My red tights were shredded and the white billowy blouse had one
sleeve nearly torn off. My head was throbbing from an elbow that
had caught me in the ear. I was followed up the stairs by five guys
wearing equally strange outfits. One had glued small horns to his
bald head and wore fur pants and nothing else. He was built like
a fire hydrant and had proved to be as strong as he looked. All
were worse for wear.
“What have you gotten into? Look at you, your tights are a
mess and you’re all splattered with blood.” I could
barely hear Gilbert, my friend, painting teacher and co-host of
our masquerade party. “Ginsberg is here with a group from
the reading. He doesn’t have a costume let’s throw him
out.”
Gilbert and I had planed the party to coincide with Paterson New
Jersey’s annual poetry reading. Allen Ginsburg, born and raised
in Paterson, made a point to always take part in the readings.
For a rough ex-industrial city, Paterson had a rich history that
included some artistic energy, past and present. William Carlos
Williams, one of America’s leading poets, wrote his poems
on the back of prescription pads. He was head of pediatrics at Paterson
general hospital in the 40’s and 50’s until he passed
away in ‘62. William J. Higginson, a haiku poet, moved to
Paterson in the 70’s just to live for a while where William
Carlos Williams had lived. There he collaborated with Tadashi Shôkan
Kondô on translations of Bashô. Add to this a handful
of old beatniks from the early Ginsburg years and some newcomers
who had come to rent the large and cheap spaces above Paterson’s
businesses.
The result was a small but vibrant little art colony that until
the writing of this tale, few have known about, or for that matter
cared to know. Paterson never became a Soho or a San Miguel, it
was just a place where we lived because it was cheap, and therefore
we could survive on our art. But it was more than that. We liked
Paterson, and I still think fondly of the city, and the funny mix
of people we all were, the loft dwellers, artists, musicians, poets,
the Italians and Irish, the Latinos and Blacks, and us. I had lived
ten years in Manhattan and Brooklyn and loved it, but everyone I
knew there had the same politics and went to the same deli. Even
living on the lower east side in the 60’s, great as it was,
had a certain artificiality to it. Most were just trying too hard
to be cool but not Paterson. Paterson was the American melting pot
they taught us about back in grade school.
For the masquerade, the party was on two floors, about 3000 square
feet. Gilbert had the top floor and I had the second. To fill things
out a bit the daughter of one of the poets who was going to a nearby
college, handed out a couple hundred invitations to her fellow women
students. She said those women who dared to come would bring a guy
for protection, this being downtown Paterson. Just to make things
more interesting I invited Angelo and Vince, owners of two of the
local go-go bars, and a few of the dancers. I also invited the guys
I had breakfast with most mornings in the restaurant around the
corner from our studios, three Paterson cops, the city’s chief
prosecutor, two other lawyers and Lou Gallo, the restaurant’s
owner. When I gave them the invitations they all looked a little
uncomfortable.
“It says here,” said Lou, quoting from the invitation:
“Men should not come as cowboys or robots. But rather focus
on the wearing of beautiful colors, feathers, masks, flowing robes,
and or painted faces, if the men want the women to adorn themselves,
why should we not do the same, at least for one night.”
“Sounds, you know, a little gay” said Richie, one of
the lawyers.
“Well,” I ventured, “go back in time, before the
protestant thing happened. Think of the ancient civilizations, the
robes they wore, the Samurais, even Aztec warriors, they wore feathers
when they went to war. It’s really only in recent history
that men have worn such drab clothing. A Roman gladiator, in his
down time, wrapped himself in beautiful garments. That is if he
was a winner. Look at the middle ages, the way the knights dressed.”
They all looked skeptical and I wondered if any of them would come.
Bill Ross, one of the lawyers, would for sure come. Bill was our
protector and advisor in times of trouble and had many times gotten
one or the other of us out of a hassle, whether it was a traffic
ticket or more serious. He was the observer, ever amused at our
strange ways.
+ + + + +
“I’ll take my clothes off,” said Ginsburg.
 “That
would be funny,” I answered, “but won’t qualify
as a costume.” We liked him immediately, and told him and
his friends where they could find a room full of costumes, wigs,
make-up and rolls of material. A bunch of us had been devoted members
of The Society for Creative Anachronisms, Eastern Kingdom, for a
year or so, and had accumulated a lot of medieval costumes. The
material had been purchased in rolls when one of the old fabric
stores going out of business had sold bolts of embroidered upholstery
material for almost nothing. We had combined it all into one room
for just this purpose. Ginsburg chose to wrap himself in a couple
yards of the material and paint a red dot on his forehead. His friends,
like the merry pranksters they were, leaped for joy when they saw
the room.
+ + + + +
Our invitation seemed to have caused domestic problems for Paterson’s
legal community. The cops’ and lawyers’ wives had found
the invitations and wanted their husbands to doll up and take them
to the masquerade. The husbands refused, except, as I predicted,
Bill Ross, and Lou, the restaurant owner, who came as a roman gladiator
so he could come armed with a wooden sword, in case anyone “got
funny.” Bill came in his beautiful medieval robe he had purchased
during his days with us in the Eastern Kingdom. The others copped-out,
so to speak, one claiming that the fight with his wife over the
party had almost snow-balled into a divorce. Lou was already divorced
and Bill was unmarried, so life was simpler for them.
+ + + + +
Around midnight I spotted Lou with an anxious look on his face heading
in my direction. He looked out of breath. “I went around the
corner to my restaurant for a private moment with the chick with
the wings. We were just getting affectionate when pictures started
falling off the wall. I think someone’s trying to break in
through the back with a sledge hammer. Should we call the cops or
check it out ourselves?”
I remember I didn’t answer and I’m not sure why. I just
started moving towards the stairs to the street. Along the way I
tapped a couple friends on the shoulder and motioned them to come.
 I
have always known how to avoid trouble and preferred it that way.
To this day, I do not know why we did not call the police. Instead,
the five of us trooped downstairs. As we passed the lower loft entrance,
Pan, with horns and furry legs, joined us sensing something was
up. As we crossed the parking lot that bordered the side of the
restaurant I looked at my companions: José, a Puerto Rican
in a purple and gold robe, Ron, a Zulu warrior with painted face
and spear who was in real life a gospel singer, Billy Bromer in
a gold cape and red bikini bathing suit, Lou, the gladiator, wooden
sword at the ready, and myself in red tights and white blouse, beads
and chains dangling from neck and waist with a silk turquoise scarf
wrapped around my head. Pan and Zulu pulled themselves up on the
wall and yelled something down to the would-be burglars. There was
no way out of that alley except through us. Three large black men
came over the wall and joined us in the parking lot. As is the usual
case in these instances, much of what followed was a blur.
There should have been a hammer and chisel involved in the fracas,
but I do not remember that. Perhaps in a panic or in their need
to climb the wall they left their tools behind. Billy quickly had
one of the three men on the ground. Pan had the second in a headlock
and I was occupied trying to keep Lou from repeatedly punching the
guy that Pan was holding. As we dragged our two captives toward
the street I saw José, in hot pursuit of the third villain,
dive screaming onto the back of the fleeing man, his gold and purple
robes completely enveloping him as they hit the pavement in front
of the hooker bar across from the parking lot. The man was by now
in such a state of terror, adrenalin pumping, that he was able to
throw José off and escape.
By now all the hookers, pimps, and clients had piled into the street.
Lou was still trying to sneak in a punch now and then. As I looked
at our open mouthed spectators I started thinking this could really
turn ugly. Our two remaining captives were black, eighty per cent
of our group was white and Lou wasn’t helping any. A couple
of the male spectators were fingering something they had concealed
under their suit jackets. I started doing what I tend to do in moments
of stress. I started talking. I pointed out that we were all neighbors
and had all at one time or another been the victims of crime and
so on, rambling on until finally one of the guys with his hand in
his pocket said “alright, listen up. You all stop punching
these guys, especially that dude in the dress over there, and wait
for the police. Any more punching and I’m gonna start shooting.”
 Suddenly
a car came roaring down the street with three of its four doors
hanging open and screeched to a stop, nearly breaking the doors
off. It was our third robber making a brave try at rescuing his
brothers. He revved the engine at full throttle, screaming at his
friends to get in. It didn’t work, and José and Ron
dragged the driver from the car. Seconds later a cruiser came onto
the scene and Mike, one of the cops invited to the party, stepped
out of the cruiser and said, “Looks like I missed one hell
of a party.”
While Lou was explaining what had happened I watched a group of
young black guys coming up the street. They stopped and asked one
of the pimps, “What the fuck is going on?”
The pimp shook his head and answered, “Six fags beating up
three niggers, I don’t know what the world is coming to.”
Later that night I found Ginsberg standing alone staring out the
window at the street below. I stood beside him to see what he was
looking at. There was nothing but an empty street.
“What goes on out there now?” He asked.
“Probably not much different than when you lived here,”
I answered.
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