132
LIONEL ABEL
Cowboy. Shall "horse" take them somewhere, and you along
with
them? Can you jump on after them and gallop out of your dull
time into some undrugged eternity? This is not to happen.
They
get their dose of heroin but I think you will get no charge out of
their "flash." After the waiting there is little release, the same
dis–
satisfaction. These people certainly take no special attitudes; they're
immersed in ordinary life, just as you are. No one is particularly
bad, nobody notably good. Anyway, moral postures are hardly
taken, and clearly do not count.
If
there is any hero, it is Cowboy,
who gets the stuff, takes the risks involved in getting it, administers
it to the others, and behaves generally like the doctor which his
white uniform makes us feel he is. Does he take the stuff himself?
Probably. But certainly there must be a greater thrill for him
in
getting hold of it. Also, he is master of the situation; he alone deter–
mines the quantity of each dose, how much each junkie can
take,
what amount might
be
fatal. Is there anyone who can ride "horse"?
If
anyone, that one is Cowboy. Yet we never see him take the stuff,
and in this fact I see the only concession to conventional morality
made by the talented young playwright, Jack Gelber.
Dull the place is, dismal the prospects, cretins the people,
and
yet you don't have a desire to go home. Certainly the music keeps
you. The musicians, stacked up like instruments for most of
the
time, come alive once or twice or maybe three times, and improvise
brilliantly, beautifully; this is music such as one seldom hears. How–
ever, the music is merely an interruption of the waiting; it serves
better, I will grant, than a movie would between .the time you get
to a station and the time your train is supposed to leave. After
all,
the musicians are also in the fix. They too are waiting for "horse."
And when they get "horse," they, at least, do something: they play,
and marvellously. "Horse" really takes them somewhere, and us
also. But not for long and not far enough. We come back.
And now a question is forced on us-it was insinuated
all
along-but we only come to recognize it after a while. The question
is: What do we want, we who are not junkies, if we are not? Don't
we too want a "flash" of one kind or other? A "horse" of some
sort, a charge, if you please, a sharp sensation, a quick connection?
