that its voice had to be heard. He meant it. I take this from
what Allen said directly to me, not from some inference I
made. He was exceptionally aggressive about his right to fuck
children and his constant pursuit of underage boys.
I did everything I could to avoid Allen and to avoid
conflict. This was my godson’s day. He did not need a political struggle to the death breaking out al over.
Ginsberg would not leave me alone. He followed me everywhere I went from the lobby of the hotel through the whole reception, then during the dinner. He photographed me constantly with a vicious little camera he wore around his neck. He sat next to me and wanted to know details of sexual abuse I
had suf ered. A lovely woman, not knowing that his interest was
entirely pornographic, told a terrible story of being molested
by a neighbor. He ignored her. She had thought, “This is
Al en Ginsberg, the great beat poet and a prince of empathy. ”
Wrong. Ginsberg told me that he had never met an intelligent
person who had the ideas I did. I told him he didn’t get
around enough. He pointed to the friends of my godson and
said they were old enough to fuck. They were twelve and
thirteen. He said that al sex was good, including forced sex.
I am good at get ing rid of men, strictly in the above-board
sense. I couldn’t get rid of Allen. Finally I had had it. Referring
back to the Supreme Court’s decision banning child pornography he said, “The right wants to put me in jail. ” I said, “Yes, they’re very sentimental; I’d kil you. ” The next day he’d point
at me in crowded rooms and screech, “She wants to put me in
jail. ” I’d say, “No, Allen, you still don’t get it. The right wants
to put you in jail. I want you dead. ”
He told everyone his fucked-up version of the story (“You
want to put me in jail”) for years. When he died he stopped.
The Bomb
There is one reason for the 1960s generation, virtually al of
its attitudes and behaviors: the bomb. From kindergarten
through the twelfth grade, every U. S. child born in 1946 or
the decade or so after had to hide from the nuclear bomb.
None of us knew life without Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In
K-3 we hid under our school desks, elbows covering our ears.
From grades four or five through graduation, we were lined
up three- or four- or five-thick against wal s without windows,
elbows over our ears. We were supposed to believe that these
poses would save us from the bomb the Soviets were going to
drop on us sometime after the warning bel rang. In the later
grades, our teachers herded us, then stood around and talked.
They didn’t seem to think that they were going to die, let
alone melt, any minute. They seemed more as if they were
going to chat until the bel rang and the next class began. In
the earlier grades the teachers would walk up and down the
