Herbert Huncke’s America
Edited by Jerome Poynton
Youth
By Herbert Huncke
When
I was a schoolboy—age fifteen—living in what was considered a
respectable middle-class neighborhood in Chicago—I had my first
encounter with love.
In
the apartment building in which I lived with my mother, brother, and
grandmother (my mother and father had been divorced two years
previously), there were several women who owned Chow dogs and they
would pay me to take the dogs out for walks. This afforded me
opportunity to make something of a show of myself—since Chows were
quite fashionable—and as I considered myself at least personable in
appearance, it rather pleased me to imagine that people seeing me
walking along Lake Shore Drive must surely think me the owner and
certainly attractive with my pet straining at the leash. Frequently I
would walk one of the dogs late in the evening and it was on such an
occasion I first met Dick.
I
had decided before returning home to stop by the neighborhood drug
store and as I was leaving someone spoke my name. I looked into the
most piercing brown—almost black brown eyes—I had ever seen. They
belonged to a man who at the time was in his late twenties—fairly
well built—not too tall—with somewhat aquiline features and
exceedingly black hair which he wore combed flat to his head. I
learned later he was of Russian Jewish parentage.
I
was very much impressed by his appearance and felt a strange
sensation upon first seeing him which was to be repeated each time we
met for as long as I knew him. I never quite got over a certain
physical response to his personality and even now in retrospect I
find myself conscious of an inner warmth.
As
I was leaving the drugstore and after he had spoken my name and I had
smiled and flushed, he commented that I didn’t know him but that a
friend of his had spoken with me one evening about my dog and that I
had given him my name, and he in turn had given it to him when they
had seen me walking and he had asked if his friend noticed me. He
then asked me if I would object to his accompanying me home so that
we might become better acquainted. He gave me to understand that he
wanted to know me. I was no end pleased by his attention and became
animated and flirtatious.
We
had a thoroughly enjoyable walk and from that point on I began seeing
him fairly regularly. He was in the recording business and second in
charge of a floor of recording studios in one of the large well-known
building off Lake Shore Drive a short distance north of the Loop. He
knew innumerable people in show business and I spent as much time
hanging around the studio as could be arranged. Sometimes we would
lunch together or stay downtown for diner or go to a movie or he
would take me along while he interviewed some possible recording
star, and it was after some such instance at the old Sherman Hotel
that he suggested since it was late I call home and ask permission to
spend the night downtown. This I was anxious to do as I had long had
the desire to sleep with him.
I
was still rather green as to what was expected in a homosexual
relationship, but I did know I was exceedingly desirous of feeling
his body near mine and was sure I could be ingenious enough sexually
to make him happy with me.
Actually
I had but little experience other than mutual masturbation with
others of my own age, and although I knew the word homosexual I
wasn’t exactly aware of the connotations.
We
spent the night together and I discovered that in fact he was nearly
as ignorant as I and besides was filled with all sorts of guilt. We
kissed and explored each other’s bodies with our hands and after
both ejaculating fell asleep in each other’s arms.
This
began a long period in which he professed deep love for me and on one
occasion threatened to throw acid in my face should he ever discover
me with someone else.
The
affair followed the usual pattern such affairs follow and after the
novelty wore off I became somewhat bored, although it appeased my
vanity to feel I had someone so completely in my control. Had anyone
threatened my supremacy I would have gone to great lengths to
eliminate them from the situation.
About
this time it was necessary for him to make a business trip to New
York, and when he returned he was wearing a Persian sapphire ring
which, he explained, he would give to me if I would promise to stay
away from some of the people and places I had lately been visiting. I
promised to do this and considered the ring mine.
One
evening we had dinner in a little French restaurant we frequented,
and, while eating, a very handsome young man joined us whom Dick
introduced as Richard, who was attending classes at The University of
Chicago and was someone he had met recently thru some mutual
acquaintance. We sat talking and suddenly I was startled to see the
ring on Richard’s finger.
Richard
was considerably younger than Dick and really very beautiful. He was
blond, with icy blue eyes—innocent and clear. He was very
interested in life and people and kept bombarding us with questions—
about our interests, the theater, music, art or whatever happened to
pop into his head. He laughed a good deal and one could feel a sense
of goodness about him. He was obviously attracted to me and asked
permission to call me on the phone so that we might make arrangements
to see each other. I complied and began making plans about how to get
the ring away from him —after all I felt the ring was mine—and I
wanted it.
And
so it happened that I succeeded in twisting one of the few really
wonderful things that occurred when I was young into a sordid, almost
tragic experience which even now fills me with shame.
As
I have already said—Richard was good. There was no guile in his
makeup and he offered his love and friendship unstintingly. It was he
who first introduced me to poetry—to great music—to the beauty of
the world— and who was concerned with my wants and happiness. Who
spent hours making love to me, caressing and kissing me on every part
of my body until I would collapse in a great explosion of beauty and
sensation which I have never attained in exactly the same way with
anyone since. He truly loved me and asked nothing in return but that
I accept him—instead of which I delighted in hurting him and making
him suffer in all manner of petty ways. I would tease him or refuse
him sex or call him a fool or say that I didn’t want to see him.
Sometimes I would tell him we were finished, thru, and not to call me
or try and see me, and it was after one such episode on a beautiful
warm summer night—when I had agreed to see him again if he would
grant me a favor—I asked for the ring and
he gave it to me.
The
next day I visited Dick at the studios and—with many gestures and
words of denunciation—flung the ring at him, telling him that we
were finished and that anyway he wasn’t nearly as amusing as
Richard—and that maybe or maybe not I’d continue seeing
Richard—and that in fact he bored me and I only felt sorry for
him—and that I would never be as big a fool over anyone as he was
over me—and besides my only reason for knowing him at all was so
that I could get the ring.
Dick
became enraged and began calling me foul names which he sort of spit
at me and pulled from his desk drawer a pistol. He was waving it in
front of my face and at the same time telling me how cruel and
heartless I was and that he could forgive the stupidity of my actions
in regard to himself but that the harm I was inflicting on Richard
was more than he could stomach and that I would be better dead.
Suddenly he started shouting —“Get out—get out—I never want
to see you again.” By this time I was shaking and almost unable to
stand and stumbled out of his presence.
The
following day in the mail I received a letter from Richard containing
a poem—that read almost like this—
A perfect
fool you called me. Perchance not as
happy in my
outlook on
life and people
as you—
Yet
in like manner—playing the
role of a
perfect fool— Gave me a sort of bliss—
You in all your
wisdom—will
never know.
Shortly
after receiving the letter I called Richard and asked to see him. He
refused to see me and at that time I would not plead. A strange thing
had happened to me—I had become aware—almost overnight—of the
enormity of my cruelty –and I was filled with a sudden sense of
loneliness—which I have never lost—and I wanted Richard’s
forgiveness.
Richard
never forgave me and I have only seen him once since the time he gave
me the ring—and that was only long enough for him to tell me —he
was trying to forget he had known me.
Nor did I ever speak with Dick again. Not so many years ago—I read in the paper—he is dead.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Editor’s Historical Notes and Audio Tracks of Brunswick’s Race Records:
Chicago’s
Sherman Hotel, long gone, was located on Randolph Street between
Clark & La Salle.) Brunswick Recording studios, undoubtedly the
building where Dick worked, is still there but the address was
legally changed in 1988 from 666 N. Lake Shore Drive to 680 N. Lake
Shore Drive.
The
Sherman was known for its jazz club with a white orchestra while Brunswick
Recording studios was known for its African American recording
artists.
Huncke
at 15 in 1929 was in the midst of the Chicago jazz scene, on both
sides of the color line, which he carried with him all his life –
into New York City – associating with black jazz musicians Charlie
Parker, Billie Holliday and Dexter Gordon who he was busted with on
42nd Street for breaking and entering a parked car – and
the primarily white beat poets, also interested in jazz and Huncke’s
street style.
“Then
based in Chicago
(although they maintained an office and studio in New York), many of
the city's best orchestras and performers recorded for Brunswick. The
label's jazz roster
included Fletcher
Henderson, Duke
Ellington (usually as the Jungle Band), King
Oliver, Johnny
Dodds, and Andy
Kirk, . Brunswick initiated a 7000 race series (with the
distinctive 'lightning bolt' label design, also used for their
popular 100 hillbilly series) as well as the Vocalion 1000 race
series. These race
records series recorded hot jazz, urban and rural blues, and
gospel.”
“In
the May and June 1929 issues of Talking
Machine World
there are reports concerning the relocation of the studios from the
Brunswick Building to the 21st floor of the Furniture Mart at 666
Lake Shore Drive. Eventually there were two studios in
operation—Studio A and Studio 8—but is not known exactly when the
second studio was established. The recording ledgers do not make any
reference to a specific studio before October 1929—so the second
studio was probably established around that time.”
Race
records link with audio tracks of Brunswick’s output:
Photo
suggestion: 1920s Sherman Hotel, Chicago
http://www.connectingthewindycity.com/2011/03/down-they-forgot-as-up-they-grew.html
