[9] NUYORICAN DREAMS At the original Nuyorican Poets Café on 6th Street, you can just about expect anything on stage Wednesday and Thursday nights. I go to see a one-act piece playwright, writer, poet extraterrestrial Pedro Pietri serves up. All I can honestly remember is that it involved a Catholic Nun in a chair surrounded by balloons. At one point the nun gets up and bursts the balloons with stiletto heels. Don't ask me why. I just remember the imagery. Other evenings, a comedian like Rick Aviles can follow a revolutionary anarchist: "I'm half black and half Rican. You know - a spookarican. I had trouble getting by in the hallway of the building I grew up in choosing whether to go play basketball in the back with the brothers or dominoes in the front with the 'panas'. Really, damn, I just want to move uptown and live like Jackie Onassis. She don't have roaches. No, she has roe-chez!" Eddie Figueroa of the New Rican Village says there is little confusion about what is hip for the Nuyorican audience, “Rick Aviles is an avant guarde comedian. He has those people locked. He will reach a crescendo of laughter and you wouldn't think there was anywhere else to go. Another guy would quit like that (snap) - Oh, I got them laughing. But the guy went here, and then he went there and then he went back and then he went there and so he had people hitting pitches of laughter I haven't heard in the longest time. Jibaros had a good technique that's similar. They would be singing all these songs and they're all stoned but the endings of the songs come in so good. That's Rick's best weapon. His endings they always come in so good.” Long before Andy Kaufman does his shtick by reading an entire Mark Twain book for a bewildered audience there occurs the following episode one evening at an open mike. "In walks this man dressed as a Muslim in North Africa - a beautiful white robe, white and gold cap and a gold embroidered dark book in his hands. He approaches the microphone, "Tonight I will read the entire Koran." "What did he say?" "The entire Koran." So the guy starts reading. And reading. And reading. And reading. One loud ass Rican screams out, "Damn, I think this guy told the truth. He's going to read the whole book!" A commotion breaks out and out the front door flies the cap, the book and then the guy. Maybe it is Kaufman in makeup. Maybe not. But the reality is I see a lot of strange things in Loisaida that later become cultural icons. Theater movements, comedy styles, musical & poetry innovations. Between 1976 and 1979 5th to 8th Streets between Avenues A and C jump with future trends. Even in its decline between 1979 and 1986 as AIDS, cocaine/heroin and NYU gentrification decimate the Loisaida arts community, its seeds are planted and blossom throughout the creative movements of the nineties to become part of today's pop culture. Spoken word/Alternative Music/Prison Drama/Gay Drama/Psycho Drama/National Slam Poetry Competition/Hip Hop/Oz/La Escuelita/Resurrection Boulevard? Response from the original Loisaida, "Been there. Done that." Exploring Loisaida in 1977 I meet actors Bimbo Rivas, Tito Goya and subsequently playwright Miguel Pinero. They’re outlaw artists. Talented but larcenous to the nth degree. The men who are the heart and soul for the award winning play Short Eyes - the ground breaking prison drama that today resonates in the HBO production of Oz. After a long night of hanging out at the New Rican Village, I run across Miguel (Mikey) and Tito on 13th Street. How appropriate. 13th Street. They're broke and trying to get uptown. Somehow the evening started at a reception hosted at Joe Papp's Public Theater on Astor Place, somehow they came into a wad of cash from a benefactor (the rich do like to have pets) and somehow they managed to go through $2000.00 in six hours. Regardless of how many foundation grants they get and paying gigs they land, these two party like there's no tomorrow. Two thousand dollars blown on hookers, hoods, and heroin is nothing to them. Solution for that evening? Tito produces a pair of handcuffs and a NY detective's shield. Pinero puts the handcuffs on Tito, attaches the shield to his belt and pulls out a gun. Then he starts like he's beating on Tito. Soon enough a police car pulls up. Pinero convinces the policeman that he's been chasing this guy for two weeks and the perp disabled his car. Mikey then piles Tito into the back of the squad car smacking him around as they drive off. "Hijo de puta. Did you think you could get over on me?" Smack! As they drive by me, Pinero yells out the window of the squad car: "And what the fuck are you scoping Holmes?" Nice touch. I later find out that the squad car drops them off a block away from the neighborhood precinct and allows Mikee to walk Tito in - slapping him all the way. As soon as the squad car rounds the corner they run off laughing into the night headed for their "spot" to keep on partying. Miguel Algarin 1977 "Mikey Pinero is an area we live in. What's happened to him is exactly what he would have wanted along all lines. What's happening to him is what he wants happening to him ... he's leading the life he loves. It's absolutely true. He's leading the life he loves but at the same time the man is developing in a form that no other Puerto Rican playwright or writer has succeeded in. If a Pinero script attracts the studio guys at a TV show like Baretta with Robert Blake they tackle it ... if they don't like it they let it go ... they pay the 1600 dollars or 1800 dollars and take the loss. By the way, Mikey's Barretta episodes were the first and last time that public TV was seen in the Cafe because I can't see any reason to bring Public TV into the cafe unless its great historical moments like Fidel Castro coming to New York." I jump from the cult of outlaw personalities on the Lower East Side to visit different uptown cults and their frightening worlds. There’s a young troupe performing in Riverside Park and I tag along with them. I’m ushered into an apartment on the upper west side – somewhere in the mid-80’s where there are people chanting. I’m there to scope the women in patrticular this coffee colored Puerto Rican hippie mami. The place reeks of incense tinged with what I think is a steady stream of nitrous oxide released from pinholes in these balloon type silver air pillows. There’s a bunch of them in two corners of the room. A couple are added while I’m there. They give the place an intoxicating atmosphere. This burly guy engages me in conversation, “So tell me what do you believe in?” “What do you mean?” “I mean your guiding force, that existential dizziness that drives you. What is it?” I feel apprehensive about this guys attitude. It’s a little menacing in my eyes. I answer promptly, “God, of course.” “What a Protestant, Jewish, Catholic God?” “I’m Catholic.” “Well, I was brought up Jewish and that God … your God, He’s an old God. A dead God. We offer something new.” And the mulata joins in, “Yeah, it’ll show you a new way.” Her face kind of changes with this weird look as she says it. Check please! I get out of there with a quickness and vow to myself as I leave, “I don’t care how freaky I get I’ll never deny You. Ever .” And from that day I feel protection no matter what insanity I get myself into. This is clear when I walk into the world of the dead. A prominent percussionist on the New York Salsa scene wraps up an interview by showing me pictures of Palo (Cuban Cult of the Dead) ceremonies. In one he’s holding a machete drenched in blood with this far off look in his eyes. It’s spooky. I accompany another drummer to a session in Washington Heights. They believe in blood sacrifice and ancient rites to manipulate the dead and the living. Hardcore practicioners work with human bones and body parts. It’s not kosher. The rhythm in the room is the key as those assembled reach a group consciousness amid repetitive beats and chants infected with African incantations that are as intoxicating as the oxide at the East side cult. Then the animal sacrifices begin but I get the impression some of these dudes want higher life forms to bleed. “El que sabe morir sabe como conquitar la esclavitud.” “He who knows how to die conquers slavery.” That stuff is just too disturbing so I beat it out of there and visit Father Gartland the next day. New York's Puerto Rican creative community in the seventies is ahead of the curve blending island lifestyles and mainland culture. At the time We collectively hold our breath and have an orgasm -- realizing a new swing in our lives that is a result of the blend. Poets and Musicians are usually among the first ones in the community to express awareness of new truths. I store up images in my mind during this period that will echo for years in my work. The exciting thing about Puerto Rican social, cultural and music clubs in the seventies is that they reverberate with a combination of the kitsch and danger Christopher Isherwood captures in his Berlin stories about cabaret life in pre Nazi Germany. Latin music blossoms in gangster-backed clubs and record distributorships as the City undergoes a radical change during the post war recesssion, Watergate, gas shortages and Ricans comiug into their own. Vietnam is shut down by 1975. There’s a ton of Rican Vets just itching to forget that mess as they drink and dance. Four of my cousins are drafted during the Vietnam War. Junior is the first to go, Carlos is next, then Uchie and finally Jose Emilio is in line. None of them come out of the experience the same they go in. First to get wounded is my cousin Carlos. “That’s bullshit over there. We get into a firefight and the sergeants disappear. The next thing I know I feel this heat and I know I’m hit. The medics get me out but when they go back the two other guys left behind have their throats slit by the Viet Cong. Some of those guys over there giving orders are the biggest chicken shits I ever meet.” My cousin Jose Emilio is drafted into the Marines. He makes sergeant several times and looses his stripes just as many for fighting, drinking, selling dope, whoring and the usual list of offenses. He goes to town when he gets back to the Bronx after getting thrown out of the service. We party together and I take his story to the Nuyorican Café in 1978. En el 503 of 161st street Billie Zombie comes out The side of his neck Sells wolf tickets with glimmers That peel the insides Of lesser cobras competing for strikes In the bush Cubicled thoughts neatly Arrange themselves In Billies mind Crime does not pay At least not the way Lesser children try to pull it off Billie Zombie is a dawn patrol jammer From the giddy up For him Suzie Sidewinder Is Heaven on earth The Pale fall moon moans As Billy makes love to Suzie Never with her Never with her But Through Her Suzies lust is to linger with him Suzies lust is to rapture in chaos Being swept far away As Billies Vice fills her The stars desert the skies And Rush to fill her eyes As Billie pumps her lips Up and down All around With a circular motion Swallows her whole She comes hard Sits straight up In heated Repeated Suck seeded Rushes of ecstasy Oh Billie you can crawl across my bedsheets on your eyebrows any time Poppy Mami you may be a bitch to others but you’re an angel in my eyes Two caramel blackbirds Singing little blue lies Along the lazy sidestreets Of a jungle gone mad In between the sexing Billie rides the loop Night to Night And with Suzie leave little pieces of themselves On the extreme highway While pulling stickups Each one richer Bolder Brazen enough to rob the restaurant In the building they live in Going back later for a midnight supper Acting shocked as the cantina owner Spilt his drinks and woes Later picking up their check For his most valued and compassionate Customers Crime does not pay At least not the way Lesser children try to pull it off Billie Zombie And Suzie Sidewinder Are two Necessary Evils In this part of God’s wonder Without them goodness would be A bland indistinguishable routine They apologize for nothing They’re not conceited They’re not conceited They’re convinced That crime does not pay At least not the way I pull it off |
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