03 June 2008

minute, I’ll be right with you soon as I finish this chapter,” and I did and it was one of the best chapters in the whole book. Then I dressed and off we flew to NY to meet some girls. As you know to go from Ozone Park to New York takes an hour by elevated and subway, and as we rode in the El over the rooftops of Brooklyn we leaned on each other with fingers waving and yelled and talked excitedly and I was beginning to get the bug like Neal. In all, what Neal was, simply, was tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man he was only conning because he wanted so much to live and also to get involved with people that would otherwise pay no attention to him. He was conning me, so-called, and I knew it, and he knew I knew (this has been the basis of our relation) but I didn’t care and we got along fine. I began to learn from him as much as he probably learned from me. As far as my work was concerned he said, “Go ahead, everything you do is great.” We went to New York, I forget what the situation was, two girls---there were no girls there, they were supposed to meet him or some such thing and they weren’t there. We went to his parkinglot where he had a few things to do---change his clothes in the shack in back and spruce up a bit in front of a cracked shack mirror and so on, and then we took off. And that was the night Neal met Leon Levinsky. A tremendous thing happened when Neal met Leon Levinsky…I mean of course Allen Ginsberg. Two keen minds that they are they took to each other at the drop of a hat. Two piercing eyes glanced into two piercing eyes…the holy con-man and the great sorrowful poetic con-man that is Allen Ginsberg. From that moment on I saw very little of Neal and I was a little sorry too…Their energies met head-on. I was a lout compared; I couldn’t keep up with them. The whole mad swirl of everything that was to come then began which would mix up all my friends and all I had left of my family in a big dust cloud over the American night---they talked of Burroughs, Hunkey, Vicki, …Burroughs in Texas, Hunkey on Riker’s Island, Vicki hung up with Norman Schnall at the time…and Neal told Allen of people in the west like Jim Holmes the hunchbacked poolhall rotation shark and cardplayer and queer saint…he told him