Chapter 4

Meanwhile back in New York, I had a literary agent who was actively hustling two stage plays I had written. We met in Paris a few years earlier. I was working playing jazz at the famous Paris Blue Note with guitarist Jimmy Gourley, and later with Kenny Clark (the famous drummer) and Bud Powell (the famous pianist). She was a student: After I moved to New York, sometime later and unbeknownst to me she did too. She came to visit me in my studio and I told her about the play that my stay in Paris had inspired, "Subway Grate," and the second one, inspired by what is now called "The Cuban Missile Crisis," called "Shelter." She told me she was now a literary agent and asked if she could read them. I gave her a copy of each, and she called only a few days later and asked if she could be my agent and try to get these plays sold and produced. I said "Sure."

The first play, "Subway Grate," was the retelling of a scene I witnessed in Paris. I was sipping espresso in a small outdoor cafe on the left bank. Two homeless women were drinking from a bottle of red wine, passing it back and forth while ensconced on a subway grate. Apparently the woman who had brought the wine was attempting to bribe her way onto a spot on the grate to share for the approaching night. These grates, which are exhaust vents over the subway ("Metro"), release warm air. They appear all over Paris in the street above where the Metro runs. The Parisians have a name for homeless street people, they call them "clouchards" (pronounced clo-shard). They are a tradition in Paris. They are the original social dropouts. They are ragged but possess a certain élan. They gather trash, bottles, cans, paper, rags and plastic to support themselves. They are proud to be Parisians. Their ragged clothing is often flamboyant, like a costume. After the wine was gone the woman who was there before the one with the wine arrived ordered the other off the grate. Eventually this noisy conflict escalated into a fist fight with the wine bearer being driven off the grate and down the street.

This action left an indelible impression on me. As I recalled it afterwards, I had a flash of enlightenment. Even the clouchard who views the competitive society with disdain, cannot really be free of it. In spite of Tim Leary's ravings there is no place to drop out to, other than death.

So back in New York, I had acquired a literary agent, I was holding rehearsals for a second play, and writing a third one. I was experimenting with free-form jazz. I was painting and filming. Really creative people were coming to my studio loft to participate with me in all these endeavors and things were going pretty good, except for not getting paid for all this effort, but it was a lot of fun and very exciting.

In the winter of 1962 I fell head over heels in love with a charming young lady of Irish descent. Mary was bright, vivacious, warm, slender, blonde and beautiful. She first came to my loft with her Japanese-American boyfriend. He was one of the group of artists who came from downtown to jam with me. He played alto sax. He was a handsome quiet lad. For some reason he left New York and I asked Mary over for dinner. She came and soon after moved in with me. I was thrilled. She had a fine figure and a face like an antique classic cameo. We had many things in common, tastes in food, music, art, politics and lifestyle. I was ecstatic. I can remember throwing myself onto the huge snow piles on the sidewalks, left there by the snow plows, when out walking one day with Mary. This was early in our relationship.

However, in just a few weeks Mary turned up pregnant. She didn't want to have the baby and become a mother at this time in her life. We tried hone remedies for her condition. She thought soaking in hot water would cause an early miscarriage. We tried this every evening, filling the barrel tub with hot water for her to soak in. It didn't work. She became desperate. Abortion was still illegal. I called Maxine who said she knew a good abortionist on the island. She got in touch with this person and set up everything for us. I scraped together all the money I could get my hands on, bought a round-trip airplane ticket and gave Mary enough money to pay for the operation. I couldn't raise up enough money to go with her, so she had to go alone.

I waited in my loft, worried sick. I couldn't eat, sleep, or work. I was consumed with guilt, fear for Mary and anxiety, but Mary came through all right to my great relief. Nobody should ever have to go through the kind of torture an illegal abortion puts you through. It didn't do our relationship any good. Her old boyfriend returned to New York and she returned to his loft. I felt pretty bad about that and shed many a tear.

But my scene was still going strong and I was able to retreat into it and distract myself from the pain. Then one day in late November, 11/22/63, I was painting and listening to music on the radio when the news interrupted saying that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas and a short time later that he was dead. The very next day my agent called me. She was extremely frightened. She said she would no longer be able to represent me. She would be returning my two stage plays.

To me both plays were not that controversial, "Subway Grate" about homelessness in Paris and "Shelter" about life in a bomb shelter in L.A. after the bomb had been dropped. During its first New York reading, "Shelter" was greeted with laughter so long and loud I was flattered. It gave me a new viewpoint on the project. The last scene, written on my first acid trip, was serious enough to quell the guffaws. 

This is just a minute example of the immediate resultant collateral damage the awful assassination of our president caused. I've always had a great admiration for JFK as a politician and as a man. I have yet to see a man grow so fast under such pressure. He had the true strength, true courage and the true ability to lead. He loved, appreciated and supported the arts. The only other example of that accelerated growth was his brother Bobby. Not that there weren't other great men at that time, but when you consider where they started from and where they were before they were killed, only then is the real magnitude of the tragedy revealed, not only for our nation, but for the world, when those two souls were snuffed out. Those two murders and the slaying of Dr. Martin Luther King have stunted, stained and shamed our nation.