Greenwich Village

When I got sick of my folks I got into Dan's car and we drove all over the place. Dan had this real bad acne. Sometimes he put vaseline on it so the zits would ripen up and he could squeeze them. He was a real good guy.

We drove all the way up to Ohio once. We had a girl with us and she wanted to see the water that went out to the sky. I'm sick of the fucking quarry. She had a cigarette that she kept bringing to her mouth between her thumb and her forefinger. She wore a striped shirt and I could see her nipples rippling in the irregular cotton like the jiggling navels of water balloons. She was beautiful. She made me want to eat glass and rip baby ducks apart. We were taking some pills that Dan had stolen from his mother. When we passed the square, he laughed maniacally and wouldn't turn, even when the girl yanked on his collar and shrieked with her mouth pressed up to his hair. We drove through the night and when we reached the lakes she was asleep, curled up like a dog on the carpet behind the passenger side with her head propped on the leather bucket seat. Her hair was splayed out like a frond. I remember that blond dyed color. It had a brass to it that shone like a copper fan in the dawn glow. It was nice.

We hitchhiked to New York. We got into Greenwich Village and this head trucked up to us. C'mere. He gave us a joint and walked us through street after street. We were both about fifteen. I had on my army jacket and my filthy denim johns. I'd patched them up. An archway rose before us, stark and tan, birdshit cascading off it like icicles. We stepped through the arch into the jangling purse of a war rally. I held a little leather gris-gris bag around my neck with some money in it and a gold watch I'd found on the ground. This bag was stolen by the head. He snapped it from my neck and fell into the spitting banks of crowd with a stag grace at just the same moment that a tear gas bomb sliced the wall just by my ear. The crowd drew from me like I've seen paint draw from salt. I remember the still faces of the hippies. They looked like a river right after a car gets in it.