The Original Hipster

I was the original hipster in my teen years but today I am an anachronism and more like the ruins in some archeological dig than a fully developed human being.

As president of my debating team in high school and college I put those programs on the map. Although Boys High was in the slums and Pace College would take anyone who was still breathing I led them to many victories and excitedly whipped the butts of Princeton and Harvard. We excelled in the sophistry that makes a debater like a diamond.

Because my high school was only two percent white I was exposed to black music like 'Pledging my Love' and cool lingo. It wasn’t just the fast track and controversial music I loved, but through my Uncle George I was introduced to marijuana when I was 16, hookers at 17 and at 18 - I tried mescaline (which was legal to buy in England). I had varied trips including one where I became a rodent that would never metamorphasize into human form. The other time I emulated The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley and felt like I was in paradise and heaven where I would hear colors and view music.

When I was discharged from the Army, I was stationed where what is now Kaufman Astoria Studios. I then went to Pace which was $110 a month. While at Pace I tried heroin with my girlfriend Althea. It was supposed to zombify me. Even though I was numb and drooling, I still ate her pussy and dropped a load in her hole. Six weeks after I started doing drugs with Althea (I was living at 305 west 71st St. in a one room studio and had to use the bathroom across the hall owned by some of my fag friends) a detective called me and told me Althea died from an overdose. I wanted to wear a black armband because I just lost some good pussy.

My hipster habits also included discovering music before it hit the mainstream. This included Elvis Presley and Moondog and the comedy of Lenny Bruce. Before Screw went bankrupt I dated Lenny’s daughter Kitty although she stood me up two out of three times. I was a great fan of his mother Sally who taught her son how to go “too far.” One of my proudest accomplishments was that I paid Sally $500 a week for 10 years as an editorial stipend for spreading her legs and allowing good ol’ Lenny to pop out.

It was always amazing to me that Sally to the very end denied that Lenny was a junkie and it was even more shocking that she was raped by a burglar when she was 85 years old!

I was innovative and had a pioneer spirit and now today I am an antique who has been buried by the technological changes that have destroyed my very existence. I still long for the days when the IBM typewriter could be used and it’s little ball would seemingly hop around as if it had a life of its own. That typewriter was to me a majestic gift from the gods and today I loathe typing on a computer keyboard, listening to iPod quality music, watching shitty satellite TV or a losing a call on my worthless cell phone.