did civil disobedience; I typed, made phone calls, the usual;
shit work; but I also tried to push m y ideas in. The idea was to
use their fame to get out anti-War messages and to get more
mainstream opposition to the War. Hey, I was home; only in
Amerika. One day this woman came in to where we were
w orking— to help, she said; was there anything she could do
to help, she asked— and she was as disreputable looking as me
or more so— she looked sort o f like a gypsy boy or some street
w a if—and they treated her like dirt, so condescending, which
was how they treated me, exactly, and it turned out she was
the wife o f this mega-star, so they got all humble and started
sucking. I had just talked to her like a person from the
beginning so she invited me to their house that night for
dinner— it turned out it was her birthday party but she didn’t
tell me that. I got there on time and no one else came for an
hour so her and me and her husband talked a lot and they were
nice even though it was clear I didn’t understand I w asn’t
supposed to show up yet. She took me places, all over, and we
caroused and talked and drank and once when he w asn’t home
she let me take this elaborate bath and she brought me a
beautiful glass o f champagne in the tub, then he came in, and I
don’t know if he was mad or not, but he was always real nice
to me, and nothing was going on, and there wasn’t no bath or
shower where I lived, though I was ashamed to say so, I had to
make an appointment with someone in the building to use
theirs. They kept me alive for a while, though they couldn’t
have known it. I ate when I was with them; otherwise I didn’t.
M y world got so big: parties, clubs, people; it was like a tour
o f a hidden world. Once she even took me to the opera. I never
was there before. She bought me a glass o f champagne and we
stood among ladies in gowns on red velvet carpets. But then
they left. And I knew some painters, real rich and famous.
One o f them was the lover o f a girl I knew. He befriended me,
like a chum, like a sort o f brother in some ways. He just acted
nice and invited me places where he was where there were a lot
o f people. He didn’t mind that I was shy. He talked to me a lot.
He seemed to see that I was overwhelmed and he didn’t take it
wrong. He tried to make me feel at ease. He tried to draw me
out. I sort o f wanted to stay away from places but he just tried
to get me to come forward a little. In some ways he seemed
like a camp counselor organizing events: now we hike, now
we make purses. I’d go drinking with all these painters in their
downtown bars and they had plenty o f money and it wasn’t a
matter o f tit for tat, they just kept the drinks coming, never
seemed to occur to them to stop drinking. I knew his girlfriend
who was a painter. At first when I met him I had just got back.
I was sleeping on floors. I slept on her floor some nights when
