True stories

I lived with a Jewish girlfriend in the West Village, right around the corner from the White Horse Tavern, where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death, and which is still open. I knew her from back in high school, and liked her a lot, but really as a friend. She is a very good person and hardworking. I was up there playing music and doing a lot of reading, but not working a job. Her friends weren’t too impressed with me, once we took a cab uptown and when we arrived, I said “I don’t have any money.” Not, like, I’ll get you back, but just, I’m broke. The cab driver, a Muslim, turned around and beamed, I made his day. “You don’t have any money?” This really impressed him. Later I overheard a snide remark, “Imagine being able to pay for goods and services.”

I went to the Finnegans Wake club, because I was just that pretentious, and they read a passage that was joking about venereal disease, but in obscure terms. I laughed, and looked up, and the whole room was glaring at me. They didn’t get the joke. One lady literally told me to move to Los Angeles, I guess because I had a blonde ponytail.

Later the girlfriend’s mom came to town, and we went out to eat. I’d known her for years. During dinner she said that Palestinians were dirty and lazy and didn’t want to work. I had been reading Noam Chomsky about the Israel-Palestine issue, so I was sympathetic towards the Palestinians, but I also took umbrage about the lazy part, I took it personally. So I objected, and quickly it got to the point where she said I was just antisemitic, apparently unaware of the irony that she had just stimgatized a people. I said that T.S. Eliot was antisemitic.

I departed the apartment soon thereafter.