I wrote this story for the Village Voice in the summer of 1971. I was 24 years old. It seemed like the whole world was 24 that year. We were passing the Great Sand Dunes National Monument, and the lady, with a calm turn of her head, shot words at me in her harsh whisper: Man, you just don’t know my sensitivities, and I don’t think you even want to.
The class of 1965 was huge. Life Magazine tagged us The Best and the Brightest, the kids that had the most opportunity in history. Hearing that when we were barely 18 seems to me as much of a curse as a blessing. If we succeeded, well we WERE the best and brightest. If we didn’t succeed spectacularly, why not? We were after all the best and the brightest.
I always marvel at your early writing. I don’t know any other men my age who would have owned up to not caring what his lover thought in private, and they sure as hell wouldn’t have published it in the Village Voice. DYLAN didn’t get around to that when he was 24. The dry and flat landscape as metaphor is brilliant. Bravo...
Do you think I don’t know where Dylan was at 24? His first album sold 100,000, and I have the one I bought when I was 15. Hell he didn’t manage to tell Baez he was married.
Ok, I am sure you know exactly what he wrote before he was that age, not that what he did or didn't write is clearly relevant, just figuring use any excuse to post a link to one of his songs will do!! Anyway did Joan do her due diligence on that, and if she had hypothetically done that, would it have changed much? Maybe yes, maybe no!
Cf. "Bob, if you go electric it will destroy your career!"
I was the class of '66, which might account for EVERYTHING. I wasn't quite the worst and dumbest, but there are lots of days when it sure feels like it.
David I was in the top 10% of my class of over 350, but there are also days and months when I would count myself among worst and dumbest. At least we can recognize that when it happens...
How I do remember the Summer of "71. I love your writing and have read all your novels..On June 1st I had just moved into a raw space loft on Prince Street which would later become SoHo. Had to install electricity and plumbing. My upstairs neighbor was Robert Hughes who was just starting as art critic for Time Magazine. I was 25 and used to stop in at the Lion's Head from time to time. It was so straight. Funny that it was next to The Mattachine Society and The Stonewall Inn!
On Friday night, the night the cops busted the Stonewall, nobody left the Lion's Head, although Dave van Ronk left the 55 and yelled at the cops and was arrested. On Saturday night, the night of the big riot, everyone stayed inside with Archie Mulligan guarding the door, packing wet bar rags across the bottom because of the tear gas outside. I don't remember anyone leaving the bar for solidarity or any other reason. I was in and out all night as I covered it.
Sorry; I was still in law school when that happened, but I was told that the Lion's Head patrons showed solidarity with Stonewall. I was given bad information.
People from the Head were on the side of the gay crowd and horrified by the cops overreaction and the beatings. They just didn't go out on the street. It was madness out there on Saturday night. Archie, guarding the door, looked terrified every time he opened the door for me.
Lucian's right, Claude. Entering the Head Saturday was the only time I was ever tear-gassed. Nobody left that night, and Lucian, who was there the first night, never wrote a word about any expression of solidarity coming from the Head. I never heard as much as a rumor of support before reading your comment.
Sorry, I was wrong about people leaving the Head in solidarity. As Lucian. who was there, points out in his reply to my comment, those in the Head that night did feel sympathy for the Stonewall patrons, but didn't go outside to face tear gas and possible clubbing.
C’mon. You must have loved those dunes more than the girl. They won’t insist on talking to you, except to say: “There are things that will last longer than your lifetime, sonny boy.”
The Harmonic Convergence was approaching. (aka Harmonica Virgins. For those who missed it check here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_Convergence) We lived in Albuquerque at the time, where to go. Great Sand Dunes, an out-of-the-ordinary place to spend the night for this hyped up "Spiritual" event. It was a good place to lie in the sand, drink wine and watch meteors.
Writing must be in your blood, sure fun to read, I would have been 19 that summer, and working, not especially interesting to me or anyone else, not that I can remember, anyways!
Delicious writing, Lucian. And interesting to hear how your voice has and has not changed since that time.
Although the informative and thought provoking aspect if your current work is crucial and we all rely on it, the art of your expression, your writing itself, is integral to the impact of your message.
Thank you so much for sharing both the writer and the thinker that you are.
Nearly everything I have written on Substack could have been a Voice piece. Nearly everything I wrote back then could be a Substack column. I have changed a lot in 50 years but my writing hasn't.
At 24 I was a pearl diver in Boston and later actually worked for a time at the Bull Finch Pub which became the basis for Cheers. I was lost in fantasy and wanted to be a writer and wrote so bad I was offered money to never do it again.
You inspire everyone with a remarkable grasp of detail and nuance.
Another splendid reminiscence; and judging from some comments below, more here than meets the eye. Fascinating! Glad these two youngsters managed to stay in touch thru the years and Onward Thru the Fog!
I miss Nick and , of course, the Lion's Head. I remember one instance in which Nick fell for a trick. The bar phone rang. It was his fellow bartender, Archie Mulligan, another I miss, who disguised his voice (he was an actor when not tending bar) and he said, "I'm trying to reach a friend who said he'd be at your bar around now. His name is Jack Mehoff. Could you page him, please?" Nick looked down the bar and called out, "Jack Mehoff?" He may not have noticed several hands quickly covering mouths. He picked up the phone and said, "Not at the bar. Hold on while I try the dining room." He went back there and said, "Jack Mehoff? Jack Mehoff?", no doubt to the amusement of diners and waitstaff.
Poor Nick—such an innocent. I feel some collective guilt that none of those guys lived to ripe old age. Smokeater machines be damned, every one of them I know of fell too soon to something second-hand-smoke-related, lungs or heart. Well, Archie, I'm not so sure. Wes told me Archie always had a drink ready at each end of the bar.
This was a great travelogue, well written, and sufficiently described that I felt I was there with you on that journey northward through the San Luis Valley connecting northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. I was once 24 years old, and I remember that feeling. I was curious about the world, and bent on making my mark on it. That was 56 years ago, and I learned a lot since then, both about myself, and the ziggurat-like structure of the human personality that differentiates the way men and women interact with one another, principally in group settings. There is no getting around it; men and women behave differently towards one another in social groups. Boys and men behave in one pattern set of ways towards each other in social groups; girls and women have differently patterned ways of relating to one another. In social groupings involving both have overlapping spheres of influence like a Venn diagram.
Intimacy for single individuals within a larger group setting is difficult to arrive at, and doubly difficult in establishing and maintaining male-female relationships. Men often perform better in group settings, say, for example, in a military setting, or team sports, then we do as individuals. Within such groupings our roles are both implicitly and explicitly prescribed, whether it is field positions in baseball, or team assignments in ice hockey, soccer, football, and basketball. The games themselves are choreographed to reflect those position assignments, and an individual's worth to his team depends upon how he will perform his job assignment. Girls and women's activity groups have their own specific hierarchies. If I had to do a schematic, I would say that men is a group begin at developing friendships based upon shared activities, games, or work requiring joint effort, and gradually move towards interpersonal intimacy. We are less open to exposing vulnerability, and a correspondingly greater fear of failure. Women seem to come from the opposite direction, sharing vulnerabilities in order to reinforce their group and individual strengths against the world seemingly dominated by men. It is not necessarily that women are more nurturing, but nurturing ensures a better chance of survival against adversity.
The friendships that form within the social groupings may depend upon how well the individuals perform their assigned tasks within those groups. Starting as toddlers, little boys are brought together by their mothers for group play where the rudiments of social interaction are developed. The social skills acquired by these children develop over time, but they tend to remain activity focused, goal oriented, and to a certain extent, competitive. The degree of intimacy within those groups tends to be just enough to meet the demands of the group objective, and individuals forming close friendships within those groups are based largely upon the goals and pursuits that brought them into the group initially. Your friend Nick Browne wondered aloud how men can have deep and abiding friendships over the years, and yet fall flat on their faces when dealing with women. I think the key to the puzzle is what those men were doing together, or would be doing together, even when existing apart from one another. In that respect, we as men have sort of a tunnel vision when it comes to relationships, where the interpersonal relationship is grounded on shared activities. I could not say whether that is true in families where the siblings are both male and female; but men who have sisters do not seem to have a leg up on those who do not. Perhaps it is the early urge to differentiate ourselves that makes it difficult to come together when we are older. Certainly, the risk of humiliation is much greater when we are younger and have fewer natural or acquired defenses against the pains of rejection, but it seems to be that women have better support systems, innately or by conscious design.
As for mixed groups between men and women, typically it is the women who organize the group and is is there shared interests that hold it together. The men are there to be the ride home, mostly. Garrison Keillor years ago did a marvelous riff about the way young men and women are socialized to deal with one another, with the women being the equivalent of Zen masters in creating and managing interpersonal relationships, and that the boys stood no chance whatsoever encountering whatever the girls wanted to do. I do not think that it is that the women are innately better at doing that, albeit that may be true, but they certainly work a lot longer and harder at it than the boys do. And it starts early. I remember my daughter Erica at age five lining up all of her stuffed toys on her bed and holding court for the afternoon.
So I comes as no surprise that you, a young man barely five years away from being a teenager might have difficulty in relating to a young woman who saw no potential in having any sort of a relationship, in particular a romantic relationship, with someone such as yourself. You did not mention how it was that you and she happened to be occupying the same car, and traveling in the same direction, through the San Luis Valley; and that might have provided a clue as to why it was she was evidently so hostile towards you. From the point of social standing, the fact that you were or had been a West Point cadet, and thus had the potential for creating a worthwhile relationship with anyone you chose to pursue comes as a bit of surprise. Women tend to be more status conscious than men. Your potential to earn a better-than-average income would have been clearly discernible, and a decidedly upscale demeanor would have been evident simply by speaking with you. The fact that you had the verve and vocabulary to write your article for the Village Voice in 1971 shows that you had a better command of language that most of us guys do, even those of us who might have gone to law school. From my perspective, this gal passed on what should have been a really good bet. The point is though that neither of you apparently trying to make the effort to see if there was anything on the other side that was worth pursuing. That, unfortunately, seems to be the curse of youth.
I feel that I have somehow offended you. That was not my intent.
I may be alone in my reading/perception of your writing then and now, but I do hear a difference.
Your writing now has a different heartbeat, in my hearing. Closer to the bone and more generous.
I agree, as a reader, that your essential style has carried through - amazing that your voice was so distinct at 24 yrs old... - but I hear the changes over 50 years, as you wrote, to have only deepened your ability to feel, think, and write about your subjects.
Summer of '71, I'd spent four months living on Crete because of a lucky writing fellowship I'd won the year before. as soon as I got back to town, before I'd unpacked, I very quickly made my way to Sheridan Square. I've said this several times before, but we might have been sitting within a few feet of each other....
I was all set to tell a slightly different, much more detailed story about sitting in the Head around noon the following October ('72), but it'd take more energy than I have right now, and might be considered inappropriate for mixed company ("they were different times..." and all that).
but thanks for THIS one, Lucian. a terrific piece.
The class of 1965 was huge. Life Magazine tagged us The Best and the Brightest, the kids that had the most opportunity in history. Hearing that when we were barely 18 seems to me as much of a curse as a blessing. If we succeeded, well we WERE the best and brightest. If we didn’t succeed spectacularly, why not? We were after all the best and the brightest.
I always marvel at your early writing. I don’t know any other men my age who would have owned up to not caring what his lover thought in private, and they sure as hell wouldn’t have published it in the Village Voice. DYLAN didn’t get around to that when he was 24. The dry and flat landscape as metaphor is brilliant. Bravo...
Ok, it's exceptionally good stuff, like all of what Lucian publishes on here, andhere's Dylan at 24 years old:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aehwEu8SBSo
I live on that same Fourth Street Southeast, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
And "Live at Carnegie Hall," could be written last week vis-a-vis the current political-cultural paranoia amplified by the vile and odious among us:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5Xn9YOKPcQ
Do you think I don’t know where Dylan was at 24? His first album sold 100,000, and I have the one I bought when I was 15. Hell he didn’t manage to tell Baez he was married.
Ok, I am sure you know exactly what he wrote before he was that age, not that what he did or didn't write is clearly relevant, just figuring use any excuse to post a link to one of his songs will do!! Anyway did Joan do her due diligence on that, and if she had hypothetically done that, would it have changed much? Maybe yes, maybe no!
Cf. "Bob, if you go electric it will destroy your career!"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FaUx-Re8i0
^^^^^
Brownsville Girl (Official Audio)
And at 23, in Hentoff's memorable profile (hope all the cabbage steers you around the paywall): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1964/10/24/the-crackin-shakin-breakin-sounds?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker&utm_social-type=earned
This piece is practically a treatise on "Why Bob Dylan Matters," thanks!
I was the class of '66, which might account for EVERYTHING. I wasn't quite the worst and dumbest, but there are lots of days when it sure feels like it.
David I was in the top 10% of my class of over 350, but there are also days and months when I would count myself among worst and dumbest. At least we can recognize that when it happens...
Class of 65 here, brats not eager to serve, but, knew we would.
Beautiful writing. I came for the politics but I'd stay for the personal stories alone.
Just gorgeous writing. Spare and wonderful. At 24.
How I do remember the Summer of "71. I love your writing and have read all your novels..On June 1st I had just moved into a raw space loft on Prince Street which would later become SoHo. Had to install electricity and plumbing. My upstairs neighbor was Robert Hughes who was just starting as art critic for Time Magazine. I was 25 and used to stop in at the Lion's Head from time to time. It was so straight. Funny that it was next to The Mattachine Society and The Stonewall Inn!
Comment deleted.
On Friday night, the night the cops busted the Stonewall, nobody left the Lion's Head, although Dave van Ronk left the 55 and yelled at the cops and was arrested. On Saturday night, the night of the big riot, everyone stayed inside with Archie Mulligan guarding the door, packing wet bar rags across the bottom because of the tear gas outside. I don't remember anyone leaving the bar for solidarity or any other reason. I was in and out all night as I covered it.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqGISXd5a8c
^^^ Dave Van Ronk....
Another thing the interwebs are useful for!
Sorry; I was still in law school when that happened, but I was told that the Lion's Head patrons showed solidarity with Stonewall. I was given bad information.
People from the Head were on the side of the gay crowd and horrified by the cops overreaction and the beatings. They just didn't go out on the street. It was madness out there on Saturday night. Archie, guarding the door, looked terrified every time he opened the door for me.
Lucian's right, Claude. Entering the Head Saturday was the only time I was ever tear-gassed. Nobody left that night, and Lucian, who was there the first night, never wrote a word about any expression of solidarity coming from the Head. I never heard as much as a rumor of support before reading your comment.
My bad; I'm sorry. In future, I will double fact check anything I post as a comment here.
Don't be. We all fall for urban myths.
I didn't know that. thank you. Glad to hear it!
Sorry, I was wrong about people leaving the Head in solidarity. As Lucian. who was there, points out in his reply to my comment, those in the Head that night did feel sympathy for the Stonewall patrons, but didn't go outside to face tear gas and possible clubbing.
C’mon. You must have loved those dunes more than the girl. They won’t insist on talking to you, except to say: “There are things that will last longer than your lifetime, sonny boy.”
The Harmonic Convergence was approaching. (aka Harmonica Virgins. For those who missed it check here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_Convergence) We lived in Albuquerque at the time, where to go. Great Sand Dunes, an out-of-the-ordinary place to spend the night for this hyped up "Spiritual" event. It was a good place to lie in the sand, drink wine and watch meteors.
Writing must be in your blood, sure fun to read, I would have been 19 that summer, and working, not especially interesting to me or anyone else, not that I can remember, anyways!
Delicious writing, Lucian. And interesting to hear how your voice has and has not changed since that time.
Although the informative and thought provoking aspect if your current work is crucial and we all rely on it, the art of your expression, your writing itself, is integral to the impact of your message.
Thank you so much for sharing both the writer and the thinker that you are.
Nearly everything I have written on Substack could have been a Voice piece. Nearly everything I wrote back then could be a Substack column. I have changed a lot in 50 years but my writing hasn't.
At 24 I was a pearl diver in Boston and later actually worked for a time at the Bull Finch Pub which became the basis for Cheers. I was lost in fantasy and wanted to be a writer and wrote so bad I was offered money to never do it again.
You inspire everyone with a remarkable grasp of detail and nuance.
We are all impressed.
Thank you Lucian.
Thank you for the break, and a vicarious trip back. I applaud your self awareness at that age. Your writing goes down as smooth as nice tarmac.
Another splendid reminiscence; and judging from some comments below, more here than meets the eye. Fascinating! Glad these two youngsters managed to stay in touch thru the years and Onward Thru the Fog!
I miss Nick and , of course, the Lion's Head. I remember one instance in which Nick fell for a trick. The bar phone rang. It was his fellow bartender, Archie Mulligan, another I miss, who disguised his voice (he was an actor when not tending bar) and he said, "I'm trying to reach a friend who said he'd be at your bar around now. His name is Jack Mehoff. Could you page him, please?" Nick looked down the bar and called out, "Jack Mehoff?" He may not have noticed several hands quickly covering mouths. He picked up the phone and said, "Not at the bar. Hold on while I try the dining room." He went back there and said, "Jack Mehoff? Jack Mehoff?", no doubt to the amusement of diners and waitstaff.
There were a few other tricks played on bartenders. Not all worked as well as that one.
Later to be ripped off by writers for The Simpsons! (Bart never got to say this one on TV, tho'.)
Poor Nick—such an innocent. I feel some collective guilt that none of those guys lived to ripe old age. Smokeater machines be damned, every one of them I know of fell too soon to something second-hand-smoke-related, lungs or heart. Well, Archie, I'm not so sure. Wes told me Archie always had a drink ready at each end of the bar.
This was a great travelogue, well written, and sufficiently described that I felt I was there with you on that journey northward through the San Luis Valley connecting northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. I was once 24 years old, and I remember that feeling. I was curious about the world, and bent on making my mark on it. That was 56 years ago, and I learned a lot since then, both about myself, and the ziggurat-like structure of the human personality that differentiates the way men and women interact with one another, principally in group settings. There is no getting around it; men and women behave differently towards one another in social groups. Boys and men behave in one pattern set of ways towards each other in social groups; girls and women have differently patterned ways of relating to one another. In social groupings involving both have overlapping spheres of influence like a Venn diagram.
Intimacy for single individuals within a larger group setting is difficult to arrive at, and doubly difficult in establishing and maintaining male-female relationships. Men often perform better in group settings, say, for example, in a military setting, or team sports, then we do as individuals. Within such groupings our roles are both implicitly and explicitly prescribed, whether it is field positions in baseball, or team assignments in ice hockey, soccer, football, and basketball. The games themselves are choreographed to reflect those position assignments, and an individual's worth to his team depends upon how he will perform his job assignment. Girls and women's activity groups have their own specific hierarchies. If I had to do a schematic, I would say that men is a group begin at developing friendships based upon shared activities, games, or work requiring joint effort, and gradually move towards interpersonal intimacy. We are less open to exposing vulnerability, and a correspondingly greater fear of failure. Women seem to come from the opposite direction, sharing vulnerabilities in order to reinforce their group and individual strengths against the world seemingly dominated by men. It is not necessarily that women are more nurturing, but nurturing ensures a better chance of survival against adversity.
The friendships that form within the social groupings may depend upon how well the individuals perform their assigned tasks within those groups. Starting as toddlers, little boys are brought together by their mothers for group play where the rudiments of social interaction are developed. The social skills acquired by these children develop over time, but they tend to remain activity focused, goal oriented, and to a certain extent, competitive. The degree of intimacy within those groups tends to be just enough to meet the demands of the group objective, and individuals forming close friendships within those groups are based largely upon the goals and pursuits that brought them into the group initially. Your friend Nick Browne wondered aloud how men can have deep and abiding friendships over the years, and yet fall flat on their faces when dealing with women. I think the key to the puzzle is what those men were doing together, or would be doing together, even when existing apart from one another. In that respect, we as men have sort of a tunnel vision when it comes to relationships, where the interpersonal relationship is grounded on shared activities. I could not say whether that is true in families where the siblings are both male and female; but men who have sisters do not seem to have a leg up on those who do not. Perhaps it is the early urge to differentiate ourselves that makes it difficult to come together when we are older. Certainly, the risk of humiliation is much greater when we are younger and have fewer natural or acquired defenses against the pains of rejection, but it seems to be that women have better support systems, innately or by conscious design.
As for mixed groups between men and women, typically it is the women who organize the group and is is there shared interests that hold it together. The men are there to be the ride home, mostly. Garrison Keillor years ago did a marvelous riff about the way young men and women are socialized to deal with one another, with the women being the equivalent of Zen masters in creating and managing interpersonal relationships, and that the boys stood no chance whatsoever encountering whatever the girls wanted to do. I do not think that it is that the women are innately better at doing that, albeit that may be true, but they certainly work a lot longer and harder at it than the boys do. And it starts early. I remember my daughter Erica at age five lining up all of her stuffed toys on her bed and holding court for the afternoon.
So I comes as no surprise that you, a young man barely five years away from being a teenager might have difficulty in relating to a young woman who saw no potential in having any sort of a relationship, in particular a romantic relationship, with someone such as yourself. You did not mention how it was that you and she happened to be occupying the same car, and traveling in the same direction, through the San Luis Valley; and that might have provided a clue as to why it was she was evidently so hostile towards you. From the point of social standing, the fact that you were or had been a West Point cadet, and thus had the potential for creating a worthwhile relationship with anyone you chose to pursue comes as a bit of surprise. Women tend to be more status conscious than men. Your potential to earn a better-than-average income would have been clearly discernible, and a decidedly upscale demeanor would have been evident simply by speaking with you. The fact that you had the verve and vocabulary to write your article for the Village Voice in 1971 shows that you had a better command of language that most of us guys do, even those of us who might have gone to law school. From my perspective, this gal passed on what should have been a really good bet. The point is though that neither of you apparently trying to make the effort to see if there was anything on the other side that was worth pursuing. That, unfortunately, seems to be the curse of youth.
Fabulous story Lucian. Brought back wonderful memories of a national road trip at 19, in 1975. Thank you.
I feel that I have somehow offended you. That was not my intent.
I may be alone in my reading/perception of your writing then and now, but I do hear a difference.
Your writing now has a different heartbeat, in my hearing. Closer to the bone and more generous.
I agree, as a reader, that your essential style has carried through - amazing that your voice was so distinct at 24 yrs old... - but I hear the changes over 50 years, as you wrote, to have only deepened your ability to feel, think, and write about your subjects.
That's a fair assessment.
Summer of '71, I'd spent four months living on Crete because of a lucky writing fellowship I'd won the year before. as soon as I got back to town, before I'd unpacked, I very quickly made my way to Sheridan Square. I've said this several times before, but we might have been sitting within a few feet of each other....
I was all set to tell a slightly different, much more detailed story about sitting in the Head around noon the following October ('72), but it'd take more energy than I have right now, and might be considered inappropriate for mixed company ("they were different times..." and all that).
but thanks for THIS one, Lucian. a terrific piece.