We went looking for my New York gang of friends. The crazy flowers bloom there too. We went
to Tom Saybrook’s first. Tom is a sad, handsome fellow, sweet, generous, and amenable; only once
in a while he suddenly has fits of depression and rushes off without saying a word to anyone. This
night he was overjoyed. .Sal, where did you find these absolutely wonderful people? I’ve never seen
anyone like them..
.I found them in the West..
Dean was having his kicks; he put on a jazz record, grabbed Marylou, held her tight, and
bounced against her with the beat of the music. She bounced right back. It was a real love dance.
Ian MacArthur came in with a huge gang. The New Year’s weekend began, and lasted three days
and three nights. Great gangs got in the Hudson and swerved in the snowy New York streets from
party to party. I brought Lucille and her sister to the biggest party. When Lucille saw me with Dean
and Marylou her face darkened - she sensed the madness they put in me.
.I don’t like you when you’re with them..
.Ah, it’s all right, it’s just kicks. We only live once. We’re having a good time..
.No, it’s sad and I don’t like it..
Then Marylou began making love to me; she said Dean was going to stay with Camille and she
wanted me to go with her. .Come back to San Francisco with us. We’ll live together. I’ll be a good
girl for you.. But I knew Dean loved Marylou, and I also knew Marylou was doing this to make
Lucille jealous, and I wanted nothing of it. Still and all, I licked my lips for the luscious blonde. When
Lucille saw Marylou pushing me into the corners and giving me the word and forcing kisses on me
she accepted Dean’s invitation to go out in the car; but they just talked and drank some of the
Southern moonshine I left in the compartment. Everything was being mixed up, and all was falling. I
knew my affair with Lucille wouldn’t last much longer. She wanted me to be her way. She was
married to a longshoreman who treated her badly. I was willing to marry her and take her baby
daughter and all if she divorced the husband; but there wasn’t even enough money to get a divorce
and the whole thing was hopeless, besides which Lucille would never understand me because I like
too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop.
This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.
The parties were enormous; there were at least a hundred people at a basement apartment in the
West Nineties. People overflowed into the cellar compartments near the furnace. Something was
going on in every corner, on every bed and couch - not an orgy but just a New Year’s party with
frantic screaming and wild radio music. There was even a Chinese girl. Dean ran like Groucho Marx
from group to group, digging everybody. Periodically we rushed out to the car to pick up more
people. Damion came. Damion is the hero of my New York gang, as Dean is the chief hero of the
Western. They immediately took a dislike to each other. Damion’s girl suddenly socked Damion on
the jaw with a roundhouse right. He stood reeling. She carried him home. Some of our mad
newspaper friends came in from the office with bottles. There was a tremendous and wonderful
snowstorm going on outside. Ed Dunkel met Lucille’s sister and disappeared with her; I forgot to say
that Ed Dunkel is a very smooth man with the women. He’s six foot four, mild, affable, agreeable,
bland, and delightful. He helps women on with their coats. That’s the way to do things. At five
o’clock in the morning we were all rushing through the backyard of a tenement and climbing in
through a window of an apartment where a huge party was going on. At dawn we were back at Tom
Saybrook’s. People were drawing pictures and drinking stale beer. I slept on a couch with a girl
called Mona in my arms. Great groups filed in from the old Columbia Campus bar. Everything in life,
all the faces of life, were piling into the same dank room. At Ian MacArthur’s the party went on. Ian
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MacArthur is a wonderful sweet fellow who wears glasses and peers out of them with delight. He
began to learn .Yes!. to everything, just like Dean at this time, and hasn’t stopped since. To the wild
sounds of Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray blowing .The Hunt,. Dean and I played catch with
Marylou over the couch; she was no small doll either. Dean went around with no undershirt, just his
pants, barefoot, till it was time to hit the car and fetch more people. Everything happened. We found
the wild, ecstatic Roll Greb and spent a night at his house on Long Island. Roll lives in a nice house
with his aunt; when she dies the house is all his. Meanwhile she refuses to comply with any of his
wishes and hates his friends. He brought this ragged gang of Dean, Marylou, Ed, and me, and began
a roaring party. The woman prowled upstairs; she threatened to call the police. .Oh, shut up, you
old bag!. yelled Greb. I wondered how he could live with her like this. He had more books than I’ve
ever seen in all my life - two libraries, two rooms loaded from floor to ceiling around all four walls,
and such books as the Apocryphal Something-or-Other in ten volumes. He played Verdi operas and
pantomimed them in his pajamas with a great rip down the back. He didn’t give a damn about
anything. He is a great scholar who goes reeling down the New York waterfront with original
seventeenth-century musical manuscripts under his arm, shouting. He crawls like a big spider through
the streets. His excitement blew out of his eyes in stabs of fiendish light. He rolled his neck in spastic
ecstasy. He lisped, he writhed, he flopped, he moaned, he howled, he fell back in despair. He could
hardly get a word out, he was so excited with life. Dean stood before him with head bowed,
repeating over and over again, .Yes . . . Yes . . . Yes.. He took me into a corner. .That Roll Greb
is the greatest, most wonderful of all. That’s what I was trying to tell you - that’s what I want to be. I
want to be like him. He’s never hung-up, he goes every direction, he lets it all out, he knows time, he
has nothing to do but rock back and forth. Man, he’s the end! You see, if you go like him all the time
you’ll finally get it..
.Get what?.
.IT! IT! I’ll tell you - now no time, we have no time now.. Dean rushed back to watch Roll Greb
some more.
George Shearing, the great jazz pianist, Dean said, was exactly like Roll Greb. Dean and I went
to see Shearing at Bird-* land in the midst of the long, mad weekend. The place was deserted, we
were the first customers, ten o’clock. Shearing’1 came out, blind, led by the hand to his keyboard.
He was distinguished-looking Englishman with a stiff white collar,! slightly beefy, blond, with a
delicate English-summer’s-night air about him that came out in the first rippling sweet number! he
played as the bass-player leaned to him reverently and} thrummed the beat. The drummer, Denzil
Best, sat motionless! except for his wrists snapping the brushes. And Shearing began to rock; a smile
broke over his ecstatic face; he began to rock in the piano seat, back and forth, slowly at first, then
the beat went up, and he began rocking fast, his left foot jumped up with every beat, his neck began
to rock crookedly, he brought his face down to the keys, he pushed his hair back, his combed hair
dissolved, he began to sweat. The music I picked up. The bass-player hunched over and socked it
in, faster and faster, it seemed faster and faster, that’s all. Shearing began to play his chords; they
rolled out of the piano in great rich showers, you’d think the man wouldn’t have time to line them up.
They rolled and rolled like the sea. Folks yelled for him to .Go!. Dean was sweating; the swear
poured down his collar. .There he is! That’s him! Old God! Old God Shearing! Yes! Yes! Yes!.
And Shearing was conscious of the madman behind him, he could hear every one of Dean’s gasps
and imprecations, he could sense it though he couldn’t see. .That’s right!. Dean said. .Yes!.
Shearing smiled; he rocked. Shearing rose from the piano, dripping with sweat; these were his great
1949 days before he became cool and commercial. When he was gone Dean pointed to the empty
piano seat. .God’s empty chair,. he said. On the piano a horn sat; its golden shadow made a strange
76
reflection along the desert caravan painted on the wall behind the drums. God was gone; it was the
silence of his departure. It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night. Dean was popeyed
with awe. This madness would lead nowhere. I didn’t know what was happening to me, and I
suddenly realized it was only the tea that we were smoking; Dean had bought some in New York. It
made me think that everything was about to arrive - the moment when you know all and everything
is decided forever.
77
5
I left everybody and went home to rest. My aunt said I was wasting my time hanging around with
Dean and his gang. I knew that was wrong, too. Life is life, and kind is kind. What I wanted was to
take one more magnificent trip to the West Coast and get back in time for the spring semester in
school. And what a trip it turned out to be! I only went along for the ride, and to see what else Dean
was going to do, and finally, also, knowing Dean would go back to Camille in Frisco, I wanted to
have an affair with Marylou. We got ready to cross the groaning continent again. I drew my GI
check and gave Dean eighteen dollars to mail to his wife; she was waiting for him to come home and
she was broke. What was on Marylou’s mind I don’t know. Ed Dunkel, as ever, just followed.
There were long, funny days spent in Carlo’s apartment before we left. He went around in his
bathrobe and made semi-ironical speeches: .Now I’m not trying to take your hincty sweets from
you, but it seems to me the time has come to decide what you are and what you’re going to do..
Carlo was working as typist in an office. .I want to know what all this sitting around the house all
day is intended to mean. What all this talk is and what you propose to do. Dean, why did you leave
Camille and pick up Marylou?. No answer - giggles. .Marylou, why are you traveling around the
country like this and what are your womanly intentions concerning the shroud?. Same answer. .Ed
Dunkel, why did you abandon your new wife in Tucson and what are you doing here sitting on your
big fat ass? Where’s your home? What’s your job?. Ed Dunkel bowed his head in genuine
befuddlement. .Sal - how comes it you’ve fallen on such sloppy days and what have you done with
Lucille?. He adjusted his bathrobe and sat facing us all. .The days of wrath are yet to come. The
balloon won’t sustain you much longer. And not only that, but it’s an abstract balloon. You’ll all go
flying to the West Coast and come staggering back in search of your stone..
In these days Carlo had developed a tone of voice which he hoped sounded like what he called
The Voice of Rock; the whole idea was to stun people into the realization of the rock. .You pin a
dragon to your hats,. he warned us; .you’re up in the attic with the bats.. His mad eyes glittered at
us. Since the Dakar Doldrums he had gone through a terrible period which he called the Holy
Doldrums, or Harlem Doldrums, when he lived in Harlem in midsummer and at night woke up in his
lonely room and heard .the great machine. descending from the sky; and when he walked on 12 5th
Street .under water. with all the other fish. It was a riot of radiant ideas that had come to enlighten
his brain. He made Marylou sit on his lap and commanded her to subside. He told Dean, .Why
don’t you just sit down and relax? Why do you jump around so much?. Dean ran around, putting
sugar in his coffee and saying, .Yes! Yes! Yes!. At night Ed Dunkel slept on the floor on cushions,
Dean and Marylou pushed Carlo out of bed, and Carlo sat up in the kitchen over his kidney stew,
mumbling the predictions of the rock. I came in days and watched everything.
Ed Dunkel said to me, .Last night I walked clear down to Times Square and just as I arrived I
suddenly realized I was a ghost - it was my ghost walking on the sidewalk.. He said these things to
me without comment, nodding his head emphatically. Ten hours later, in the midst of someone else’s
conversation, Ed said, .Yep, it was my ghost walking on the sidewalk..
Suddenly Dean leaned to me earnestly and said, .Sal, I have something to ask of you - very
important to me - I wonder how you’ll take it - we’re buddies, aren’t we?.
.Sure are, Dean.. He almost blushed. Finally he came out with it: he wanted me to work
Marylou. I didn’t ask him why because I knew he wanted to see what Marylou was like with
another man. We were sitting in Ritzy’s Bar when he proposed the idea; we’d spent an hour walking
Times Square, looking for Hassel. Ritzy’s Bar is the hoodlum bar of the streets around Times
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Square; it changes names every year. You walk in there and you don’t see a single girl, even in the
booths, just a great mob of young men dressed in all varieties of hoodlum cloth, from red shirts to
zoot suits. It is also the hustlers’ bar - the boys who make a living among the sad old homos of the
Eighth Avenue night. Dean walked in there with his eyes slitted to see every single face. There were
wild Negro queers, sullen guys with guns, shiv-packing seamen, thin, noncommittal junkies, and an
occasional well-dressed middle-aged detective, posing as a bookie and hanging around half for
interest and half for duty. It was the typical place for Dean to put down his request. All kinds of evil
plans are hatched in Ritzy’s Bar - you can sense it in the air - and all kinds of mad sexual routines are
initiated to go with them. The safecracker proposes not only a certain loft on i4th Street to the
hoodlum, but that they sleep together. Kinsey spent a lot of time in Ritzy’s Bar, interviewing some of
the boys; I was there the night his assistant came, in 1945. Hassel and Carlo were interviewed.
Dean and I drove back to the pad and found Marylou in bed. Dunkel was roaming his ghost
around New York. Dean told her what we had decided. She said she was pleased. I wasn’t so sure
myself. I had to prove that I’d go through with it. The-bed had been the deathbed of a big man and
sagged in the middle. Marylou lay there, with Dean and myself on each side of her, poised on the
upjutting mattress-ends, not knowing what to say. I said, .Ah hell, I can’t do this..
.Go on, man, you promised!. said Dean.
.What about Marylou?. I said. .Come on, Marylou, what do you think?.
.Go ahead,. she said.
She embraced me and I tried to forget old Dean was there. Every time I realized he was there in
the dark, listening for every sound, I couldn’t do anything but laugh. It was horrible.
.We must all relax,. said Dean.
.I’m afraid I can’t make it. Why don’t you go in the kitchen a minute?.
Dean did so. Marylou was so lovely, but I whispered, .Wait until we be lovers in San Francisco;
my heart isn’t in it.. I was right, she could tell. It was three children of the earth trying to decide
something in the night and having all the weight of past centuries ballooning in the dark before them.
There was a strange quiet in the apartment. I went and tapped Dean and told him to go to Marylou;
and I retired to the couch. I could hear Dean, blissful and blabbering and frantically rocking. Only a
guy who’s spent five years in jail can go to such maniacal helpless extremes; beseeching at the
portals of the soft source, mad with a completely physical realization of the origins of life-bliss; blindly
seeking to return the way he came. This is the result of years looking at sexy pictures behind bars;
looking at the legs and breasts of women in popular magazines; evaluating the hardness of the steel
halls and the softness of the woman who is not there. Prison is where you promise yourself the right
to live. Dean had never seen his mother’s face. Every new girl, every new wife, every new child was
an addition to his bleak impoverishment. Where was his father? - old bum Dean Moriarty the
Tinsmith, riding freights, working as a scullion in railroad cookshacks, stumbling, down-crashing in
wino alley nights, expiring on coal piles, dropping his yellowed teeth one by one in the gutters of the
West. Dean had every right to die the sweet deaths of complete love of his Marylou-1 didn’t want to
interfere, I just wanted to follow.
Carlo came back at dawn and put on his bathrobe. He wasn’t sleeping any more those days.
.Eeh!. he screamed. He was going out of his mind from the confusion of jam on the floor, pants,
dresses thrown around, cigarette butts, dirty dishes, open books - it was a great forum we were
having. Every day the world groaned to turn and we were making our appalling studies of the night.
Marylou was black and blue from a fight with Dean about something; his face was scratched. It was
time to go.
We drove to my house, a whole gang of ten, to get my bag and call Old Bull Lee in New Orleans
79
from the phone in the bar where Dean and I had our first talk years ago when he came to my door to
learn to write. We heard Bull’s whining voice eighteen hundred miles away. .Say, what do you boys
expect me to do with this Galatea Dunkel? She’s been here two weeks now, hiding in her room and
refusing to talk to either Jane or me. Have you got this character Ed Dunkel with you? For krissakes
bring him down and get rid of her. She’s sleeping in our best bedroom and’s run clear out of money.
This ain’t a hotel.. He assured Bull with whoops and cries over the phone - there was Dean,
Marylou, Carlo, Dunkel, me, lan MacArthur, his wife, Tom Saybrook, God knows who else, all
yelling and drinking beer over the phone at befuddled Bull, who above all things hated confusion.
.Well,. he said, .maybe you’ll make better sense when you gets down here if you gets down here..
I said good-by to my aunt and promised to be back in two weeks and took off for California again.
80
6
It was drizzling and mysterious at the beginning of our journey. I could see that it was all going to
be one big saga of the mist. .Whooee!. yelled Dean. .Here we go!. And he hunched over the
wheel and gunned her; he was back in his element, everybody could see that. We were all delighted,
we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble
function of the time, move.
And we moved! We flashed past the mysterious white signs in the night somewhere in New
Jersey that say SOUTH (with an arrow) and WEST (with an arrow) and took the south one. New
Orleans! It burned in our brains. From the dirty snows of .frosty fagtown New York,. as Dean
called it, all the way to the greeneries and river smells of old New Orleans at the washed-out bottom
of America; then west. Ed was in the back seat; Marylou and Dean and I sat in front and had the
warmest talk about the goodness and joy of life. Dean suddenly became tender. .Now dammit, look
here, all of you, we all must admit that everything is fine and there’s no need in the world to worry,
and in fact we should realize what it would mean to us to UNDERSTAND that we’re not REALLY
worried about ANYTHING. Am I right?. We all agreed. .Here we go, we’re all together . . . What
did we do in New York? Let’s forgive.. We all had our spats back there. .That’s behind us, merely
by miles and inclinations. Now we’re heading down to New Orleans to dig Old Bull Lee and ain’t
that going to be kicks and listen will you to this old tenorman blow his top. - he shot up the radio
volume till the car shuddered - .and listen to him tell the story and put down true relaxation and
knowledge..
We all jumped to the music and agreed. The purity of the road. The white line in the middle of the
highway unrolled and hugged our left front tire as if glued to our groove. Dean hunched his muscular
neck, T-shirted in the winter night, and blasted the car along. He insisted I drive through Baltimore
for traffic practice; that was all right, except he and Marylou insisted on steering while they kissed
and fooled around. It was crazy; the radio was on full blast. Dean beat drums on the dashboard till a
great sag developed in it; I did too. The poor Hudson - the slow boat to China - was receiving her
beating.
.Oh man, what kicks!. yelled Dean. .Now Marylou, listen really, honey, you know that I’m
hotrock capable of everything at the same time and I have unlimited energy - now in San Francisco
we must go on living together. I know just the place for you - at the end of the regular chain-gang run
-I’ll be home just a cut-hair less than every two days and for twelve hours at a stretch, and man, you
know what we can do in twelve hours, darling. Meanwhile I’ll go right on living at Camille’s like
nothin, see, she won’t know. We can work it, we’ve done it before.. It was all right with Marylou,
she was really out for Camille’s scalp. The understanding had been that Marylou would switch to me
in Frisco, but I now began to see they were going to stick and I was going to be left alone on my butt
at the other end of the continent. But why think about that when all the golden land’s ahead of you
and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you’re alive to
see?
We arrived in Washington at dawn. It was the day of Harry Truman’s inauguration for his second
term. Great displays of war might were lined along Pennsylvania Avenue as we rolled by in our
battered boat. There were 6-295, PT boats, artillery, all kinds of war material that looked
murderous in the snowy grass; the last thing was a regular small ordinary lifeboat that looked pitiful
and foolish. Dean slowed down to look at it. He kept shaking his head in awe. .What are these
people up to? Harry’s sleeping somewhere in this town. . . . Good old Harry. . . . Man from
81
Missouri, as I am. . . . That must be his own boat..
Dean went to sleep in the back seat and Dunkel drove. We gave him specific instructions to take
it easy. No sooner were we snoring than he gunned the car up to eighty, bad bearings and all, and
not only that but he made a triple pass at a spot where a cop was arguing with a motorist - he was in
the fourth lane of a four-lane highway, going the wrong way. Naturally the cop took after us with his
siren whining. We were stopped. He told us to follow him to the station house. There was a mean
cop in there who took an immediate dislike to Dean; he could smell jail all over him. He sent his
cohort outdoors to question Marylou and me privately. They wanted to know how old Marylou was,
they were trying to whip up a Mann Act idea. But she had her marriage certificate. Then they took
me aside alone and wanted to know who was sleeping with Marylou. .Her husband,. I said quite
simply. They were curious. Something was fishy. They tried some amateur Sherlocking by asking the
same questions twice, expecting us to make a slip. I said, .Those two fellows are going back to
work on the railroad in California, this is the short one’s wife, and I’m a friend on a two-week
vacation from college..
The cop smiled and said, .Yeah? Is this really your own wallet?.
Finally the mean one inside fined Dean twenty-five dollars. We told them we only had forty to go
all the way to the Coast; they said that made no difference to them. When Dean protested, the mean
cop threatened to take him back to Pennsylvania and slap a special charge on him.
.What charge?.
.Never mind what charge. Don’t worry about that, wiseguy..
We had to give them the twenty-five. But first Ed Dunkel, that culprit, offered to go to jail. Dean
considered it. The cop was infuriated; he said, .If you let your partner go to jail I’m taking you back
to Pennsylvania right now. You hear that?. All we wanted to do was go. .Another speeding ticket in
Virginia and you lose your car,. said the mean cop as a parting volley. Dean was red in the face. We
drove off silently. It was just like an invitation to steal to take our trip-money away from us. They
knew we were broke and had no relatives on the road or to wire to for money. The American police
are involved in psychological warfare against those Americans who don’t frighten them with imposing
papers and threats. It’s a Victorian police force; it peers out of musty windows and wants to inquire
about everything, and can make crimes if the crimes don’t exist to its satisfaction. .Nine lines of
crime, one of boredom,. said Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Dean was so mad he wanted to come back
to Virginia and shoot the cop as soon as he had a gun.
.Pennsylvania!. he scoffed. .I wish I knew what that charge was! Vag, probably; take all my
money and charge me vag. Those guys have it so damn easy. They’ll out and shoot you if you
complain, too.. There was nothing to do but get happy with ourselves again and forget about it.
When we got through Richmond we began forgetting about it, and soon everything was okay.
Now we had fifteen dollars to go all the way. We’d have to pick up hitchhikers and bum quarters
off them for gas. In the Virginia wilderness suddenly we saw a man walking on the road. Dean
zoomed to a stop. I looked back and said he was only a bum and probably didn’t have a cent.
.We’ll just pick him up for kicks!. Dean laughed. The man was a ragged, bespectacled mad
type, walking along reading a paperbacked muddy book he’d found in a culvert by the road. He got
in the car and went right on reading; he was incredibly filthy and covered with scabs. He said his
name was Hyman Solomon and that he walked all over the USA, knocking and sometimes kicking
at Jewish doors and demanding money: .Give me money to eat, I am a Jew..
He said it worked very well and that it was coming to him. We asked him what he was reading.
He didn’t know. He didn’t bother to look at the title page. He was only looking at the words, as
though he had found the real Torah where it belonged, in the wilderness.
82
.See? See? See?. cackled Dean, poking my ribs. .I told you it was kicks. Everybody’s kicks,
man!. We carried Solomon all the way to Testament. My brother by now was in his new house on
the other side of town. Here we were back on the long, bleak street with the railroad track running
down the middle and the sad, sullen Southerners loping in front of hardware stores and five-andtens.
Solomon said, .I see you people need a little money to continue your journey. You wait for me
and I’ll go hustle up a few dollars at a Jewish home and I’ll go along with you as far as Alabama..
Dean was all beside himself with happiness; he and I rushed off to buy bread and cheese spread for
a lunch in the car. Marylou and Ed waited in the car. We spent two hours in Testament waiting for
Hyman Solomon to show up; he was hustling for his bread somewhere in town, but we couldn’t see
him. The sun began to grow red and late.
Solomon never showed up so we roared out of Testament. .Now you see, Sal, God does exist,
because we keep getting hung-up with this town, no matter what we try to do, and you’ll notice the
strange Biblical name of it, and that strange Biblical character who made us stop here once more,
and all things tied together all over like rain connecting everybody the world over by chain touch. . .
.. Dean rattled on like this; he was overjoyed and exuberant. He and I suddenly saw the whole
country like an oyster for us to open; and the pearl was there, the pearl was there. Off we roared
south. We picked up another hitchhiker. This was a sad young kid who said he had an aunt who
owned a grocery store in Dunn, North Carolina, right outside Fayetteville. .When we get there can
you bum a buck off her? Right! Fine! Let’s go!. We were in Dunn in an hour, at dusk. We drove to
where the kid said his aunt had the grocery store. It was a sad little street that dead-ended at a
factory wall. There was a grocery store but there was no aunt. We wondered what the kid was
talking about. We asked him how far he was going; he didn’t know. It was a big hoax; once upon a
time, in some lost back-alley adventure, he had seen the grocery store in Dunn, and it was the first
story that popped into his disordered, feverish mind. We bought him a hot dog, but Dean said we
couldn’t take him along because we needed room to sleep and room for hitchhikers who could buy a
little gas. This was sad but true. We left him in Dunn at nightfall.
I drove through South Carolina and beyond Macon, Georgia, as Dean, Marylou, and Ed slept.
All alone in the night I had my own thoughts and held the car to the white line in the holy road. What
was I doing? Where was I going? I’d soon find out. I got dog-tired beyond Macon and woke up
Dean to resume. We got out of the car for air and suddenly both of us were stoned with joy to
