"The Poets"

“There are two sure-fired ways to get someone to leave you the hell alone,” said Scaramanga, the leftist poet. As an infant he had once sat on the lap of Rosa Luxembourg, or at least so he claimed.



“Only two?” said Seamas McSeamas, the Irish poet. He had been just another loud-mouthed drunk back in Dublin, but here in New York, and especially in Bob’s Bowery Bar, he was a “colorful Irish poet.”

“Only two sure-fired ways,” said Scaramanga.

“All ears we are,” said Frank X Fagan, the nature poet. He hadn’t been farther from Manhattan than Coney Island in eleven years, but he still loved nature, or at any rate that’s what he wrote his poems about.

“Unmuzzle your wisdom,” said Howard Paul Studebaker, the “western” poet, who had once spent part of a summer on a dude ranch in New Mexico, when he was a lad, before his father lost all his money in the crash. “That’s from Shakespeare, by the way.”

“The first way to get somebody to leave you alone,” said Scaramanga, “is to ask them to lend you money.”

The other poets all laughed, more or less mirthlessly. Scaramanga had hit close to home.

“The second way,” said Scaramanga, “is to ask them to read one of your poems.”

At this a silence as of the tomb fell over the assembled poets.

Young Hector Philips Stone, the doomed romantic poet, came over to the table.

“I’m broke,” he said. “Will any of you guys lend me two bits so I can have a bock and a hard-boiled egg?”

The other poets all looked at each other. Poor Hector looked like he hadn’t eaten in a week. Scaramanga had just cashed his welfare check, so he dragged out his old Boy Scout wallet and took out a fiver.

“Take this, Hector, and go to the bar and order us another pitcher of bock, and an empty glass and a hard-boiled egg for yourself. You can leave Bob a fifty cent tip, but I want the rest of the change back, comrade.”

Hector took the five and went over to the bar.

“I just hope he doesn’t ask us to read any of his poems,” said Scaramanga.

– The Poets, by Horace P. Sternwall, a Kozy Books paperback original, 1956; out of print.

"A Gal Called Midge"

One of the first things Midge ever told me, sitting there that snowy night at Bob’s Bowery Bar, was that she had killed a guy one time.

“This big ex-pug named Mike Grabowski. We were shacked, and I got fed up with his drinking and hitting me, so I told him I was cutting out. He told me over his dead body. So I let him get really drunk on Tokay wine, then said let’s go down to the bar. We lived in a fourth-floor walk-up, and as soon as we got outside our trap and at the head of the stairs I gave him a good push. He broke his neck. So he got his wish. I cut out. Over his dead body.”

She gave me a long hard look.

“You still want to buy me a drink?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Not scared?”

“I didn’t say I’m not scared,” I said.



She looked at me hard again.

“I’m drinking bock beer,” she said.

I got the bartender’s attention and ordered two bocks.

– A Gal Called Midge, by Horace P. Sternwall, a Bantam paperback original, 1950; out of print.

"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.

“Pete Willingham’s Transformation”

Once again Judge O’Hara had made it a requirement of Pete Willingham’s probation that he receive psychiatric help, and so here he was back on Dr. Blanche Weinberg’s couch.

“So, Peter, how has it been going?”

“Well, Doc, I guess you know I copped an insanity plea again, so here I am.”

“Well, strictly speaking, Peter, not insanity per se. It’s more that Judge O’Hara and my colleagues at Bellevue feel that you –”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I gotta learn how to control my emotions and all.” Peter sat up. He always had trouble remaining in a supine position for more than a few minutes. “Does it say there in them papers what I got arrested for this time?”

“Yes, Peter.”

“Disorderly conduct. Public drunkenness. Criminal mischief?”

“Incitement to riot, assault with a deadly weapon –”

“Okay, Dr. Weinberg, let me ask you a question. May I ask you a question?”

“Of course, Peter.”

“Do you consider a bottle of Tokay a deadly weapon? And it was in a paper sack too, y’understand.”

“I’ll admit that a bottle of Tokay may not fit the traditional idea of a deadly weapon, but I think you have to admit, Peter, that if you struck a person hard enough on the head the blow might prove fatal –”

“Not these Commie hardheads. A baseball bat, maybe. But a bottle of Tokay, and it wasn’t even a full bottle? I ain’t stupid, Doc. You think I’d waste a full bottle of Tokay smashing it on some Commie’s head? I made sure I had drunk every last drop out of that bottle before I tried to smash it on that Bolshevik’s head. And, anyway, I didn’t even hit the guy’s head. He stuck his arm up and blocked it and that was when he hit me with a right cross. Big dumb Commie bull.”

“Well, I think the broader issue, Peter, is that you should learn not to attack people at all, with or without a deadly weapon –”

“So-called deadly weapon, Doc, so-called.”

“You shouldn’t hit people at all, Peter.”

“But these Commies were protesting, preaching their Communist propaganda, what am I gonna do, let ‘em get away with that?”

“It’s freedom of speech, Peter. They have the right to protest, and to speak, just as you do. This freedom of speech is guaranteed in our constitution.”


“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Even if they are Commies. Let me ask you something, Doc. You’re Jewish, right?”

“Well, I was raised Jewish, Peter, but I am not a practicing –”

“But you are a Jew?”

“Yes, I am of Jewish descent.”

“So what do you think of the Protocols of Zion?”

“Peter, that book has been exposed as a fraud. Nothing in it is true.”

“So, like there ain’t a international Jewish conspiracy?”

“I somehow doubt it, Peter.”

“Y’know, that makes sense, Doc. Because if there really was a international Jewish conspiracy they would keep it secret, right? And how can it be secret if everybody knows about it?”

“That’s an interesting observation, Peter.”

“That’s why I think it’s really the Rosicrucians who have the international conspiracy, them and the Masons, and the Catholic Church, too, maybe.”

“Peter, let me ask you a question now. Isn’t it possible that there are no international conspiracies?”

“What about the Illuminati?”

“What if even the Illuminati are a myth?’

“Wow. That’s something to think about. But if it ain’t the Jews, and it ain’t the Rosicrucians, or the Masons, or the Pope, then who’s running the world?”

“Maybe no one runs the world.”

“Maybe. I say maybe, Doc. ‘Cause I ain’t quite convinced yet. Somebody’s got to be running the world. Who runs the the world?”

“I don’t know, Peter. Rich people? Wealthy people?”

“Rich people,” said Pete. “Wealthy people.” Finally he lay back down on the couch. “Y’know, Dr. Weinberg, maybe you’re onto something there.”

And thus Pete Willingham, who had been ousted even from the John Birch Society for excessive zeal, took his first step to becoming a card-carrying member of the Communist Party.

– Pete Willingham’s Transformation, by Horace P. Sternwall; a Workingman’s Press paperback original, 1958; out of print.