Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Summer 65 - Jim Carroll
Deborah Duckster, the debutante, Ned the fag, Marc Clutcher, and I were up bullshitting the night at pal Joey's apartment on East 10th Street. By about five a.m. we were all whacked out from too much dope and too many late show TV ads about buying lots for cheap in some New Jersey swamp etc. that we decide to screw the ride uptown and shack up there for the night. First we plan to make it to RATNER'S for some mushroom soup breakfast. We walk out into the pleasant morning air and what horrible bringdown is there to greet us: out on the sidewalk in front of the next building a totally naked woman groaning in slow pain, blood splashed all over the pavement. Before I know it, in some strange dope flash I'm next to her, and her hand reaches into mine holding tight she mumbles, "I let them..." She must have been about twenty-five and a pretty face under the red and tangled hair all knotted by blood. I can't do anything but hold her hand and look around at everyone else. I spot a long deep gorge in her ankle and it's oozing blood in slowmotion spurts. Deborah half-faints onto a car hood. Joey's hopping steps to call an ambulance and the cops. Ned the fag is zonked on repulsion. She keeps mumbling groan talk; my first thought was she was some junkie hooker from up Third Avenue who crossed a pimp and got hacked up in a car and dumped here. But she's too tan and pretty to be a junkie-whore. I could see the outline of white skin from the strap marks of a bikini. Third Ave. and Fourteenth St. hookers are the cheapest and ugliest around and they sure don't spend their days at beaches getting tans. Then I spot Ned the fag staring horribly up the building's facade and I realized the obvious. The fifth floor window was open to the hilt: this chick had taken a dry dive. Joey nodded as I looked at the window...I was the last one to figure it out. And she's clutching me and I keep letting soft gestures out... What the fuck am I supposed to say? Stoned from the such strong grass we smoked, here in the cosmos holding a suicide case at five a.m.? Now a bunch of morning people surround us and finally a cop car pulls up... I walk over and bum a smoke from the dog walker, my hand shaking badly. The cops toss a blanket over her body and a few questions at us. They want to know why Deborah and Ned keep fainting on each other if we don't know who she is. I explain we're not used to walking out to a dry dive case so early in the morning, dumb ass cops. I float back into Joey's apartment with that pleading face of hers (for who? for what?) on my mind, took a bang of H and went off to a nod, my nerves calmed a bit...it will all come back. These things happen. - From The Basketball Diaries
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