One day I was hanging around the campus and Chad and Tim Gray told me Dean was staying in a cold-water pad in East Harlem, the Spanish Harlem. Dean had arrived the night before, the first time in New York, with his beautiful little sharp chick Marylou; they got off the Greyhound bus at 50th Street and cut around the corner looking for a place to eat and went right in Hector's, and since then Hector's cafete-ria has always been a big symbol of New York for Dean. They spent money on beautiful big glazed6 cakes and creampuffs.
All this time Dean was telling Marylou things like this: "Now, darling, here we are in New York and although I haven't quite told you everything that I was thinking about when we crossed Missouri and especially at the point when we passed the Booneville reformatory which reminded me of my jail problem, it is absolutely necessary now to postpone all those leftover7 things concerning our personal loveth- ings and at once begin thinking of specific worklife plans ... " and so on in the way that he had in those early days.
I went to the cold-water flat with the boys, and Dean came to the door in his shorts. Marylou was jumping off the couch; Dean had dispatched the occupant of the apartment to the kitchen, probably to make coffee, while he proceeded with his love-problems, for to him sex was the one and only holy and important thing in life, although he had to sweat and curse to make a living and so on. You saw that in the way he stood bobbing his head, always looking down, nodding, like a young boxer8 to instructions, to make you think he was listening to every word, throwing in a thousand "Yeses" and "That's rights." My first impression of Dean was of a young Gene Autry--trim, thin- hipped9, blue-eyed, with a real Oklahoma accent--a sideburned hero of the snowy West. In fact he'd just been working on a ranch11, Ed Wall's in Colorado, before marrying Marylou and coming East. Marylou was a pretty blonde with immense ringlets of hair like a sea of golden tresses; she sat there on the edge of the couch with her hands hanging in her lap and her smoky blue country eyes fixed12 in a wide stare because she was in an evil gray New York pad that she'd heard about back West, and waiting like a longbodied emaciated13 Modigliani surrealist woman in a serious room. But, outside of being a sweet little girl, she was aw- fully14 dumb and capable of doing horrible things. That night we all drank beer and pulled wrists and talked till dawn, and in the morning, while we sat around dumbly smoking butts15 from ashtrays16 in the gray light of a gloomy day, Dean got up nervously17, paced around, thinking, and decided18 the thing to do was to have Marylou make breakfast and sweep the floor. "In other words we've got to get on the ball, darling, what I'm saying, otherwise it'll be fluctuating and lack of true know- ledge19 or crystallization of our plans." Then I went away.
During the following week he confided20 in Chad King that he absolutely had to learn how to write from him; Chad said I was a writ- er and he should come to me for advice. Meanwhile Dean had gotten a job in a parking lot, had a fight with Marylou in their Hoboken apart- ment--God knows why they went there--and she was so mad and so down deep vindictive that she reported to the police some false trumped-up hysterical22 crazy charge, and Dean had to lam from Hobo- ken21. So he had no place to live. He came right out to Paterson, New Jersey23, where I was living with my aunt, and one night while I was studying there was a knock on the door, and there was Dean, bowing, shuffling24 obsequiously25 in the dark of the hall, and saying, "Hello, you remember me--Dean Moriarty? I've come to ask you to show me how to write."
"And where's Marylou?" I asked, and Dean said she'd apparent- ly whored a few dollars together and gone back to Denver--"the whore!" So we went out to have a few beers because we couldn't talk like we wanted to talk in front of my aunt, who sat in the living room reading her paper. She took one look at Dean and decided that he was a madman.
In the bar I told Dean, "Hell, man, I know very well you didn't come to me only to want to become a writer, and after all what do I really know about it except you've got to stick to it with the energy of a benny addict26." And he said, "Yes, of course, I know exactly what you mean and in fact all those problems have occurred to me, but the thing that I want is the realization27 of those factors that should one depend on Schopenhauer's dichotomy for any inwardly realized ... " and so on in that way, things I understood not a bit and he himself didn't. In those days he really didn't know what he was talking about; that is to say, he was a young jailkid all hung-up on the wonderful possibilities of be- coming a real intellectual, and he liked to talk in the tone and using the words, but in a jumbled28 way, that he had heard from "real intellec- tuals"--although, mind you, he wasn't so naive4 as that in all other things, and it took him just a few months with Carlo Marx to become completely iin therei with all the terms and jargon29. Nonetheless we understood each other on other levels of madness, and I agreed that he could stay at my house till he found a job and furthermore we agreed to go out West sometime. That was the winter of 1947.
One night when Dean ate supper at my house--he already had the parking-lot job in New York--he leaned over my shoulder as I typed rapidly away and said, "Come on man, those girls won't wait, make it fast."I said, "Hold on just a minute, I'll be right with you soon as I finish this chapter," and it was one of the best chapters in the book. Then I dressed and off we flew to New York to meet some girls. As we rode in the bus in the weird30 phosphorescent void of the Lincoln Tunnel we leaned on each other with fingers waving and yelled and talked excitedly, and I was beginning to get the bug31 like Dean. He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning32 because he wanted so much to live and to get in- volved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him. He was conning me and I knew it (for room and board and "how-to-write," etc.), and he knew I knew (this has been the basis of our relationship), but I didn't care and we got along fine--no pestering33, no catering34; we tiptoed around each other like heartbreaking new friends. I began to learn from him as much as he probably learned from me. As far as my work was concerned he said, "Go ahead, everything you do is great." He watched over my shoulder as I wrote stories, yelling, "Yes! That's right! Wow! Man!" and "Phew!" and wiped his face with his handker- chief. "Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even ibegini to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears ... "
"That's right, man, now you're talking." And a kind of holy lightning I saw flashing from his excitement and his visions, which he described so torrentially that people in buses looked around to see the "overexcited nut." In the West he'd spent a third of his time in the poolhall, a third in jail, and a third in the public library. They'd seen him rushing eagerly down the winter streets, bareheaded, carrying books to the poolhall, or climbing trees to get into the attics35 of buddies36 where he spent days reading or hiding from the law.
We went to New York--I forget what the situation was, two colored girls--there were no girls there; they were supposed to meet him in a diner and didn't show up. We went to his parking lot where he had a few things to do--change his clothes in the shack37 in back and spruce up a bit in front of a cracked mirror and so on, and then we took off. And that was the night Dean met Carlo Marx. A tremendous thing happened when Dean met Carlo Marx. Two keen minds that they are, they took to each other at the drop of a hat. Two piercing eyes glanced into two piercing eyes--the holy con-man with the shining mind, and the sorrowful poetic38 con-man with the dark mind that is Carlo Marx. From that moment on I saw very little of Dean, and I was a little sorry too. Their energies met head-on, I was a lout39 compared, I couldn't keep up with them.
The whole mad swirl40 of everything that was to come began then; it would mix up all my friends and all I had left of my family in a big dust-cloud over the American Night. Carlo told him of Old Bull Lee, Elmer Hassel, Jane: Lee in Texas growing weed, Hassel on Riker's Island, Jane wandering on Times Square in a benzedrine hallucination, with her baby girl in her arms and ending up in Bellevue. And Dean told Carlo of unknown people in the West like Tommy Snark, the club- footed poolhall rotation41 shark and cardplayer and queer saint. He told him of Roy Johnson, Big Ed Dunkel, his boyhood buddies, his street buddies, his innumerable girls and sex-parties and pornographic pic- tures, his heroes, heroines, adventures. They rushed down the street together, digging everything in the early way they had, which later became so much sadder and perceptive and blank. But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous42 yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!" What did they call such young people in Goethe's Ger- many? Wanting dearly to learn how to write like Carlo, the first thing you know, Dean was attacking him with a great amorous43 soul such as only a con-man can have. "Now, Carlo, let imei speak--here's whatiI'mi saying ... " I didn't see them for about two weeks, during which time they cemented their relationship to fiendish allday-allnight-talk roportions.
Then came spring, the great time of traveling, and everybody in the scattered44 gang was getting ready to take one trip or another. I was busily at work on my novel and when I came to the halfway45 mark, af- ter a trip down South with my aunt to visit my brother Rocco, I got ready to travel West for the very first time.
Dean had already left. Carlo and I saw him off at the 34th Street Greyhound station. Upstairs they had a place where you could make pictures for a quarter. Carlo took off his glasses and looked sinister46. Dean made a profile shot and looked coyly around. I took a straight picture that made me look like a thirty-year-old Italian who'd kill any- body who said anything against his mother. This picture Carlo and Dean neatly47 cut down the middle with a razor and saved a half each in their wallets. Dean was wearing a real Western business suit for his big trip back to Denver; he'd finished his first fling in New York. I say fling, but he only worked like a dog in parking lots. The most fantastic parking-lot attendant in the world, he can back a car forty miles an hour into a tight squeeze and stop at the wall, jump out, race among fenders, leap into another car, circle it fifty miles an hour in a narrow space, back swiftly into tight spot, ihumpi, snap the car with the emergency so that you see it bounce as he flies out; then clear to the ticket shack, sprinting48 like a track star, hand a ticket, leap into a newly arrived car before the owner's half out, leap literally49 under him as he steps out, start the car with the door flapping, and roar off to the next available spot, arc, pop in, brake, out, run; working like that without pause eight hours a night, evening rush hours and after-theater rush hours, in greasy50 wino pants with a frayed51 fur-lined jacket and beat shoes that flap. Now he'd bought a new suit to go back in; blue with pencil stripes, vest and all--eleven dollars on Third Avenue, with a watch and watch chain, and a portable typewriter with which he was going to start writing in a Denver rooming house as soon as he got a job there. We had a farewell meal of franks and beans in a Seventh Avenue Riker's, and then Dean got on the bus that said Chicago and roared off into the night. There went our wrangler52. I promised myself to go the same way when spring really bloomed and opened up the land.
And this was really the way that my whole road experience began, and the things that were to come are too fantastic not to tell.Yes, and it wasn't only because I was a writer and needed new experiences that I wanted to know Dean more, and because my life hanging around the campus had reached the completion of its cycle and was stultified53, but because, somehow, in spite of our difference in character, he reminded me of some long-lost brother; the sight of his suffering bony face with the long sideburns and his straining muscular sweating neck made me remember my boyhood in those dye-dumps and swim-holes and riversides of Paterson and the Passaic. His dirty workclothes clung to him so gracefully54, as though you couldn't buy a better fit from a custom tailor but only earn it from the Natural Tailor of Natural Joy, as Dean had, in his stresses. And in his excited way of speaking I heard again the voices of old companions and brothers un- der the bridge, among the motorcycles, along the wash-lined neigh- borhood and drowsy55 doorsteps of afternoon where boys played guitars while their older brothers worked in the mills. All my other current friends were "intellectuals"--Chad the Nietzschean anthropologist56, Car- lo Marx and his nutty surrealist low-voiced serious staring talk, Old Bull Lee and his critical anti-every-thing drawl--or else they were slink- ing criminals like Elmer Hassel, with that hip10 sneer57; Jane Lee the same, sprawled58 on the Oriental cover of her couch, sniffing59 at the iNew Yorkeri. But Dean's intelligence was every bit as formal and shining and complete, without the tedious intellectualness. And his "criminali- ty" was not something that sulked and sneered60; it was a wild yea- saying overburst of American joy; it was Western, the west wind, an ode from the Plains, something new, long prophesied61, long a-coming (he only stole cars for joy rides). Besides, all my New York friends were in the negative, nightmare position of putting down society and giving their tired bookish or political or psychoanalytical reasons, but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love; he didn't care one way or the other, "so long's I can get that lil ole gal with that lil sumpin down there tween her legs, boy," and "so long's we can ieati, son, y'ear me? I'm ihungryi, I'm istarvingi, let's ieat right nowi!"-- and off we'd rush to eat, whereof, as saith Ecclesiastes, "It is your portion under the sun."
A western kinsman of the sun, Dean. Although my aunt warned me that he would get me in trouble, I could hear a new call and see a new horizon, and believe it at my young age; and a little bit of trouble or even Dean's eventual62 rejection63 of me as a buddy64, putting me down, as he would later, on starving sidewalks and sickbeds--what did it matter? I was a young writer and I wanted to take off.
Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, eve- rything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.
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1
miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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naively
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| adv. 天真地 | |
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naive
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| adj.幼稚的，轻信的；天真的 | |
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shrouded
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| v.隐瞒( shroud的过去式和过去分词 )；保密 | |
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glazed
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| adj.光滑的，像玻璃的；上过釉的；呆滞无神的v.装玻璃( glaze的过去式)；上釉于，上光；（目光）变得呆滞无神 | |
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leftover
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| n.剩货，残留物，剩饭；adj.残余的 | |
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boxer
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| n.制箱者，拳击手 | |
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hipped
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| adj.着迷的，忧郁的 | |
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hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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ranch
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| n.大牧场，大农场 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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emaciated
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| adj.衰弱的，消瘦的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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butts
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| 笑柄( butt的名词复数 )； （武器或工具的）粗大的一端； 屁股； 烟蒂 | |
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ashtrays
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| 烟灰缸( ashtray的名词复数 ) | |
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nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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ledge
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| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
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confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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ken
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| n.视野，知识领域 | |
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hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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obsequiously
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addict
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| v.使沉溺；使上瘾；n.沉溺于不良嗜好的人 | |
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realization
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| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
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jumbled
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| adj.混乱的；杂乱的 | |
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jargon
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| n.术语，行话 | |
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weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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bug
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| n.虫子；故障；窃听器；vt.纠缠；装窃听器 | |
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conning
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| v.诈骗，哄骗( con的现在分词 )；指挥操舵( conn的现在分词 ) | |
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pestering
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| 使烦恼，纠缠( pester的现在分词 ) | |
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catering
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| n. 给养 | |
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attics
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| n. 阁楼 | |
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buddies
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| n.密友( buddy的名词复数 )；同伴；弟兄；（用于称呼男子，常带怒气）家伙v.（如密友、战友、伙伴、弟兄般）交往( buddy的第三人称单数 )；做朋友；亲近（…）；伴护艾滋病人 | |
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shack
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| adj.简陋的小屋，窝棚 | |
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poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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lout
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| n.粗鄙的人；举止粗鲁的人 | |
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swirl
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| v.(使)打漩，(使)涡卷；n.漩涡，螺旋形 | |
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rotation
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| n.旋转；循环，轮流 | |
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fabulous
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| adj.极好的；极为巨大的；寓言中的，传说中的 | |
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amorous
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| adj.多情的；有关爱情的 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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46
sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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48
sprinting
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| v.短距离疾跑( sprint的现在分词 ) | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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50
greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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51
frayed
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| adj.磨损的v.（使布、绳等）磨损，磨破( fray的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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52
wrangler
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| n.口角者，争论者；牧马者 | |
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53
stultified
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| v.使成为徒劳，使变得无用( stultify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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54
gracefully
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| ad.大大方方地；优美地 | |
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55
drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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56
anthropologist
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| n.人类学家，人类学者 | |
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57
sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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58
sprawled
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| v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的过去式和过去分词)；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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59
sniffing
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| n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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60
sneered
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| 讥笑，冷笑( sneer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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61
prophesied
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| v.预告，预言( prophesy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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62
eventual
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| adj.最后的，结局的，最终的 | |
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63
rejection
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| n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃 | |
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64
buddy
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| n.（美口）密友，伙伴 | |
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