"The Be Bop Generation"

“But what’s it all about, man?” said Bosco. “Like, what’s it all about, y’know?”

“I’ll tell you what it’s all about,” said the fellow they called Slim Jim, even though he wasn’t slim and his name wasn’t Jim. “It’s about getting high and watching French movies, man.”

“Wow,” said Bosco.



“It’s about swingin’ over to the Village Vanguard and catching Diz, or Miles, or Chet, man. Or Bird.”

“But Bird is dead, man.”

“I meant Bird before he was dead, man.”

“Oh, cool.”

“And it’s about going out to the desert, man, and feeling God everywhere.”

“I’ve never been to the desert,” said Bosco. “But now I want to go.”

“It’s about being cool, man, like the Negroes.”

“Like the Negroes. I can dig, man.”

“It’s about not working some stupid job, man.”

“Dig that.”

“It’s about not working for the man, man.”

“Right. Screw the man, man.”

“It’s about staying up all night if you want to, and sleeping half the day away.”

“Nice.”

“And making sweet cosmic love to the old lady.”

“Old lady? Now there you might be losing me, Jim. I kinda prefer the young ladies myself, I mean, you know –”

“I don’t mean that kind of old lady. I mean a lady who is your 'old lady'.”

“Oh, like my ‘girl friend’.”

“Right, your old lady.”

“I got you now.”

Slim Jim paused, and took another drag on the reefer.

“It’s about a lot of things,” he said.

– The Be Bop Generation, by Horace P. Sternwall, an Ace Double paperback original, published in tandem with Bongo Girl, by Harriet Preacher Snowe {Horace P. Sternwall}; 1958. Out of print.