Page:Big Sur (1963).djvu/68

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
60BIG SUR

ing “Shhh, He’s sleeping,” “He” being Joey and all the disciples are following him on a march to New York after which they expect to keep going walking on water to the other shore—But of course (in my revery even) I scoff and dont believe it (a kind of story daydreaming I often do) but in the morning when I look into Joey Rosenberg’s eyes I instantly realize it IS Him, Jesus, because anyone (according to the rules of my revery) who looks into those eyes is instantly convinced and converted—So the revery continues into a long farfetched story ending with thinking I.B.M. machines trying to destroy this “Second Coming” etc. (but also, in reality, a few months later I threw away his shoes in the ashcan back home because I felt they had brought me bad luck and wishing I'd kept my blue sneakers with the little holes in the toes!)

So anyway we get Joey and Ron Blake who's always following Dave and go off to see Monsanto at the store, our usual ritual, then across the corner to Mike’s Place where we start off the 10 A.M. with food, drink and a few games of pool at the tables along the bar—Joey winning the game and a stranger poolshark you never saw with his long Biblical hair bending to slide the cue stick smoothly through completely professionally competent fingerstance and smashing home long straight drives, like seeing Jesus shoot pool of course—And meanwhile all the food these poor starved kids all three of them do pack in and eat!—It’s not every day they’re with a drunken novelist with hundreds of dollars to splurge on them, they order everything, spaghetti, follow that up with Jumbo Hamburgers, follow that up with ice cream and pie and puddings, Dave Wain has a huge appetite anyway but adds Manhattans and Martinis to the side of his plate—I’m just wailing away on my old fatal double bourbons and gingerale and I'll be sorry in a few days.

Any drinker knows how the process works: the first day you get drunk is okay, the morning after means a big head but so you can kill that easy with a few more drinks and a meal, but if you pass up the meal and go