any cheap Village apartment that would be available for the two women to rent at the end of the month. Because about a week after going to see “The Boys In The Band” with the two women and Mike, I received a telephone call from Mike’s date—to whom Mike had apparently previously given my phone number to call in case she had couldn’t find the building in which I lived when she picked us up for our date together. And in an angry voice, Mike’s date complained: “Your friend Mike keeps telephoning me to ask me for another date and keeps promising me that I’ll be able to rent the apartment he knows about the next day. But every day he telephones, he always gives me some excuse as to why I can’t go see the apartment yet. Do you know whether there really is a Village apartment that Mike can get me?
“If Mike still hasn’t shown you by now the apartment he says he found for you in the Village, it sounds like you probably shouldn’t count on Mike being able to get you an apartment,” I replied.
“Well, you can tell your friend Mike to go fuck himself!” Mike’s date snarled before hanging up the telephone receiver.
I did not speak with Mike again, however, until about a month later, in late July 1971, when he again knocked on my apartment door, entered the apartment and offered me a joint again. And, surprisingly, Mike now announced to me that he had decided that he was a gay man and was now going to come out and start hanging out in the Village gay bars. And he urged me to join him there if I ever recovered from my financial difficulties. But since--by August 1971--my financial difficulties had led me to move from the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx and I never returned there to hang out after August 1971, I never bumped into Mike again. And I never learned whether or not he enjoyed his life during the rest of the 1970s and whether or not he survived the 1980s or made it into the 21st-century.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxxiii)
By performing at this coffeehouse near Jerome Avenue in June 1971, however, I was able to meet an African-American folk singer named Don, who also wrote his own folk songs. Like me, Don played the harmonica in his harmonica holder, at the same time he accompanied his singing of one song with an acoustic guitar before this coffeehouse audience of mostly neighborhood high school-age teenagers
Don’s harmonica-playing in June of 1971 was much more technically proficient than my harmonica playing would ever be. But the audience that had not paid much attention to me when I had performed my one song also quickly stopped listening to Don, who was as unknown as I was, when he was performing his one song—even though it was probably more unusual for an unknown African-American singer-songwriter to sing before the all-white audience of youths in this particular coffeehouse.
Although I decided not to get into the “open mike circuit” on weekend and weekday nights during the 1970s, when you’re under 30-- like most of the other “regulars” at open mikes generally are—performing at open mikes can sometimes be a way to meet, and perhaps befriend, other unknown musicians of your own generation, who you might not otherwise have bumped into at the time.
So after the coffeehouse open mike session had ended, I invited Don back to my apartment for a few hours to share some wine and sing to each other the folk songs we each had written, since it was still only about 10 o’clock on a Friday night.
Don was a gentle, good-natured bearded guy in his late 20s who then lived in Park Slope near 15th Street in Brooklyn—in the days before the Park Slope neighborhood became gentrified with white liberal or left-liberal yuppies from the suburbs. And the folk songs that Don had written were both melodic and lyrically more interesting than what was then getting played on either the AM or FM radio station airwaves.
Although the great songs Don had written seemed real in terms of being about real working-class neighborhood people and their real feelings, they were less political in their themes than the folk songs I had written and contained no rebel protest component in their lyrics, unlike most of the songs I had written contained. So, not surprisingly, although Don seemed to like the songs I had written as much as I liked the songs he had written, after I sang the protest folk song, “He Walked Up The Hill,” that was written following Martin Luther King’s assassination, Don also kidded me, while chuckling in a good-natured way, “You seem to write a lot of political songs, don’t you?”
Yet even though the great songs that Don had written were less political than the ones I had written and contained no protest folk lyrical component, Don was then no closer to getting any of his songs recorded on a vinyl record album by one of the New York City record companies in 1971 than was I. And besides agreeing that the coffeehouse audience, for whom we had both performed a few hours before, wasn’t the type of audience that would be inclined to respond to our type of songs, Don and I also were pretty much both clueless about how unknown singer-songwriters like ourselves, who lacked both money and music or entertainment industry contacts, could get their songs onto some vinyl record album in the early 1970s.
After a few hours of singing songs to each other, in-between sips of wine, it was time for Don to start back on the long subway trip from the Bronx to Brooklyn. But before he left my apartment, Don wrote down his phone number and his address on a piece of paper; and we agreed that we’d get together sometime to sing songs to each other again for a few hours in his apartment in Brooklyn, later in the month. And a few weeks later I actually did telephone Don and did make the subway journey with my guitar from the Bronx to Brooklyn on the D train to spend a few hours in his apartment singing to each other some more of the songs that we had each written, in-between sharing a joint of marijuana.
But given how long it took to travel by subway from where I lived in the Bronx to where Don lived in Brooklyn, Don’s lack of interest in forming a duo with me that would perform both his songs and my protest folk songs occasionally at some open mikes, and my post-July 1971 escalating financial difficulties, I didn’t follow-up on my visit to Don’s Park Slope pad. And, after late June 1971, I never bumped into Don again.
Don’s harmonica-playing in June of 1971 was much more technically proficient than my harmonica playing would ever be. But the audience that had not paid much attention to me when I had performed my one song also quickly stopped listening to Don, who was as unknown as I was, when he was performing his one song—even though it was probably more unusual for an unknown African-American singer-songwriter to sing before the all-white audience of youths in this particular coffeehouse.
Although I decided not to get into the “open mike circuit” on weekend and weekday nights during the 1970s, when you’re under 30-- like most of the other “regulars” at open mikes generally are—performing at open mikes can sometimes be a way to meet, and perhaps befriend, other unknown musicians of your own generation, who you might not otherwise have bumped into at the time.
So after the coffeehouse open mike session had ended, I invited Don back to my apartment for a few hours to share some wine and sing to each other the folk songs we each had written, since it was still only about 10 o’clock on a Friday night.
Don was a gentle, good-natured bearded guy in his late 20s who then lived in Park Slope near 15th Street in Brooklyn—in the days before the Park Slope neighborhood became gentrified with white liberal or left-liberal yuppies from the suburbs. And the folk songs that Don had written were both melodic and lyrically more interesting than what was then getting played on either the AM or FM radio station airwaves.
Although the great songs Don had written seemed real in terms of being about real working-class neighborhood people and their real feelings, they were less political in their themes than the folk songs I had written and contained no rebel protest component in their lyrics, unlike most of the songs I had written contained. So, not surprisingly, although Don seemed to like the songs I had written as much as I liked the songs he had written, after I sang the protest folk song, “He Walked Up The Hill,” that was written following Martin Luther King’s assassination, Don also kidded me, while chuckling in a good-natured way, “You seem to write a lot of political songs, don’t you?”
Yet even though the great songs that Don had written were less political than the ones I had written and contained no protest folk lyrical component, Don was then no closer to getting any of his songs recorded on a vinyl record album by one of the New York City record companies in 1971 than was I. And besides agreeing that the coffeehouse audience, for whom we had both performed a few hours before, wasn’t the type of audience that would be inclined to respond to our type of songs, Don and I also were pretty much both clueless about how unknown singer-songwriters like ourselves, who lacked both money and music or entertainment industry contacts, could get their songs onto some vinyl record album in the early 1970s.
After a few hours of singing songs to each other, in-between sips of wine, it was time for Don to start back on the long subway trip from the Bronx to Brooklyn. But before he left my apartment, Don wrote down his phone number and his address on a piece of paper; and we agreed that we’d get together sometime to sing songs to each other again for a few hours in his apartment in Brooklyn, later in the month. And a few weeks later I actually did telephone Don and did make the subway journey with my guitar from the Bronx to Brooklyn on the D train to spend a few hours in his apartment singing to each other some more of the songs that we had each written, in-between sharing a joint of marijuana.
But given how long it took to travel by subway from where I lived in the Bronx to where Don lived in Brooklyn, Don’s lack of interest in forming a duo with me that would perform both his songs and my protest folk songs occasionally at some open mikes, and my post-July 1971 escalating financial difficulties, I didn’t follow-up on my visit to Don’s Park Slope pad. And, after late June 1971, I never bumped into Don again.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxxii)
Another way that I thought I could possibly break into the local New York City folk music sub-culture scene or into local record industry circles, in order to get the protest folk songs and male feminist love songs that I had written onto a vinyl record, was to start singing in June of 1971 at open mikes in coffee houses or at clubs in the Bronx, in Manhattan and possibly in the other boroughs of New York City. So one Friday night in early June of 1971 I took my guitar, my harmonica and my harmonica-holder to a church basement near Jerome Avenue, that wasn’t too far from Lehman College’s campus, where, at that time, there was a coffeehouse that had a weekly open mike for musicians who wished to sing one song apiece before a live audience.
Not surprisingly--since by June 1971 large numbers of people under 30 all played guitar and hoped to earn their livings as musicians rather than as 9-to-5 wage slaves—I wasn’t the only musician to show up at the coffeehouse who wished to sing and perform.
None of the other musicians seemed to be singing topical folk songs or protest folk songs. And since the audience seemed to consist of mostly straight-looking neighborhood high school students who didn’t appear to be anti-war folks who were into Dylan or Phil Ochs very much, I decided that the song I would perform would just be the “Open Up Your Eyes” love song that I had written for Helene in late 1969.
But after I started singing into the microphone, I realized that people in the audience at the coffeehouse really seemed more interested in chatting with their friends, while the musicians who performed at the open mike sessions just provided some background music for their conversations, rather than really being interested in listening carefully to the lyrics that a musician was singing. Unless a musician who performed at this coffeehouse’s open mike session was either a friend of some of the audience members’ or some kind of already-established professional musician or celebrity, it seemed that most of the 25 people in the audience felt that they would rather chat with their friends than listen closely to what was being sung by some unknown performer.
I felt that getting some experience in singing into a microphone in front of a live audience, instead of just singing in my apartment to myself or into a cheap portable cassette tape recorder, was of some value and somewhat interesting. But I did not find it very satisfying or worthwhile to sing in front of an audience that really wasn’t that particularly interested in listening to what the songs I had written had to say.
And it struck me that just as the U.S. mass media had created a false political consciousness among large numbers of white working-class youth in the United States (so that they would not quickly mobilize politically in support of an African-American or radical feminist-led New Left Revolution in the USA in the 1970s), the same U.S. mass media had created the kind of mass consciousness among large numbers of U.S. music fans which would tend to make them closed to responding in an enthusiastic way to any of the protest folk or folk love songs that I had written, when sung by an unknown musician in a coffeehouse or small club setting--unless they had previously been able to become familiar with the songs from having heard them previously on either a vinyl record album or on the U.S. radio airwaves.
It might be conceivable that if I was willing to spend all my spare time writing new protest folk songs and folk love songs, memorizing them and performing at open mikes in coffeehouses, bars or clubs around New York City for the next 5 years, I might possibly be “discovered” by somebody in the music industry who might be interested in putting my songs on a vinyl record. But a lifestyle of lugging my guitar around each evening on weekdays and weekends to perform for free at open mikes before small crowds of mostly apolitical musicians and apolitical rock music or singer-songwriter acoustic music fans seemed like an existential trap.
The point of writing the protest folk songs and male feminist folk love songs was to help change mass youth consciousness in the USA more quickly so that there might be an African-American-led or radical feminist-led anti-imperialist revolution in the USA as soon as possible during the 1970s. The point of my activity as a creative artist was not to let myself be co-opted into a working-class person who spent all his or her evenings--when not in the wage-slave cage--running around--in a careerist way--to every open mike that gave him or her the chance to just sit around for 2 to 3 hours listening to other open mike performers; before performing for 5 to 15 minutes before an audience that was not likely to respond very enthusiastically to the songs of an unknown performer.
What performing every night before an open mike audience for the next 5 years on a steady basis might do, however, would be to give me a heavy experience in figuring out the best way to sing into a microphone before a live audience (without forgetting the lyrics to a particular song) and the best way to possibly use my voice to get an audience to want to hear more songs from me. But since my main artistic objective in June 1971 was more to get my protest folk songs on a vinyl record (with the hope that an already-established anti-war singer--like Joan Baez, for example--might then record a cover version of some of these songs) and reach a mass audience with these songs, rather than spending all my evening time developing into a more skillful performer or entertainer, immersing myself in the world of open mikes for the next 5 years was not the road I was willing to take during the 1970s.
Not surprisingly--since by June 1971 large numbers of people under 30 all played guitar and hoped to earn their livings as musicians rather than as 9-to-5 wage slaves—I wasn’t the only musician to show up at the coffeehouse who wished to sing and perform.
None of the other musicians seemed to be singing topical folk songs or protest folk songs. And since the audience seemed to consist of mostly straight-looking neighborhood high school students who didn’t appear to be anti-war folks who were into Dylan or Phil Ochs very much, I decided that the song I would perform would just be the “Open Up Your Eyes” love song that I had written for Helene in late 1969.
But after I started singing into the microphone, I realized that people in the audience at the coffeehouse really seemed more interested in chatting with their friends, while the musicians who performed at the open mike sessions just provided some background music for their conversations, rather than really being interested in listening carefully to the lyrics that a musician was singing. Unless a musician who performed at this coffeehouse’s open mike session was either a friend of some of the audience members’ or some kind of already-established professional musician or celebrity, it seemed that most of the 25 people in the audience felt that they would rather chat with their friends than listen closely to what was being sung by some unknown performer.
I felt that getting some experience in singing into a microphone in front of a live audience, instead of just singing in my apartment to myself or into a cheap portable cassette tape recorder, was of some value and somewhat interesting. But I did not find it very satisfying or worthwhile to sing in front of an audience that really wasn’t that particularly interested in listening to what the songs I had written had to say.
And it struck me that just as the U.S. mass media had created a false political consciousness among large numbers of white working-class youth in the United States (so that they would not quickly mobilize politically in support of an African-American or radical feminist-led New Left Revolution in the USA in the 1970s), the same U.S. mass media had created the kind of mass consciousness among large numbers of U.S. music fans which would tend to make them closed to responding in an enthusiastic way to any of the protest folk or folk love songs that I had written, when sung by an unknown musician in a coffeehouse or small club setting--unless they had previously been able to become familiar with the songs from having heard them previously on either a vinyl record album or on the U.S. radio airwaves.
It might be conceivable that if I was willing to spend all my spare time writing new protest folk songs and folk love songs, memorizing them and performing at open mikes in coffeehouses, bars or clubs around New York City for the next 5 years, I might possibly be “discovered” by somebody in the music industry who might be interested in putting my songs on a vinyl record. But a lifestyle of lugging my guitar around each evening on weekdays and weekends to perform for free at open mikes before small crowds of mostly apolitical musicians and apolitical rock music or singer-songwriter acoustic music fans seemed like an existential trap.
The point of writing the protest folk songs and male feminist folk love songs was to help change mass youth consciousness in the USA more quickly so that there might be an African-American-led or radical feminist-led anti-imperialist revolution in the USA as soon as possible during the 1970s. The point of my activity as a creative artist was not to let myself be co-opted into a working-class person who spent all his or her evenings--when not in the wage-slave cage--running around--in a careerist way--to every open mike that gave him or her the chance to just sit around for 2 to 3 hours listening to other open mike performers; before performing for 5 to 15 minutes before an audience that was not likely to respond very enthusiastically to the songs of an unknown performer.
What performing every night before an open mike audience for the next 5 years on a steady basis might do, however, would be to give me a heavy experience in figuring out the best way to sing into a microphone before a live audience (without forgetting the lyrics to a particular song) and the best way to possibly use my voice to get an audience to want to hear more songs from me. But since my main artistic objective in June 1971 was more to get my protest folk songs on a vinyl record (with the hope that an already-established anti-war singer--like Joan Baez, for example--might then record a cover version of some of these songs) and reach a mass audience with these songs, rather than spending all my evening time developing into a more skillful performer or entertainer, immersing myself in the world of open mikes for the next 5 years was not the road I was willing to take during the 1970s.
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