The night I met Francy I went home with her. We didn't leave the bed for a week. She had been dating a science fiction writer, but he'd been atomized. The hot avaricious sparks that we were throwing off like protons were incendiary. Poor guy didn't stand a chance. The universe was singing our song.

When we finally came up for air I noticed that my dick had swollen up to the size of a junior-league football, and was dripping yellow custard.

For Francy it was an object of curiosity. She wanted me to show it to her friends. I'm a fairly liberated soul, but I was shy about hauling out my ailing junk to satisfy the curiosity of casual acquaintances and bible salesmen.

I went to a urologist who asked "Where have you been putting that thing? I pointed to Francy and said "In her".

I guess it was a sexually transmitted disease. But it didn't come from her pussy, but from her respiratory tract.

The doctor said I was infected with pneumonia bacillus and streptococcus. My cock had a bad cold, treatable with antibiotics and Robitussin.

Francy's roommate was Gary Belson. It his twenties, he was a tawdry young glamour-puss. Lots of mascara, gaudy-glitz, jungle cat-prints, sequins. Tacky yet alluring. We called him Gary Glitter.

Shifting into high hedonism, and having had enough of earthy imponderables, the world was self-medicated and lookin' sharp in glittery platform shoes and velveteen! We were in the analgesic glow of the 1970s Narco-Glitter Disco Age!

Bowie was Ziggy, the New York Dolls were all dolled-up, Elton John was topping the charts, the BeeGees were getting their act together. And punk, as a means of cultural change, was busy being born.

One night when Francy, me, Gary Belson and Bob Rudnick were fucked-up on angel dust and quaaludes Gary was his usual flamboyant and gaudy self, and Bob Rudnick -- whose roommate was a fifteen-year old androgynous snake dancer named Kim -- told him "You're a star", and renamed him the Clit. So it was that Gary was to be known, in perpetuum .


Many of Francy's friends were drug dealers. Her ex-boyfriend was doing serious time for transporting marijuana for the purpose of commerce.

There was Dano from Tuscon.

Dano, who resembled Wild Bill Hickock, moved a lot of high quality weed and coke.

Like outlaws, Dano and his sidekick would swoop into town laden with bottles of Cristal, small mountains of white powder, an assortment of barbituates (Seconal, Nebutol, Quaalude) exceptional cush, and we'd be off for lunch at the Pump Room. Inevitably a disruption would erupt over the wearing of their cowboy hats in the restaurant. After a minor tussle they'd acquiesce and remove their headwear even though -- were they come from -- it was a grievous insult to challenge the wearing large hats.

The last time I saw Dano he'd radically altered his appearance. Instead of looking like a long-haired psychedelic cowboy adorned in indian silver and turquoise squashblossoms, he'd transformed into a normal looking guy. He had a short Republican haircut. He was cleanshaven except for a neatly trimmed porn-star mustache. He was wearing a flannel shirt and tan slacks. His snakeskin boots had been replaced with Rockport Oxfords.

He said "One day a light just went off. If I look like a fireman instead of a dope-dealer it would probably make my life easier."

Jacob was a small man. Gloria, Jacob's girlfriend, was small, too. They were a small couple who lived on Sanibel island. Jacob had made big money dealing large quantities of pot. And Gloria was one of Francy's best friends. They'd attended college together at the University of Arizona at Tucson.

Gloria and Jacob were coming to visit. It would be the first time I'd meet them since Francy and I had been a couple.

As was the custom, they arrived bearing gifts of opiates and hallucinogens.

I had procured tickets for "Lenny", a stageplay about the life and times of Lenny Bruce.

We toked up, snorted many rails of cocaine, dropped acid and headed out for an evening of theater.

The Blackstone theater lobby was abuzz with energy as an animated crowd of urban theater mavens, in search of cultural edification, funneled into the auditorium.

I looked out across the crowd and noticed that most had mutated into iridescent crustacean-like creatures. Skittering excitedly down the aisles they excreted florid, jewel-studded polychromatic guano, to the delight of gilded arachnids and lacquered arthropods who hissed and chattered, checked their ticket stubs and found their seats.

The lights went down and the curtain opened revealing a clearing in the African jungle, a thatched hut in the background, and a central fire around which masked aborigines danced and chanted.

"Did you ever fuck a Jewish girl?" Gloria said in a voice resonant enough to get the attention of the first five or six rows.

Angry whirring and droning admonishment rumbled through the playhouse.

As time passed the play became increasingly intolerable, competing with vastly superior alternative realities.

On stage, the actor playing Lenny Bruce jabbered incessantly, incomprehensibly in an unintelligible language.

Gloria shouts --- more forcibly this time -- "DID YOU EVER FUCK A JEWISH GIRL?!"

The actor stopped and looked at her. But he regained his composure and continued his gibberish soliloquy.

Gloria shrieks "DID YOU EVER FUCK A JEWISH GIRL?!"

The play comes to a complete halt. The audience hisses reproach, harsh like a nettled beehive.

Incensed, the actor playing Lenny Bruce blustered, "Lady! People paid good money to see this performance!"

An usher rushed down the aisle and started strangling Gloria.

"They're certainly getting their money's worth tonight!" I barked at Lenny Bruce as I attempted to break the usher's strangle-hold on Gloria's neck. The house lights came up and the audience was on their feet, snarling and howling.

"The cops are on the way! The cops are on the way!" squawked the enraged usher just as I'd managed to pull him off of Gloria, who was making odd "gakking" and gurgling sounds.

"Lenny woulda loved this!" I brayed approvingly towards the stage.

A small army of ushers had joined the commotion, managed to dislodge us from our seats and was hustling the four of us up the aisle as the audience hooted and yawlped.

The cold Chicago night air was reinvigorating. We all crammed into a cab and squealed off towards our apartment, as angry thespian voices faded into the murmur of the city.

Once we were back at our place I commented on what a delightful evening of theater it had been. Then I went into the back room and took off my clothes. It seemed to be the thing to do at the time. There were all kinds of metaphysical reasons.

Not wanting to appear antisocial, I rejoined Francy, Gloria and Jacob.

Francy was bemused by my nudity, Gloria was transfixed and Jacob was dispassionate, as if this were a normal and convivial evening of social interaction.

I went and sat with Gloria and it wasn't long before she was also naked. I undressed her, but I'm pretty sure she was willing.

I remember lying on top Gloria in the middle of the livingroom floor and whispering to her how beautiful I thought she was.

"Oh, Skip. You don't love her, you love me," Francy said as she and Jacob observed from the sidelines and ingested powerful dope.

I'm not sure, but It's possible -- I've asked Gloria and she's not sure either. But we're pretty sure (Jacob claims it happened.) I fucked a Jewish girl that night.

It was after dark and Francy and I were walking home. As we approached our apartment in the alley behind 711 Diversey Parkway we could see that the door to the place was standing open. The lights were on inside, an invitation for anyone with criminal intent to walk on in and help themselves.

Bob Rudnick had been staying at our place for a few days. I said to Francy "Godamnit! Rudnick left the fuckin' door open!" He was always doing something like that. One time -- while housesitting -- he hung some clothes in the bathroom and turned the shower on hot in order to get out wrinkles. Then he nodded out for several of hours and flooded the landlord's apartment below ours.

We climbed up the stairs and through the open back door into our kitchen.

The place was covered in blood. It looked like a slaughterhouse. Like someone had been ax-murdered. The metallic stink of blood was overwhelming. There was blood all over the floor and pooled over the dirty dishes in the sink. There was a blood trail leading from the back bedroom where Bob had been sleeping. The bed was blood-soaked. There were towels sopped in blood and strewn around the bathroom floor. There were bloody footprints and bloody handprints everywhere. No room was untouched. We were aghast. What had happened here? Had Bob been murdered. Had he murdered someone? Surely no one could survive this volume of blood loss.

I closed the kitchen door. And written in blood on the back of the door was "I'm ok. Gone to the hospital." We both started laughing. I got out the mop and began cleaning up.

A couple of hours later we got a call from Rudnick at the hospital. He'd been sleeping -- he loved his naps -- in the back bedroom. The bed was against a window and he had flailed his arm during a fitful dream, smashing it through the windowpane and slicing an artery. He went careening throughout the apartment like a chicken with his head cut off (or like a junkie with his arm sliced open). He ran into the bathroom and attempted, unsuccessfully, to stem the flow of blood with bath towels. Then into the kitchen to rinse the flow in the sink. Then into the livingroom to call a friend to take him to the hospital. By the time his friend arrived Rudnick had begun to slip into unconsciousness, not an uncommon occurrence for Bob.

His friend arrived and hauled him off to the hospital. But not before Bob, always courteous--even though nearly bled out -- scrawled his bloody message on the back of our kitchen door.

Shortly after we'd become inseparable Francy told me she'd had sex with Charlie Callas.

 

For those who don't know, Charlie Callas was a popular, rubber-faced/stuttering/deranged/ physical comedian during the 60s. He worked with Mel Brooks, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. And he was a frequent guest on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, where Carson eventually banned him because Callas -- bombing badly -- shoved Johnny in an attempt to generate laughs.

Callas started his showbiz career as a drummer and piano player during the Big Band era when he played in the Tommy Dorsey, Claude Thornhill and Buddy Rich bands.

But by the late 60s Charlie Callas was on the stand-up comic circuit, which is how Francy connected with him.

He was performing at a hotel in Kansas City where Francy and her boyfriend were staying. One afternoon her boyfriend was off procuring drugs in order to sell them at a profit while Francy roamed the hotel. She ended up in the opulent lobby that had, among other high-toned accouterments, a grand piano. She sat at the Wurlitzer and started pecking out the Beethoven sonata, "Fluer de Lis" just as Charlie Callas strode into the lobby. Seizing the opportunity (A pretty twenty-year-old attempting to play the piano in the lobby of the hotel where he was headlining.), he said "Ah..Fluer de Lis" and joined her on the bench, deftly tickling the ivories in tandem.

They ended up in his hotel room. He ordered champagne from room service and pretty soon they were fucking. Francy told me he had a big dick and he talked to her in a Donald Duck voice as they screwed. To me, that would have been worth the price of admission right there.

Charlie invited Francy back to his room the next afternoon. She accepted as he said goodbye by chittering like a squirrel and making the sound of depth-charges exploding in the inky fathomage.

Later that evening Francy reconnected with her boyfriend. She told him she'd met Charlie Callas, leaving out the part about the fucking.

Then she asked her boyfriend "Would you like to meet him"

So the next afternoon, at the appointed time, Francy -- with her boyfriend in tow -- knocked on Charlie Callas' hotel-room door.

Charlie Callas opened the door.

He was known as a bug-eyed comic. But his eyes had popped out their sockets, and were twirling in mid-air like a Tex Avery wolf, when he saw that his date was in the company of a young man.

Behind Charlie, in the room, were a couple of bottles of Dom chilling in two silver champagne buckets. And a dozen long-stemmed red roses strewn across the bed.

As his eyes whirled and his tongue unreeled, he made a high whining sound, followed by the screeeech of rubber on asphalt, followed by the sound of breaking glass. And then he slammed the door in their faces.

Through the door as they walked away they could hear the muffled sounds of grenades exploding and the screams of dying horses and regimental trumpets.

"Fuck 'im if he can't take a joke" Francy said.