ABSTRACT
Over at Twelfth and B, I’m working on my first books, waking up late in the morning, writing through the afternoon, then staggering out onto Avenue B, my mind blank after hours at the typewriter, down the Avenue to Tompkins Square Park to stare at the many-ethnicked panorama, the swarming kids, the old chess players, the cavorting dogs, and the sexy subterranean women, especially after miniskirts and see-through blouses come into vogue, then over to Stanley’s [bar] across the street for a beer or two and a little idle chat with Stanley or whomever, before the place gets jammed with its usual population of creative genius, Puerto Rican street guys, chicks on the make, hip tourists from the West Village or Uptown. Then dinner, and the prospect of meeting a friend or two and going over to some interesting place like Slug’s on East Third to hear some great jazz or hitting the late show at the Charles Theatre next door to see an avant-garde film. When I don’t have to sweat some ill-paying job and am not getting robbed or mugged too much or getting too paranoid about getting robbed or mugged too much and the roaches and water bugs and rats aren’t too bad and the heat is working in the winter or it isn’t too hot in the summer and the pachangas aren’t coming in too loud across the air shaft and the poisonous stench from Elk’s furniture-stripping shop downstairs isn’t seeping through the floor or the soot spew from the Con Ed stacks on Fourteenth Street isn’t boiling through the windows, it’s the best situation and schedule for working on a book I’ve ever had, before or since.
