Introduction
“Fishes, Purple,Tiny…a “60s tale” is a somewhat anthropological snapshot of a time before the digital revolution of computers and cell phones. Today’s reader may find it hard to imagine a world with only 5 tv channels, milk deliveries, and neighbors whom you knew. People of this era would never walk while they drank coffee, they would sit with a cup during what was called a “coffee break”. There was little warning when the 1950s, a conservative post war decade, collided with the “peace and love 1960s.” Many, especially those coming of age at that time were caught in the turbulent zeitgeist. Zak Wozny was one of them.
1 – Meeting Miss Kemp
Zak Wozny spent his first 17 years on a 20 block patch of working-class streets in a Brooklyn neighborhood called Sunset Park, named for the large park in the middle of it. He was a little kid in the 1950’s and a teenager in the sixties. Had eight years of Sisters of St. Joseph at St. Michaels grammar school on Fourth Avenue, followed by four years of black robed Franciscan Brothers, at Bishop Ford High School, which was up the hill next to Green-wood Cemetery. There wasn’t much different between the two except that if you weren’t ready for it, a brother’s slap in the face could land you on the floor. The nuns used rulers and humiliation to keep kids in line.
When Zak was scheduled to graduate high school, the last thing he wanted to do was sign up for another four years of college. He was gonna hang out, smoke pot, listen to all the great music that was happening. The Beatles were still together, the Doors were on AM radio! However, hovering over the class of ’69 was the draft, and the scourge of Vietnam. Most of Zak’s classmates wound up going to Brooklyn College – it was cheap, easy to get into – and kept you from being drafted.
Zak put off any post-high school plans, just didn’t want to think about it.
That changed one day in April. He was standing on his stoop at 451 40th Street, when he saw a ragged looking figure coming up the block from Fourth Avenue. It turned out to be a local guy, Joey Riccardi, who was about four years older.
He didn’t look good, nothing like the muscled greaser type Zak remembered.
“Hey Woz… I thought that was you.”
“Hey Joey.”
“How you doing, Woz?”
Before Zak could answer, Joey continued.
“yeah man… ya know… fuck… I’m livin’ down there now.” He pointed down the block towards the Gowanus Expressway.
“Under the highway… fuck.”
Joey paused to rub his face.
“My parents threw me out… you dig that! Threw me out… say I stole their stereo. You believe that shit… fuck.. .so how you doin’?”
“I’m…”
“Yeah, ya know, they don’t know, nobody knows what it’s like over there. Nam… the jungle, never a second to relax. Now I’m down there, with the junkies… fuckin’ animals.”
“So how you doin, Woz.”
“Uhh…”
“Listen, ya got five bucks you could spare?”
He gave Joey the seven dollars he had on him.
The next day at school, Zak Wozny went to his guidance counselor and told him he was ready to start thinking about college. With his help, Zak got into the city university system. He was too late for Brooklyn College and wound up getting admitted to Hunter College. Hunter was in Manhattan, or as the Sunset Park natives called it… “The City.”
The summer of ’69 was a blur, not just to Zak, who was working a few part-time jobs and getting high at night with his friends, but to the whole world. Men walking on the moon, Woodstock Nation, peace and love, Mets winning the world series, and of course Vietnam. The war raged on and on, no matter what the hippies did with sit ins and protest marches.
There was a wake for Jimmy Dalton, a local kid who had been drafted earlier that year. Zak, who was friends with his younger brother Tommy, went. The coffin was closed and he stayed in the back. Didn’t stay long, didn’t get high that night. He was feeling something different, something new. What exactly was it? It took a while to figure out, but turning up 40th Street from Fourth Avenue it came to him.
It was guilt.
Early one morning in September, Zak caught the N train at the 36th Street BMT station. Took it one express stop to Pacific Street, walked through a series of crowded tunnels to connect with the IRT express, which took him to the “City,” the upper east side of Manhattan.
On registration day, Zak wandered around the Hunter College auditorium signing up for 101’s at random: English, German, Geography and one class which he thought from the description was creative writing, but turned out to be “English as a second language.”
This was the first time in a school setting that he didn’t know ANYONE. He felt strange being out of the little village of Sunset Park. It was a drag, a real drag, and he had to be there by 8 am every morning.
The alarm clock his mother bought him would go off at 6:30 with a grinding screech, and since the ‘snooze’ button hadn’t been invented yet, he had to get up right then, cross the room, and shut it off. Coffee, buttered roll, N train to the 4 Train… “Better than ‘Nam’ everybody told him when he’d complain, but to Zak it felt like a slow death.
Geography 101, at 1 pm was his last class of the day and the most tiresome of all. Professor Miller would talk for fifty minutes, sometimes using a pointer on a map, explaining the importance of geographic formations on world events and culture. Usually Zak would doze off during these presentations. But not on this day in his second week at Hunter. On this day he decided that the tab of synthetic mescaline in his little jeans pocket, which he was saving for the evening hangout would be swallowed, Now. With a sip from the hallway fountain just before class this was done.
Within 15 minutes, Geography 101 became the most mind-blowing, fascinating fount of knowledge and understanding he had ever experienced. Mr. Miller was laying out foundations of universal constructs, illuminations, terrestrial epiphanies.
Zak, who up until now had never uttered a word in class, raised his hand.
Mr. Miller scanned the attendance sheet for his name. “yes Mr…”
“Wozny, Zak Wozny.”
“Yes, Mr. Wozny.”
“Is it possible that a mountain range separating two valleys, could, over time, create an evolutionary effect upon the developing species that would…”
He went on for a while in a mescaline infused rant, at the end of which Mr. Miller replied:
“Possibly…”
Mercifully for all concerned, the bell rang and the class, mostly kids Zak’s age in jeans and tee-shirts, filed out quickly. Zak, by now stoned, was moving slowly. As he rose to leave, a woman approached him.
“Mr. Wozny,” she began, extending her hand. “I’m Susan Kemp.”
A mescaline-induced pause later, he shook it and said hello.
“I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your observation in class today.”
He could only stare, she was so very different from the jeans-and-tee-shirt girls he was used to. She wore a pink skirt and blouse, a matching hat, and kept talking about geography. Zak didn’t do much more than nod and notice that she was wearing high heels and stockings and was pretty, with perfectly straight light brown hair.
“Would you like to get some coffee?” she said after a while.
Zak Wozny and Susan Kemp walked one block west to a Chock Full of Nuts on Madison and 69th.
“May I call you Zak?” Her English was crisp, like the people on television newscasts.
“Sure… that’s my name.”
Zak wasn’t intending to be funny, but she laughed. “Please, call me Susan… that’s my name.” And she laughed a little more.
They sat at the counter. Susan ordered coffee. At this stage of his mescaline high Zak felt no hunger, he could barely feel his body. The fluorescent lights in the restaurant seemed shockingly bright and gave the chewing diners sitting across from him a greenish pallor.
The uniformed waiter stood, slightly annoyed, until Zak, realizing he had to order something, said “A glass of milk, please.”
“And a whole wheat doughnut,” Susan added. “You’ll like it.”
Zak nodded.
The waiter served Miss Kemp a mug of coffee and placed an empty tall glass in front of Zak. He touched the glass and it was warm, almost hot, having just come out of the dishwasher. The waiter returned with a doughnut and a metal pitcher of cold milk. He then filled the glass, which instantly exploded with a high-pitched cracking sound.
Milk and shards of glass were sent flying in all directions. “My dress – my dress!” Miss Kemp began shrieking. Zak, being high, fell into wide eyed laughter
The manager came over to apologize and assured them there would be no charge.
“No charge?!” screamed Miss Kemp. “What do you usually charge to cover someone in milk and broken glass?!!” And then to Zak, “I have to change. Come with me; I’m just down on Park and 68th.”
As they headed east, Zak picked small pieces of glass out of his tie-dye tee shirt. It’s different up here than in Brooklyn, he thought to himself.
They came to one of the tall grey buildings on Park Avenue. As they approached the metal grilled door, it was opened for them by a small, middle-aged man in a military outfit, complete with a brimmed cap and trousers with red stripes running down the legs.
“Good afternoon, Miss Kemp!” he greeted her. To Zak, he directed a dirty look.
“Hello Harry – this way, Zak.” She led him down a dim, wood-paneled hallway to an ancient-looking elevator operated by another small man in military garb. He also greeted Miss Kemp with a “good afternoon” and Zak with a dirty look. He pulled shut a shiny brass grilled door, turned a wood handled crank, and took them swiftly up to the eleventh floor.
Zak followed Miss Kemp down a silent, plush-carpeted hallway, past faded landscape paintings, to 11 J. While Miss Kemp went to change, he stood in the parlor looking out at the East River. Mescaline high or not, this was an amazing view. Zak had only seen Manhattan, with its glimmering towers shining in the distance, from the top of Sunset Park. Now he was in one of those towers.
“I don’t have much to offer you,” she called out from the bedroom. “My parents are in Europe, and I usually eat out.”
“That’s cool – I’m not hungry.”
She came out now in jeans and a red tee-shirt with STANFORD printed in white letters. “I could get you some whiskey… my father keeps some old bourbon whiskey or something.”
“Sure – that’s cool.”
She brought him a heavy cut-glass tumbler filled halfway with amber liquid, saying, “Don’t worry – this glass won’t explode,” and they laughed a little.
Dressed this way she was more familiar to Zak, except now in her red tee-shirt he noticed she was braless. None of the girls in Sunset Park would ever do that. He took a swig; it was smooth and warm.
When Miss Kemp perched on a nearby ottoman, Zak took a seat on the worn leather couch.
“So, Zak – where do you live?”
“Brooklyn.”
“Oh, Brooklyn… I was there once.”
“Okay.”
“How do you like Hunter?”
“It’s okay. Better than Vietnam.”
“You seemed so enthusiastic in class.”
He didn’t want to tell her why. Instead, he said “I’m getting into it.”
“Another drink?”
Before he could answer she began pouring. “Vietnam… what a mess. Girls are lucky, we don’t get drafted. Well, not yet.”
Zak sipped at the whiskey while Miss Kemp began talking about herself.
His mind kept floating out the window to the view of the East River and hearing only some of what she was saying.
She was twenty-seven, dropped out of a bunch of colleges, under a lot of pressure to get married.
Until one word she uttered brough him back forcefully to the leather couch, Apartment 11-J, and the twenty-seven-year-old Susan Kemp, who was now kneeling on the rug in front of him.
The word was “fellate.”
And the full sentence was “Would you do me a big favor and let me fellate you?”
Now back in the room in both body and mind, he shouted, “What?! What did you just say?”
Somewhat shyly, Miss Kemp replied. “I said, would you do me a big favor and let me fellate you? It means give you a blow job.”
“I know what it fucking means!”
After a pause, she went on. “It would help me with this guy I’m dating.”
“Help you?”
“Yes. It would be a big help.”
Zak just stared at her.
“Okay… I told you about the pressure I’m under to get married. But not to just anyone. Ken – that’s his name – is a Whitman. From Sutton Place. We’ve gone out a few times, but… I’m not as experienced as I should be, and neither is he. So if I could just practice…”
Zak cut her off. “Practice?”
“It could help seal the deal. And get my parents off my back.”
Zak kept staring. He thought he would get up and leave.
But he didn’t get up, and he didn’t leave.
Susan Kemp raised her head slowly, squinted her eyes, and said, with a touch of grit, “Pleeeeease?”
Then she took off the red Stanford tee-shirt.
Bob Racioppo is a founding member of the Shirts, a New York-based American punk band that formed in 1975. In addition to music, Robert is an accomplished fine artist. This is his first novel. He is a Brooklynite, grew up in Sunset Park and now lives in Windsor Terrace. To order a copy of the complete book ($15) text 917 652-9128.
