Sunday, December 22, 2013
I wonder where he is. We used to get next to pretty young daughters and
feel them up in the kitchen. This afternoon I had the gonest housewife
in her little kitchen- -arm around her demonstrating. Ah! Hmm! Wow!”
“Keep it up Neal,” I said, “maybe someday you’ll be mayor of San
Francisco.” He had the whole cookpot spiel worked out; he practiced on
Carolyn and me in the evenings. One morning he stood naked looking at all
San Francisco out the window as the sun came up. He looked like someday
he’d be the pagan mayor of San Francisco. But his energies ran out. One
rainy afternoon the salesman came around to find out what Neal was
doing. Neal was sprawled on the couch. “Have you been trying to sell
these?” “No” said Neal “I have another job coming up.” “Well, what are
you going to do about all these samples?” “I don’t know.” In a dead
silence the salesman gathered up his sad pots and left. I was sick and
tired of everything and so was Neal. But one night we suddenly went mad
together again; we went to see Slim Gaillard in a little Frisco
niteclub. Slim Gaillard is a tall thin Negro with big sad eyes who’s
always saying “Right-orooni” and “How ’bout a little bourbon-orooni.” In
Frisco great eager crowds of semi-intellectuals sit at his feet and
listen to him on piano, guitar and bongo drums. When he gets warmed up
he takes off his shirt and undershirt and really goes. He does and says
anything that comes into his head. He’ll sing “Cement Mixer, Put-ti
Put-ti (which he wrote) and suddenly slow down the beat and brood over
his bongos with fingertips barely tapping the skin as everybody leans
forward breathlessly to hear; you think he’ll do this for a minute or so
but he goes right on, for as long as an hour, making an imperceptible
little noise, like Al Hinkle did, with the tip of his fingernails,
getting smaller and smaller all the time till you can’t make hear it any
more and sounds of traffic come in the open door. Then he slowly gets
up and takes the mike and says very slowly,
“Great-orooni…fine-orooni…oroonirooni…” He keeps this up for fifteen
minutes, his voice getting softer and softer till you can’t hear. His
great sad eyes scan the
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