Eyes shrewdly narrowed, mouth
slackened in the extremity of per–
spicuous sentience, he kept tabs,
like a suspicious proprietor, on his
environment. He stood always a
little apart from the group. His
feet solidly planted, his shoulders
drawn up, his elbows in, hands
pressed to sides, he was a pylon
around whose implacability the
world obsequiously careered.
Occasionally he brandished his
padded shoulders, warning hu–
manity to clear him a space. He
flourished his thirty-one inch pegs
like banners. His two and seven–
eighths inch brim was snapped with
absolute symmetry. Its exactness
was a symbol of his control, his
domination of contingency. From
time to time he turned to the can–
dy store window, and with an eso–
teric gesture, reshaped his roll col–
lar, which came up very high on
his neck. He was, indeed, up to
the neck in somewhereness.
He affected a white streak, made
with powder, in his hair. This was
the outer sign of a significant, pro–
phetic mutation. And he always
wore dark glasses, because normal
light offended his eyes. He was an
underground man, requiring espe–
cial adjustment to ordinary condi–
tions; he was a lucifugous creature
of the darkness, where sex, gam–
bling, crime, and other bold acts
of consequence occurred.
At intervals he made an inspec–
tion tour of the neighborhood to
see that everything was in order.
The importance of this round was
723
implicit in the portentous trochees
of his stride, which, being unnatu–
rally accentual, or discontinuous,
expressed his particularity, lifted
him, so to speak, out of the ordin–
ary rhythm of normal cosmic pul–
sati_on. He was a discrete entity–
separate, critical, and defining.
Jive music and tea were the two
most important components of the
hipster's life. Music was not, as has
often been supposed, a stimulus to
dancing. For the hipster rarely
danced; he was beyond the reach
of stimuli.
If
he did dance, it was
half parody-"second removism"–
and he danced only to the off-beat,
in a morganatic one to two ratio
with the music.
Actually, jive music was the hip-
Water Colors by
BYRON
BROWNE
$150 each
1
11111115
EAST 57
NEW YORK
