We went looking for my New York gang of friends. The crazy flowers bloom there too. We wentto Tom Saybrook’s first. Tom is a sad, handsome fellow, sweet, generous, and amenable; only oncein a while he suddenly has fits of depression and rushes off without saying a word to anyone. Thisnight he was overjoyed. .Sal, where did you find these absolutely wonderful people? I’ve never seenanyone like them...I found them in the West..Dean was having his kicks; he put on a jazz record, grabbed Marylou, held her tight, andbounced against her with the beat of the music. She bounced right back. It was a real love dance.Ian MacArthur came in with a huge gang. The New Year’s weekend began, and lasted three daysand three nights. Great gangs got in the Hudson and swerved in the snowy New York streets fromparty to party. I brought Lucille and her sister to the biggest party. When Lucille saw me with Deanand Marylou her face darkened - she sensed the madness they put in me..I don’t like you when you’re with them...Ah, it’s all right, it’s just kicks. We only live once. We’re having a good time...No, it’s sad and I don’t like it..Then Marylou began making love to me; she said Dean was going to stay with Camille and shewanted me to go with her. .Come back to San Francisco with us. We’ll live together. I’ll be a goodgirl for you.. But I knew Dean loved Marylou, and I also knew Marylou was doing this to makeLucille jealous, and I wanted nothing of it. Still and all, I licked my lips for the luscious blonde. WhenLucille saw Marylou pushing me into the corners and giving me the word and forcing kisses on meshe accepted Dean’s invitation to go out in the car; but they just talked and drank some of theSouthern moonshine I left in the compartment. Everything was being mixed up, and all was falling. Iknew my affair with Lucille wouldn’t last much longer. She wanted me to be her way. She wasmarried to a longshoreman who treated her badly. I was willing to marry her and take her babydaughter and all if she divorced the husband; but there wasn’t even enough money to get a divorceand the whole thing was hopeless, besides which Lucille would never understand me because I liketoo many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop.This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.The parties were enormous; there were at least a hundred people at a basement apartment in theWest Nineties. People overflowed into the cellar compartments near the furnace. Something wasgoing on in every corner, on every bed and couch - not an orgy but just a New Year’s party withfrantic screaming and wild radio music. There was even a Chinese girl. Dean ran like Groucho Marxfrom group to group, digging everybody. Periodically we rushed out to the car to pick up morepeople. Damion came. Damion is the hero of my New York gang, as Dean is the chief hero of theWestern. They immediately took a dislike to each other. Damion’s girl suddenly socked Damion onthe jaw with a roundhouse right. He stood reeling. She carried him home. Some of our madnewspaper friends came in from the office with bottles. There was a tremendous and wonderfulsnowstorm going on outside. Ed Dunkel met Lucille’s sister and disappeared with her; I forgot to saythat Ed Dunkel is a very smooth man with the women. He’s six foot four, mild, affable, agreeable,bland, and delightful. He helps women on with their coats. That’s the way to do things. At fiveo’clock in the morning we were all rushing through the backyard of a tenement and climbing inthrough a window of an apartment where a huge party was going on. At dawn we were back at TomSaybrook’s. People were drawing pictures and drinking stale beer. I slept on a couch with a girlcalled Mona in my arms. Great groups filed in from the old Columbia Campus bar. Everything in life,all the faces of life, were piling into the same dank room. At Ian MacArthur’s the party went on. Ian75MacArthur is a wonderful sweet fellow who wears glasses and peers out of them with delight. Hebegan to learn .Yes!. to everything, just like Dean at this time, and hasn’t stopped since. To the wildsounds of Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray blowing .The Hunt,. Dean and I played catch withMarylou over the couch; she was no small doll either. Dean went around with no undershirt, just hispants, barefoot, till it was time to hit the car and fetch more people. Everything happened. We foundthe wild, ecstatic Roll Greb and spent a night at his house on Long Island. Roll lives in a nice housewith his aunt; when she dies the house is all his. Meanwhile she refuses to comply with any of hiswishes and hates his friends. He brought this ragged gang of Dean, Marylou, Ed, and me, and begana roaring party. The woman prowled upstairs; she threatened to call the police. .Oh, shut up, youold bag!. yelled Greb. I wondered how he could live with her like this. He had more books than I’veever seen in all my life - two libraries, two rooms loaded from floor to ceiling around all four walls,and such books as the Apocryphal Something-or-Other in ten volumes. He played Verdi operas andpantomimed them in his pajamas with a great rip down the back. He didn’t give a damn aboutanything. He is a great scholar who goes reeling down the New York waterfront with originalseventeenth-century musical manuscripts under his arm, shouting. He crawls like a big spider throughthe streets. His excitement blew out of his eyes in stabs of fiendish light. He rolled his neck in spasticecstasy. He lisped, he writhed, he flopped, he moaned, he howled, he fell back in despair. He couldhardly get a word out, he was so excited with life. Dean stood before him with head bowed,repeating over and over again, .Yes . . . Yes . . . Yes.. He took me into a corner. .That Roll Grebis the greatest, most wonderful of all. That’s what I was trying to tell you - that’s what I want to be. Iwant to be like him. He’s never hung-up, he goes every direction, he lets it all out, he knows time, hehas nothing to do but rock back and forth. Man, he’s the end! You see, if you go like him all the timeyou’ll finally get it...Get what?..IT! IT! I’ll tell you - now no time, we have no time now.. Dean rushed back to watch Roll Grebsome more.George Shearing, the great jazz pianist, Dean said, was exactly like Roll Greb. Dean and I wentto see Shearing at Bird-* land in the midst of the long, mad weekend. The place was deserted, wewere the first customers, ten o’clock. Shearing’1 came out, blind, led by the hand to his keyboard.He was distinguished-looking Englishman with a stiff white collar,! slightly beefy, blond, with adelicate English-summer’s-night air about him that came out in the first rippling sweet number! heplayed as the bass-player leaned to him reverently and} thrummed the beat. The drummer, DenzilBest, sat motionless! except for his wrists snapping the brushes. And Shearing began to rock; a smilebroke over his ecstatic face; he began to rock in the piano seat, back and forth, slowly at first, thenthe beat went up, and he began rocking fast, his left foot jumped up with every beat, his neck beganto rock crookedly, he brought his face down to the keys, he pushed his hair back, his combed hairdissolved, he began to sweat. The music I picked up. The bass-player hunched over and socked itin, faster and faster, it seemed faster and faster, that’s all. Shearing began to play his chords; theyrolled out of the piano in great rich showers, you’d think the man wouldn’t have time to line them up.They rolled and rolled like the sea. Folks yelled for him to .Go!. Dean was sweating; the swearpoured down his collar. .There he is! That’s him! Old God! Old God Shearing! Yes! Yes! Yes!.And Shearing was conscious of the madman behind him, he could hear every one of Dean’s gaspsand imprecations, he could sense it though he couldn’t see. .That’s right!. Dean said. .Yes!.Shearing smiled; he rocked. Shearing rose from the piano, dripping with sweat; these were his great1949 days before he became cool and commercial. When he was gone Dean pointed to the emptypiano seat. .God’s empty chair,. he said. On the piano a horn sat; its golden shadow made a strange76reflection along the desert caravan painted on the wall behind the drums. God was gone; it was thesilence of his departure. It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night. Dean was popeyedwith awe. This madness would lead nowhere. I didn’t know what was happening to me, and Isuddenly realized it was only the tea that we were smoking; Dean had bought some in New York. Itmade me think that everything was about to arrive - the moment when you know all and everythingis decided forever.775I left everybody and went home to rest. My aunt said I was wasting my time hanging around withDean and his gang. I knew that was wrong, too. Life is life, and kind is kind. What I wanted was totake one more magnificent trip to the West Coast and get back in time for the spring semester inschool. And what a trip it turned out to be! I only went along for the ride, and to see what else Deanwas going to do, and finally, also, knowing Dean would go back to Camille in Frisco, I wanted tohave an affair with Marylou. We got ready to cross the groaning continent again. I drew my GIcheck and gave Dean eighteen dollars to mail to his wife; she was waiting for him to come home andshe was broke. What was on Marylou’s mind I don’t know. Ed Dunkel, as ever, just followed.There were long, funny days spent in Carlo’s apartment before we left. He went around in hisbathrobe and made semi-ironical speeches: .Now I’m not trying to take your hincty sweets fromyou, but it seems to me the time has come to decide what you are and what you’re going to do..Carlo was working as typist in an office. .I want to know what all this sitting around the house allday is intended to mean. What all this talk is and what you propose to do. Dean, why did you leaveCamille and pick up Marylou?. No answer - giggles. .Marylou, why are you traveling around thecountry like this and what are your womanly intentions concerning the shroud?. Same answer. .EdDunkel, why did you abandon your new wife in Tucson and what are you doing here sitting on yourbig fat ass? Where’s your home? What’s your job?. Ed Dunkel bowed his head in genuinebefuddlement. .Sal - how comes it you’ve fallen on such sloppy days and what have you done withLucille?. He adjusted his bathrobe and sat facing us all. .The days of wrath are yet to come. Theballoon won’t sustain you much longer. And not only that, but it’s an abstract balloon. You’ll all goflying to the West Coast and come staggering back in search of your stone..In these days Carlo had developed a tone of voice which he hoped sounded like what he calledThe Voice of Rock; the whole idea was to stun people into the realization of the rock. .You pin adragon to your hats,. he warned us; .you’re up in the attic with the bats.. His mad eyes glittered atus. Since the Dakar Doldrums he had gone through a terrible period which he called the HolyDoldrums, or Harlem Doldrums, when he lived in Harlem in midsummer and at night woke up in hislonely room and heard .the great machine. descending from the sky; and when he walked on 12 5thStreet .under water. with all the other fish. It was a riot of radiant ideas that had come to enlightenhis brain. He made Marylou sit on his lap and commanded her to subside. He told Dean, .Whydon’t you just sit down and relax? Why do you jump around so much?. Dean ran around, puttingsugar in his coffee and saying, .Yes! Yes! Yes!. At night Ed Dunkel slept on the floor on cushions,Dean and Marylou pushed Carlo out of bed, and Carlo sat up in the kitchen over his kidney stew,mumbling the predictions of the rock. I came in days and watched everything.Ed Dunkel said to me, .Last night I walked clear down to Times Square and just as I arrived Isuddenly realized I was a ghost - it was my ghost walking on the sidewalk.. He said these things tome without comment, nodding his head emphatically. Ten hours later, in the midst of someone else’sconversation, Ed said, .Yep, it was my ghost walking on the sidewalk..Suddenly Dean leaned to me earnestly and said, .Sal, I have something to ask of you - veryimportant to me - I wonder how you’ll take it - we’re buddies, aren’t we?..Sure are, Dean.. He almost blushed. Finally he came out with it: he wanted me to workMarylou. I didn’t ask him why because I knew he wanted to see what Marylou was like withanother man. We were sitting in Ritzy’s Bar when he proposed the idea; we’d spent an hour walkingTimes Square, looking for Hassel. Ritzy’s Bar is the hoodlum bar of the streets around Times78Square; it changes names every year. You walk in there and you don’t see a single girl, even in thebooths, just a great mob of young men dressed in all varieties of hoodlum cloth, from red shirts tozoot suits. It is also the hustlers’ bar - the boys who make a living among the sad old homos of theEighth Avenue night. Dean walked in there with his eyes slitted to see every single face. There werewild Negro queers, sullen guys with guns, shiv-packing seamen, thin, noncommittal junkies, and anoccasional well-dressed middle-aged detective, posing as a bookie and hanging around half forinterest and half for duty. It was the typical place for Dean to put down his request. All kinds of evilplans are hatched in Ritzy’s Bar - you can sense it in the air - and all kinds of mad sexual routines areinitiated to go with them. The safecracker proposes not only a certain loft on i4th Street to thehoodlum, but that they sleep together. Kinsey spent a lot of time in Ritzy’s Bar, interviewing some ofthe boys; I was there the night his assistant came, in 1945. Hassel and Carlo were interviewed.Dean and I drove back to the pad and found Marylou in bed. Dunkel was roaming his ghostaround New York. Dean told her what we had decided. She said she was pleased. I wasn’t so suremyself. I had to prove that I’d go through with it. The-bed had been the deathbed of a big man andsagged in the middle. Marylou lay there, with Dean and myself on each side of her, poised on theupjutting mattress-ends, not knowing what to say. I said, .Ah hell, I can’t do this...Go on, man, you promised!. said Dean..What about Marylou?. I said. .Come on, Marylou, what do you think?..Go ahead,. she said.She embraced me and I tried to forget old Dean was there. Every time I realized he was there inthe dark, listening for every sound, I couldn’t do anything but laugh. It was horrible..We must all relax,. said Dean..I’m afraid I can’t make it. Why don’t you go in the kitchen a minute?.Dean did so. Marylou was so lovely, but I whispered, .Wait until we be lovers in San Francisco;my heart isn’t in it.. I was right, she could tell. It was three children of the earth trying to decidesomething in the night and having all the weight of past centuries ballooning in the dark before them.There was a strange quiet in the apartment. I went and tapped Dean and told him to go to Marylou;and I retired to the couch. I could hear Dean, blissful and blabbering and frantically rocking. Only aguy who’s spent five years in jail can go to such maniacal helpless extremes; beseeching at theportals of the soft source, mad with a completely physical realization of the origins of life-bliss; blindlyseeking to return the way he came. This is the result of years looking at sexy pictures behind bars;looking at the legs and breasts of women in popular magazines; evaluating the hardness of the steelhalls and the softness of the woman who is not there. Prison is where you promise yourself the rightto live. Dean had never seen his mother’s face. Every new girl, every new wife, every new child wasan addition to his bleak impoverishment. Where was his father? - old bum Dean Moriarty theTinsmith, riding freights, working as a scullion in railroad cookshacks, stumbling, down-crashing inwino alley nights, expiring on coal piles, dropping his yellowed teeth one by one in the gutters of theWest. Dean had every right to die the sweet deaths of complete love of his Marylou-1 didn’t want tointerfere, I just wanted to follow.Carlo came back at dawn and put on his bathrobe. He wasn’t sleeping any more those days..Eeh!. he screamed. He was going out of his mind from the confusion of jam on the floor, pants,dresses thrown around, cigarette butts, dirty dishes, open books - it was a great forum we werehaving. Every day the world groaned to turn and we were making our appalling studies of the night.Marylou was black and blue from a fight with Dean about something; his face was scratched. It wastime to go.We drove to my house, a whole gang of ten, to get my bag and call Old Bull Lee in New Orleans79from the phone in the bar where Dean and I had our first talk years ago when he came to my door tolearn to write. We heard Bull’s whining voice eighteen hundred miles away. .Say, what do you boysexpect me to do with this Galatea Dunkel? She’s been here two weeks now, hiding in her room andrefusing to talk to either Jane or me. Have you got this character Ed Dunkel with you? For krissakesbring him down and get rid of her. She’s sleeping in our best bedroom and’s run clear out of money.This ain’t a hotel.. He assured Bull with whoops and cries over the phone - there was Dean,Marylou, Carlo, Dunkel, me, lan MacArthur, his wife, Tom Saybrook, God knows who else, allyelling and drinking beer over the phone at befuddled Bull, who above all things hated confusion..Well,. he said, .maybe you’ll make better sense when you gets down here if you gets down here..I said good-by to my aunt and promised to be back in two weeks and took off for California again.806It was drizzling and mysterious at the beginning of our journey. I could see that it was all going tobe one big saga of the mist. .Whooee!. yelled Dean. .Here we go!. And he hunched over thewheel and gunned her; he was back in his element, everybody could see that. We were all delighted,we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noblefunction of the time, move.And we moved! We flashed past the mysterious white signs in the night somewhere in NewJersey that say SOUTH (with an arrow) and WEST (with an arrow) and took the south one. NewOrleans! It burned in our brains. From the dirty snows of .frosty fagtown New York,. as Deancalled it, all the way to the greeneries and river smells of old New Orleans at the washed-out bottomof America; then west. Ed was in the back seat; Marylou and Dean and I sat in front and had thewarmest talk about the goodness and joy of life. Dean suddenly became tender. .Now dammit, lookhere, all of you, we all must admit that everything is fine and there’s no need in the world to worry,and in fact we should realize what it would mean to us to UNDERSTAND that we’re not REALLYworried about ANYTHING. Am I right?. We all agreed. .Here we go, we’re all together . . . Whatdid we do in New York? Let’s forgive.. We all had our spats back there. .That’s behind us, merelyby miles and inclinations. Now we’re heading down to New Orleans to dig Old Bull Lee and ain’tthat going to be kicks and listen will you to this old tenorman blow his top. - he shot up the radiovolume till the car shuddered - .and listen to him tell the story and put down true relaxation andknowledge..We all jumped to the music and agreed. The purity of the road. The white line in the middle of thehighway unrolled and hugged our left front tire as if glued to our groove. Dean hunched his muscularneck, T-shirted in the winter night, and blasted the car along. He insisted I drive through Baltimorefor traffic practice; that was all right, except he and Marylou insisted on steering while they kissedand fooled around. It was crazy; the radio was on full blast. Dean beat drums on the dashboard till agreat sag developed in it; I did too. The poor Hudson - the slow boat to China - was receiving herbeating..Oh man, what kicks!. yelled Dean. .Now Marylou, listen really, honey, you know that I’mhotrock capable of everything at the same time and I have unlimited energy - now in San Franciscowe must go on living together. I know just the place for you - at the end of the regular chain-gang run-I’ll be home just a cut-hair less than every two days and for twelve hours at a stretch, and man, youknow what we can do in twelve hours, darling. Meanwhile I’ll go right on living at Camille’s likenothin, see, she won’t know. We can work it, we’ve done it before.. It was all right with Marylou,she was really out for Camille’s scalp. The understanding had been that Marylou would switch to mein Frisco, but I now began to see they were going to stick and I was going to be left alone on my buttat the other end of the continent. But why think about that when all the golden land’s ahead of youand all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you’re alive tosee?We arrived in Washington at dawn. It was the day of Harry Truman’s inauguration for his secondterm. Great displays of war might were lined along Pennsylvania Avenue as we rolled by in ourbattered boat. There were 6-295, PT boats, artillery, all kinds of war material that lookedmurderous in the snowy grass; the last thing was a regular small ordinary lifeboat that looked pitifuland foolish. Dean slowed down to look at it. He kept shaking his head in awe. .What are thesepeople up to? Harry’s sleeping somewhere in this town. . . . Good old Harry. . . . Man from81Missouri, as I am. . . . That must be his own boat..Dean went to sleep in the back seat and Dunkel drove. We gave him specific instructions to takeit easy. No sooner were we snoring than he gunned the car up to eighty, bad bearings and all, andnot only that but he made a triple pass at a spot where a cop was arguing with a motorist - he was inthe fourth lane of a four-lane highway, going the wrong way. Naturally the cop took after us with hissiren whining. We were stopped. He told us to follow him to the station house. There was a meancop in there who took an immediate dislike to Dean; he could smell jail all over him. He sent hiscohort outdoors to question Marylou and me privately. They wanted to know how old Marylou was,they were trying to whip up a Mann Act idea. But she had her marriage certificate. Then they tookme aside alone and wanted to know who was sleeping with Marylou. .Her husband,. I said quitesimply. They were curious. Something was fishy. They tried some amateur Sherlocking by asking thesame questions twice, expecting us to make a slip. I said, .Those two fellows are going back towork on the railroad in California, this is the short one’s wife, and I’m a friend on a two-weekvacation from college..The cop smiled and said, .Yeah? Is this really your own wallet?.Finally the mean one inside fined Dean twenty-five dollars. We told them we only had forty to goall the way to the Coast; they said that made no difference to them. When Dean protested, the meancop threatened to take him back to Pennsylvania and slap a special charge on him..What charge?..Never mind what charge. Don’t worry about that, wiseguy..We had to give them the twenty-five. But first Ed Dunkel, that culprit, offered to go to jail. Deanconsidered it. The cop was infuriated; he said, .If you let your partner go to jail I’m taking you backto Pennsylvania right now. You hear that?. All we wanted to do was go. .Another speeding ticket inVirginia and you lose your car,. said the mean cop as a parting volley. Dean was red in the face. Wedrove off silently. It was just like an invitation to steal to take our trip-money away from us. Theyknew we were broke and had no relatives on the road or to wire to for money. The American policeare involved in psychological warfare against those Americans who don’t frighten them with imposingpapers and threats. It’s a Victorian police force; it peers out of musty windows and wants to inquireabout everything, and can make crimes if the crimes don’t exist to its satisfaction. .Nine lines ofcrime, one of boredom,. said Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Dean was so mad he wanted to come backto Virginia and shoot the cop as soon as he had a gun..Pennsylvania!. he scoffed. .I wish I knew what that charge was! Vag, probably; take all mymoney and charge me vag. Those guys have it so damn easy. They’ll out and shoot you if youcomplain, too.. There was nothing to do but get happy with ourselves again and forget about it.When we got through Richmond we began forgetting about it, and soon everything was okay.Now we had fifteen dollars to go all the way. We’d have to pick up hitchhikers and bum quartersoff them for gas. In the Virginia wilderness suddenly we saw a man walking on the road. Deanzoomed to a stop. I looked back and said he was only a bum and probably didn’t have a cent..We’ll just pick him up for kicks!. Dean laughed. The man was a ragged, bespectacled madtype, walking along reading a paperbacked muddy book he’d found in a culvert by the road. He gotin the car and went right on reading; he was incredibly filthy and covered with scabs. He said hisname was Hyman Solomon and that he walked all over the USA, knocking and sometimes kickingat Jewish doors and demanding money: .Give me money to eat, I am a Jew..He said it worked very well and that it was coming to him. We asked him what he was reading.He didn’t know. He didn’t bother to look at the title page. He was only looking at the words, asthough he had found the real Torah where it belonged, in the wilderness.82.See? See? See?. cackled Dean, poking my ribs. .I told you it was kicks. Everybody’s kicks,man!. We carried Solomon all the way to Testament. My brother by now was in his new house onthe other side of town. Here we were back on the long, bleak street with the railroad track runningdown the middle and the sad, sullen Southerners loping in front of hardware stores and five-andtens.Solomon said, .I see you people need a little money to continue your journey. You wait for meand I’ll go hustle up a few dollars at a Jewish home and I’ll go along with you as far as Alabama..Dean was all beside himself with happiness; he and I rushed off to buy bread and cheese spread fora lunch in the car. Marylou and Ed waited in the car. We spent two hours in Testament waiting forHyman Solomon to show up; he was hustling for his bread somewhere in town, but we couldn’t seehim. The sun began to grow red and late.Solomon never showed up so we roared out of Testament. .Now you see, Sal, God does exist,because we keep getting hung-up with this town, no matter what we try to do, and you’ll notice thestrange Biblical name of it, and that strange Biblical character who made us stop here once more,and all things tied together all over like rain connecting everybody the world over by chain touch. . ... Dean rattled on like this; he was overjoyed and exuberant. He and I suddenly saw the wholecountry like an oyster for us to open; and the pearl was there, the pearl was there. Off we roaredsouth. We picked up another hitchhiker. This was a sad young kid who said he had an aunt whoowned a grocery store in Dunn, North Carolina, right outside Fayetteville. .When we get there canyou bum a buck off her? Right! Fine! Let’s go!. We were in Dunn in an hour, at dusk. We drove towhere the kid said his aunt had the grocery store. It was a sad little street that dead-ended at afactory wall. There was a grocery store but there was no aunt. We wondered what the kid wastalking about. We asked him how far he was going; he didn’t know. It was a big hoax; once upon atime, in some lost back-alley adventure, he had seen the grocery store in Dunn, and it was the firststory that popped into his disordered, feverish mind. We bought him a hot dog, but Dean said wecouldn’t take him along because we needed room to sleep and room for hitchhikers who could buy alittle gas. This was sad but true. We left him in Dunn at nightfall.I drove through South Carolina and beyond Macon, Georgia, as Dean, Marylou, and Ed slept.All alone in the night I had my own thoughts and held the car to the white line in the holy road. Whatwas I doing? Where was I going? I’d soon find out. I got dog-tired beyond Macon and woke upDean to resume. We got out of the car for air and suddenly both of us were stoned with joy to