526
one table a small hipster com–
ponent keeps its own counsel.
Cool
is their keyword:
Keep cool, man,
or you'll burn 'yourself out.
The
address
man
still survives with
them, but now it is no longer
strictly slang, it also connotes a
large abstraction, a featureless des–
ignation.
Here and there you see the un–
fallen faces of girls fresh from
Eastern colleges, or free on their
winter projects. At ten, it is the
mystery of birth that fascinates
them; at twenty, its inverse, abor–
tion. (These aborted lives are liter–
ature.) Their counterparts are the
Harvard boys, little Oedipuses too
polite to murder their fathers,
shrinking from the task in nar–
row shouldered suits. Those that
live here ran away from home to
be doggedly themselves, but there
are still dozens of cans and can'ts
tied to their tales, and all they can
do is bitch about it.
The fairies always
Ii
l'affllt,
in
ambush behind demurely dropped
lids, or frankly tumescent in a
gimlet eye. The real queens are
quashed-Gene throws a beer on
their tattersall vests, glares into
their crimson faces. None do much
business here, but the tension-so
much deeper and more equivocal
than at the regular markets-is like
a delicious knotting in the bowels.
Outside, pacing, peering through
the
breath~blurred
windows, are
the barred, the untouchabl es who
have touched one of the trinity's
touchy spot. Exiled from exile,
they wait, doing their appointed
penance, on the alert for redemp–
tion. A rare fight, perhaps, will
bring the bartenders out, and if
they see you there, a nod, a
nuance, may mean readmittance.
In the middle of the floor stands
a man who has two slabs of card–
board strung from his neck, with
poems pasted on them, a sand–
wich-man, absurd image of a hu–
man being-or a generation-sand–
wiched between bits of bad poe–
try. Crouched in a booth is ·his
opposite, whose poems are so deep–
ly buried within as to be forever
unutterable or unprintable. Other,
median types consciously or uncon–
sciously soak up tension for future
lines.
Dominating the bar, infusing it
with his spirit, Gene, the manager,
walks among these shades, these
displaced persons, like a com–
placent prison guard. Symbol of
the further world, the one outside
the ark, Gene is king or judge of
court. He establishes rank, and,
exquisite irony, ranks you as you
rank yourself, accepts your own
unconscious evaluation, which he
intuits through your gestures, your
acquaintances, the amount you
spend, who you make it with, and
who puts you down . He is neither
friendly nor unfriendly. Since you
are not of the same species, his
ordinary social standards don't ap–
ply to you. Like a Coney I sland
boardwalk conner, he guesses how
much weight you carry, and each
