“Heaven in a Highball Glass”

In the meantime and just at this moment the fool people called Addison and the lady called Bubbles tumbled together out of the San Remo Café into the night thick with snow swirling down through the light of the corner streetlamp.

“Fucking hell,” said Bubbles, “look at this shit.”

“I adore the snow,” said Addison. “It reminds me of the Norman Rockwell Christmases I never had as a lad myself, and now I daresay, alas, I shall never have them.”

“Hold on just a minute, Patterson,” said Bubbles. 

They were standing wobbling together in the narrow rectangular shelter of the San Remo’s entrance area, and Bubbles put both of her ungloved hands on Addison's narrow shoulders. 

She stared into his oblivious eyes.

“If you want to kiss me I shan’t object,” said Addison.

“Kiss you?”

“Yes. I mean, gee, Bubbles, how many times have we shared each other’s company? I think it’s obvious by now that there is a mutual attraction.”

“Oh, is it obvious?”

“Yes, I should think so,” said Addison, pulling away her wrists with their remarkably strong hands so that he could more comfortably dig out his crumpled pack of Husky Boys. “Cigarette, darling?”

“What? No, I don’t want one of your Husky Boys. You know I smoke Philip Morrises.”

“Sorry. You don’t mind terribly if I light up, do you?”

“Go right ahead, Pattinson, and now there's something I want to ask you.”

“An open book am I,” said Addison, lighting up his Husky Boy with a match from one of the seven complimentary San Remo Café matchbooks he had helped himself to from a bowl on the bar top. "Ask away, ma cherie. I have no secrets, at least none worth keeping."

“What I want to ask you is this," said Bubbles. "How can you be so gay?”

“I beg your pardon, dearest Bubbles. I am not always gay. I too have my dark moments, nay, even dark hours or entire days. Why, not so very long ago, I was so overwhelmed by the misery of my life that I walked out to the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge and prepared myself to jump into the icy cold and oh so unforgiving East River.”

“Why didn’t you?” said Bubbles. She had replaced her left hand on Addison's right shoulder, while with her right hand she toyed with the loosened knot of his necktie, his old Andover "school tie", a stained and threadbare memento of those long ago days of youth when he still thought he might not be an utter failure his entire life.

“Well, you’re not going to believe this,” said Addison, and he took a drag of his Husky Boy. He exhaled the smoke into the snowy cold night air. “It was one of those horrible freezing gusty winter days, when the sky is a cloudless arctic blue, and all the hideousness of the city stands out in high relief.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, get to the point,” said Bubbles, tugging hard on his necktie.

“Yes, to the point, well, there I was, standing by the guard rail up at the middle of the bridge, and trying to summon up the courage to throw myself over, when suddenly this little old man appeared by my side.”

“A little man?”

“Yes, a shabby little chap who gave his sobriquet as 'Bowery Bert'. He informed me that he was the guardian angel of the Bowery, and so apparently he felt it incumbent upon his duties as regional guardian angel to have a word with me before I should leap over the rail to my doom.”

“And so this guardian angel talked you out of jumping.”

“In a sense. Because he reminded me of the little things in life I would miss."

"Like what?"

"Like a doughnut dipped into a hot cup of chicory coffee at the diner across the street from my humble abode. Ma's Diner it is called, and I should love to breakfast with you there someday –”

“Oh my fucking God.”

“Anyway, after we chatted for a bit, I gazed out over the river for a moment, and when I turned he had disappeared, and there I was, standing alone over the no longer quite so beckoning East River. But then a most extraordinary thing happened.”

“You walked back to the shore and got loaded?”

“Well, yes, but before that, what was extraordinary was that I suddenly flew off the bridge, but instead of falling I continued to fly, looking down on the river, and to the land to my right and left, and upon all the buildings and automobiles and tiny people, like the people on a toy train set, and I flew all the way out to Long Island Sound, and then, I don’t know why, but I suppose I just didn’t feel like flying out over the ocean just then, so I turned around in a graceful swoop and flew back down the river and back to the middle of the bridge. And then I walked to the shore and to the Bowery and to my local, Bob’s Bowery Bar, and, yes, I admit I got quite drunk, and quite gloriously so.”

“So,” said Bubbles, and she touched the stubble on the side of Addison’s chin. “You’re not only gay, you’re psychotic.”

Addison felt almost as of he could swoon at the touch of her cold fingers on his face. 

“See here, Bubbles,” he said. “My friend Milford gave me a twenty-dollar bill tonight.”

“What did you have to do for it.”

“Nothing, but what he wanted me to do with it was to ask you to give me a throw.”

“I only charge ten, you know that. I ain’t no grifter, except with these rich uptown swells that come down here slumming. But for regular joes I charge ten for a throw.”

“Well, I was going to save ten of the twenty perhaps for some other time.”

“Tell you what I’m gonna do, Patcherson. I’m gonna let you walk me home.”

“Oh, splendid.”

“Maybe we’ll stop over at the Kettle of Fish first, on account of I like the bourbon and cokes they make there.”

“Oh, are they good?”

“I recommend them. They use the coke you get from one of them soda guns, and there's just something about the way the soda gets mixed with the coke syrup, the bartender squirts some of that stuff over some Cream of Kentucky bourbon and ice, and it’s like heaven in a highball glass.”

“I should like to try one!”

“You can buy us a round, since you got that twenty burning a hole in your pocket.”

“Yes, but I really do want to save ten, just for, well, you know.”

“Tell you what, Hatcherson, you behave yourself, maybe you will get a throw tonight.”

“Now that would be heaven.”

“And maybe I won’t even charge you.”

He didn’t say so, but that, that would truly be heaven. A throw, and for free! Leaving him a whole twenty dollars to spend as he pleased!

“So,” said Addison, “shall we toddle on then, into the blizzard?”

“Yeah,” said Bubbles. “Let’s.”

And, putting her arm in his, she pulled him out from the shelter of the entranceway and into the not quite a blizzard, and led him trudging through the thickly fallen snow and around the corner up MacDougal Street, and they and the street looked for all the world like a Norman Rockwell painting for the Saturday Evening Post.

{Please go here to read the unexpurgated "adult comix" version in A Flophouse is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by rhoda penmarq…}

"A Man Called Stoney"

Milford wandered down the dim corridor and after a minute he came to the corner he had passed before. He turned left and continued, and after two minutes he came to the door on the right that led into the barroom known apparently as The Man of Constant Sorrow. He heard the muffled clamor of shouting and laughing voices, and of a man singing to the accompaniment of a banjo. 

Milford stood and listened.

Jump to the sound of the doom of the young,

leap to the music of the farmyard dung,

sing a song of the free and the brave,

but try for once if you can to behave…

Straight ahead the narrow corridor continued, on into darkness, and opposite the door was another dim narrow corridor, also extending into darkness. 

Which way to go?

“It doesn’t matter,” said that voice in his head.

“But it must matter,” said Milford, realizing he was speaking aloud.

“Who says it must matter?” said the voice, also now speaking aloud.

“But all our choices must matter,” said Milford.

“Poppycock,” said the voice, which seemed to come from behind him. 

Milford turned around, and there he saw what looked like himself, a slight young man in a peacoat and newsboy’s cap, with thick round glasses, and smoking a cigarette.

“Oh, no,” said Milford.

“Oh, yes,” said his double.

“Who are you?” asked Milford.

“I am the other you, the you that you would be were you not a simpleton.”

“Oh,” said Milford. 

“I am the you that you would be were you not to waste your whole pathetic life, past, present, and future.”

“I see.”

“In short I am the you that you will never be.”

Milford sighed, and looked away, but when he finished sighing and looked again, the confident-looking young fellow was still standing there, smoking his cigarette.

“What is your name?” asked Milford.

“Same as yours, of course, but my nickname, the name all my friends call me, is Stoney.”

“Stoney,” said Milford.

“Yes, I derived it from our middle name of Crackstone.”

“I wish I had thought of that.”

“You must admit it’s better than our given name of Marion.”

“Yes, much better.”

“And it doesn’t sound so, you should pardon the expression, ‘gay’, as calling yourself, tout simplement, ‘Milford’.”

“No one can ever remember my name anyway,” said Milford. “They always call me Mumford, or Milvoin, or Melville, or Melvin –”

“And do you know why that is?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Tell me.”

“Because I am so unmemorable and insignificant?”

“Bingo,” said the young man called Stoney. “But I am here to tell you something.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. I am here to tell you that you don’t have to be a pathetic twerp your whole life.”

“Really?”

“Yes. There’s hope for you yet.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“You don’t believe in God.”

“Oh, right. Well, thank whomever.”

“There’s no one to thank, except me.”

“Thank you.”

“Which is you.”

“So thank me?”

“Now you’re getting somewhere,” said Stoney.

“So now what do I do?”

“Don’t ask me. I can’t tell you what to do. It’s your life. Do what you want to do with it. But do you want my advice?”

“Yes, please.”

“Try to live your life in such a way that when you’re lying on your deathbed dying painfully of cancer that you won’t regret living your whole life like a fucking idiot and a fool.”

“Okay.”

“That’s a start.”

“Yes, it’s a start.”

The young man called Stoney dropped what was left of his cigarette to the floor, and ground it out with the sole of his workman’s brogan.

“All right, buddy, I could say a lot more, and maybe in the future I will, but I’m going to take off now.”

“Okay.”

“Later.”

And just like that Milford’s double Stoney disappeared, and the only sign that remained of his presence was the crushed cigarette butt on the floor.

That was weird, thought Milford. But now I am still left with the question, which way to go?

What had Stoney said?

“It doesn’t matter,” said the voice in his head, which he now recognized as Stoney’s voice.

And so he set forth down the dim corridor opposite the door from behind which came that muffled drunken clamor of laughing and shouting and the man’s voice singing along to a banjo.

Shake it up, shake it up, 

and kick up your heels,

sing a merry song 

about the way that you feels

The shouting and the laughing and the singing faded away as Milford walked along the dim corridor, and after a while there was only the sound of his heavy workman’s brogans on the floor.

The corridor came to an end at another dim corridor going to the left and to the right, and this time Milford turned right, without hesitation and without thinking about it. This corridor ended at yet another dim corridor going left and right, and this time he headed left.

After another minute, maybe two, although it felt longer, he came to a door, another door, under a light fixture in a wire cage. There was no sign on the door. 

Milford put his hand on the doorknob, and turned it, and the door opened inward.

Inside was another barroom, smoky and dim, and although Milford was young, this was nevertheless the ten-thousandth time he had entered a barroom in his life, each time hoping that this time it would be somehow less unpleasant than all the times before. 

Booths and tables filled with people, a jukebox playing, and to the right a bar filled with more people. 

The place smelled like all bars, of smoke and whiskey and beer, but behind it all was yet another almost palpable odor, a thick still musk like that of a church or a funeral parlour. 

Milford saw Louisa May Alcott sitting on a stool near the front of the bar, and, after only a moment’s pause, he headed on over.

{Please go here to read the “adult comix” version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}

“The Ballad of the Sad Clowns”

Milford floated and swam and bobbed through the mob of drunken people. Where did they all come from? Why were they here? Why were they not somewhere else? Why was he here?

Suddenly he stopped.

Was he heading in the right direction?

In a panic he looked ahead. Wasn’t there supposed to be an EXIT sign? Where was it? He swiveled his head on its narrow neck. Where was this supposed exit? Dear God (in whom he did not believe, now more than ever), he was lost again, lost, eternally, and he would never escape this place, and this was his hell, to be trapped here forever in this churning mass of presumed people, all of them shouting and laughing as a voice sang to a twanging and jangling banjo.

I’m your candy man
and I gots all that you wants
I’m your candy man
but don’t you eats me all at once



He turned in a circle, once, then twice, and he was halfway through a third turn when, thank God (in whom he now believed, if only for the moment) there it was, off to his left, just visible through the swirling thick clouds of smoke, an electric EXIT sign in red capital letters against a pale background.

And so, setting forth again, he took a step and then another, but why were there so many people in here? What was so great about this bar? He decided he would make better time if he flew up above, and so by an act of sheer willpower he rose up into the fogged air, bending forward so as not to bump his head against the stained and cracked ceiling, with its ancient moldings of vines and leaves, and then, churning his feet and waving his arms in a breast-stroke he swam through the clouds of smoke towards the EXIT sign. At last he reached it and the door beneath it, and he lowered his feet down to the floor. He reached his hand toward the doorknob and realized that a cigarette was held between its index and middle fingers. He transferred the cigarette to his lips and then put his hand on the knob and turned it.

The door opened, outward, and he stepped through, into a dim narrow corridor. Quickly he closed the door behind him, lest anyone should follow on his heels and perhaps try to drag him back inside.

Now what?

He removed the cigarette from his mouth. The corridor went to the left but also to the right, and there was another corridor directly ahead, going straight forward into darkness. He should have asked Shorty for directions, but it was too late now, because one thing he was sure of, but only that one thing, he wouldn’t go back through that door again, through the wood of which he could still hear the muffled clamor of drunkenness and allegedly folk music.

Right, left, or straight ahead?

What difference did it make?

An imp of perversity in his brain said, “Go left, young man!”

He headed to the left.

Where was he going, anyway? And then he remembered, he had agreed to meet Louisa May Alcott for a drink. But where? Had she said “the back bar”?

Sure enough, after only a minute, maybe two, the corridor made a turn to the right, and not too far ahead was another door, beneath a weak bare lightbulb above the lintel, and painted on the door was the face of a sad clown, and above the face were the words The Sad Clown.

Could this be the back room?

He opened the door.

It was another smoky barroom, but this one was shadowy and quiet, the only sounds the low murmuring of voices, the gentle tinkling of glassware, a jukebox playing a sad song.

A big man in a clown’s tattered suit and make-up sat on a stool to the right of the door. He had a bulbous fake red nose and a squashed hat with no top to it. In his mouth was an enormous cigar.

“First time here, buddy?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure I’m in the right place.”

“You look like you’re in the right place. You got I.D.?”

“I.D.?”

“Papers. I’m gonna have to see some identification before I let you in.”

“Would a library card do?”

“You in the union?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“An apprentice then.”

“No, I’m not an apprentice.”

“And yet you look like a clown.”

“I do?”

“Most assuredly. Look at you. The newsboy’s cap. The peacoat. The fisherman’s sweater. The dungarees and workman’s brogans. The milk-bottle thick eyeglasses. You look like a clown to me.”

“I’m not a clown.”

“You look like a sad clown to me, so I’ll let you in, provisionally. Just don’t make no trouble or I’ll have to throw you out.”

“I don’t want to make any trouble.”

“Then you’re welcome, my friend. To the fraternity of sad clowns.”

“But I’m telling you I’m not a sad clown.”

“You sure don’t look like a happy clown.”

“I’m not any sort of clown.”

A shorter and fatter man in a clown’s costume and maquillage came over. He didn’t have a  false nose, but he did have a huge red fright wig on, and a cigarette in a black holder in his white-gloved hands.

“We got a problem here, Zoots?”

“Feller says he ain’t neither a sad nor a happy clown.”

The little clown looked at Milford, up and down and up again.

“He looks like a sad clown to me.”

“That’s what I said,” said the big clown on the stool.

“So I reckon you work the vaudeville circuit?” the little clown said to Milford.

“What? No,” said Milford.

“My name’s Boots, by the way,” said the little clown. “And this big gorilla is called Zoots. What’s your moniker, pal?”

“I don’t expect you to remember it, but my name is Marion Milford, and, yes, I prefer to be called Milford.”

“Milford the Clown?”

“No, just Milford.”

“I ain’t one to give advice, but I ain’t so sure Milford is a great clown name. What about Simpy?”

“What?”

“Why don’t you call yourself Simpy. You look like a Simpy. Don’t he, Zoots?”

“Simpy’s a good name for him,” said Zoots.

“You want to be a good clown you got to have a good clown name,” said the little clown called Boots.

“I don’t want to be a clown,” said Milford. “I’m looking for a lady.”

“A lady clown?”

“No, just a lady. Louisa May Alcott.”

“Ain’t no ladies named Louisa May Alcott in here. Ain’t no ladies in here at all. Just clowns.”

“Sad clowns,” said Zoots.

“I didn’t know that,” said Milford.

“Can’t you read?” said Boots the Clown.

“Yes,” said Milford.

“What’s the sign on the door out there say?”

“The Sad Clown?”

“Exactemundo.”

“So it’s only sad clowns in here.”

“Smart boy,” said Boots.

“Real smart boy,” said Zoots.

“I’m sorry,” said Milford.

“I still say you look like a clown,” said Boots.

“A sad clown,” said Zoots.

“A very sad clown,” said Boots.

“Well, I’m sad, and I might be a clown,” said Milford, “but not in the professional sense.”

“Come on in, son,” said Boots. “Come join our glum brotherhood.”

“Listen,” said Milford, “I mean no offense, but I’ve made a mistake.”

“We all make mistakes,” said Boots. “Every clown in here has made mistakes.”

“Well, regardless,” said Milford, “I don’t really think I belong here.”

“Fair enough,” said Boots. “But let me ask you this. Where do you belong?”

Milford paused just for a moment before answering.

“Nowhere,” he said.

“In that case,” said Boots, “you’ve come to the right place. Give him a membership card, Zoots.”

If Milford had possessed the eye for detail of a true poet he would have noticed the small table next to the stool that Zoots sat on, which had a can of Rheingold on it, an ashtray, a long, heavy-looking flashlight, and a small stack of cards. Zoots picked up one of the cards and handed it to Milford.

Milford looked at the card, which had a picture of a sad clown’s face on it, and under the picture the words:

    This is to certify that

   __________________
    
is a member in good standing of
 
    the Sad Clown Society.


“Just put your name in the blank space there when you get a chance” said Zoots. “Just ‘Simpy’ will do. Dues are ten dollars for a lifetime membership, but with that you get drinks and beers for a nickel, a dime for top-shelf liquors and imported beers, plus free hot dogs with complimentary potato chips and your choice of condiments and ‘fixin’s’; I can personally recommend the ‘fatback ‘n’ beans’ and our proprietary barrel-cured sauerkraut. Please feel free to try our all-day breakfast for only fifty cent, as well as our daily-changing table d’hôte dinner special for only one dollar.”

“Well, that all seems very reasonable,” said Milford.

“Also, we never close.”

“Well, uh –”

“So, you know, just ten bucks. Payable in advance.”

Milford was afraid they wouldn’t let him leave unless he paid, so he put the card down on the little table while he dug out  his wallet, opened it, took out a ten-dollar bill and handed it to Zoots. The big clown picked up the flashlight, clicked it on, held the bill up and examined it in the harsh glare of the flashlight.

“It’s not counterfeit,” said Milford, putting his wallet away. “At least not to my knowledge it isn’t.”

“Looks legit,“ said Zoots. He clicked off the flashlight, stood it upside-down on the table, then folded up the ten and stuck it in a pocket of his ragged suit. “We get a lot of jokers trying to pass fugazis here, so I got to check.”

“Great,” said Boots. “Now that we got that all settled, let me escort you to the bar, Simpy. First drink’s on the house.”

“Look, I appreciate it,” said Milford, “but I really can’t stay. You see, I have to find this lady.”

“Why?” said Boots. “She’s only going to make you sad. Sadder, I should say.”

“Nevertheless, I told her I would meet her, and so I feel it is incumbent upon me to try to do so.”

“Okay then,” said Boots. “Go. Go find this ‘lady’. But listen. When she breaks your heart and then rips it out of your chest and throws it on the ground and dances the Black Bottom all over it, you come back here.”

“Okay,” said Milford.

“You come back here and join the rest of the sad clowns.”

“Possibly,” said Milford.

“He’ll be back,” said Zoots.

“I think you’re right, Zoots,” said Boots. “He’ll be back all right.”

Milford wondered if he should ask for directions to the back bar, but he decided not to.

“Well, thanks anyway,” he said.

“Good luck, Simpy,” said Boots.

“He’s gonna need it,” said Zoots.

“Goodnight,” said Milford.

“Wait,” said Zoots.

“Pardon me?”

“Ain’t you forgetting something?”

He pointed to the membership card that Milford had absent-mindedly laid on the table.

“Oh, right,” said Milford. He picked up the card. “Thanks for reminding me.”

“Hey, Simpy,” said Boots.

“Yes?”

“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

“What?”

“It’s a joke,” said Boots. 



“Ha ha,” said Zoots.


“Now that you’re one of us,” said Boots, “you got to get used to us clowning around.”

“It’s what we do,” said Zoots.

“Okay,” said Milford. “Well, uh –”

He turned around, put his hand on the doorknob, turned it, and went out. He closed the door behind him.

So, he had gone the wrong way.

Unless it had really been the right way.

He headed back down the corridor.

A burning sensation in his fingers alerted him to the fact that his Husky Boy had burned down to a tiny nubbin, and so he dropped it to the floor, and then ground it out with his sturdy workman’s brogan.

Perhaps that place had been the right one for him after all.

No matter, he could always go back.

He sighed, for the twelve-thousandth and twenty-first time since he had crawled his way from slumber so many hours and seeming months ago, and he continued on down the corridor. 



He suddenly became aware that he was still holding the sad clowns membership card. Should he throw it away? No, just to be on the safe side, he decided to keep it, and he took out his wallet again and slid the card in next to his library card.

{Please go here to read the unexpurgated “adult comix” version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}